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Hyôdô Akiko 兵頭晶子, Seishinbyô no Nihon kindai: tsuku shinshin kara yamu shinshin e 精神病の日本近代 : 憑く心身から病む心身へ (Mental Disease and Japanese Modernity: From the Possessed Mind/Body to the Diseased Mind/Body) Tokyo: Seikyûsha, 2008. ISBN 978-4-7872-2032-5. 322 pp. Akihito Suzuki Received: 26 July 2010 /Accepted: 26 July 2010 /Published online: 2 October 2010 # National Science Council, Taiwan 2010 Research into the history of Japanese psychiatry has shown some signs of change in the last couple of decades and is now undergoing a remarkable transformation. As in many other countries, the history of psychiatry used to be studied almost exclusively by Japanese psychiatrists, who wrote for their colleagues. Such research became an integral part of the enterprise of psychiatry, and in Japan it emerged at the same moment as academic psychiatry. Kure Shûzô, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Tokyo from 1901 to 1925, holds a double crown as the founding father of psychiatry in Japan and of the history of Japanese psychiatry. Inspired by his example, many psychiatrists have taken up historical research for nearly a century. Kaneko Junji, who was a student of Kure, compiled bibliographies and anthologies of materials related to psychiatry and mental illness; they remain indispensable tools for every scholar in the field. Matsushita Masa’aki, another professor of psychiatry at the University of Tokyo, founded the Japanese Society for the History of Psychiatry in 1997, which is now flourishing. Okada Yasuo, another eminent psychiatrist-historian, has been an indefatigable researcher and writer; he has amassed by far the richest private collection of materials on the topic. These scholars represent the first wave in the history of Japanese psychiatry: psychiatrists writing for psychiatrists. We are now witnessing the rise of a new wave. Although there are still psychiatrists who work in the field, authors with different backgrounds have appeared who write for a different audience. The history of psychiatry is now being written by scholars trained in sociology, science studies, anthropology, literature, and history. At the recent annual conferences held by the Japanese Society for the History of Psychiatry, roughly half of the participants have nonmedical backgrounds. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2010) 4:467–473 DOI 10.1007/s12280-010-9151-0 A. Suzuki (*) School of Economics, Keio University, 4-1-1 Hiyoshi, Yokohama 223-8521, Japan e-mail: asuzuki@hc.cc.keio.ac.jp A representative of the new wave is Serizawa Kazuya who received his doctorate in sociology from Keio University. His work displays a new potential to throw light on the deep-rooted problems in both psychiatry and contemporary Japanese society. Serizawa’s intellectual trajectory reflects a broader trend comparable with what happened in Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s when young scholars in the humanities and the social sciences inspired by the critiques of psychiatry offered by Michel Foucault and others turned a critical eye on the field. Not only authorship but readership too has changed. Quite naturally, the authors of new history do not write just for psychiatrists. Their articles are published in humanities and the social science journals, and their books look decidedly nonmedical, although psychiatrists certainly read them. With their very different training and disciplinary emphasis, the new historians of psychiatry have asked novel questions and examined different aspects of psychiatry than their predecessors. They are less interested in great psychiatrists and the therapies that ostensibly alleviated the suffering of many patients. They are more interested in social and cultural analysis of the discourse and the practice of psychiatry. Akiko Hyôdô’s recent book is one of the best works of psychiatric history published to date by the new wave. As far as I am aware, it is the first monograph on the history of Japanese psychiatry by a scholar with a humanities background. Hyôdô’s areas of specialization are history and ethnology, and the latter discipline has provided the key themes that run through her book: religion and possession. Based on her dissertation, the book maintains high scholarly standards throughout. Plenty of little-known historical documents have been examined and analyzed, and new light is thrown on the well-known material. Sophisticated theories...

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