Feb 2021
Oji Brain Hospital 2. Source: Psychiatry and Transboundary Anxiety in Modern Japan Humanities, Social Sciences, Medicine and Biomedicine no.3. Global Health History no.128
During the first half of the twentieth century, Western psychiatry was quickly absorbed in Japan, particularly the versions from Germany and Austria.
Japan’s empire expanded during this same period, and many immigrants came to the country. Growth in immigration from Korea was particularly important. Korean immigrants encountered Japanese psychiatric hospitals during the second quarter of the twentieth century.
In the article Japanese imperial psychiatry in Tokyo: two Korean immigrants in a psychiatric hospital, 1920-1945, Akihto Suzuki, medical history professor at Death and Life Studies Centre at the University of Tokyo, examines the complex nature of their hospital stay.
He presents the world of hospital doctors, employees, and Korean patients at the Oji Brain Hospital (OBH) in Tokyo, with specific attention to how nurses cared for Korean patients.
This paper is also part of the dossier Transcultural Histories of psychotherapies: new narratives, coordinated by professors Sonu Shamdasani (Health Humanities Centre/University College London) and Cristiana Facchinetti (postgraduate Program in History of Sciences and Health/Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz).
Suzuki, A.. (2022). Japanese imperial psychiatry in Tokyo: two Korean immigrants in a psychiatric hospital, 1920-1945. História, Ciências, Saúde-manguinhos, 29(Hist. cienc. saude-Manguinhos, 2022 29 suppl 1). https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702022000500004
Vol 29, suplemento, Dez, 2022
