The Geographical and Social Establishment of Early Mental Hospitals in Tokyo 1880-1945

In Edo and Tokyo, the earliest mental hospitals were built between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper examines the modernisation of medicine and psychiatry in Japan in three respects, as well as the continuation of traditional customs. First, the fundamental and revolutionary change in land policy brought about by the Meiji Restoration was very important for hospitals, including mental hospitals, around the 1880s. Secondly, the epidemiological shock, mainly cholera, in the late nineteenth century, and the clear differences between the eastern and western parts of Edo and Tokyo were important for the establishment of early mental hospitals. Thirdly, mental hospitals incorporated modern financial rules for establishing hospitals, relying on the power of police and the real estate. They also adopted the traditional custom of appointing a young adult as a future leader of the household, a practice widely used in early private mental hospitals.

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Sarah Terrail-Lormel View e-mail