Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity

by Wei Yu Wayne Tan

Overview

While the loss of sight—whether in early modern Japan or now—may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) could thrive because of disability. The blind of the era were prominent across a wide range of professions, and through a strong guild structure were able to exert contractual monopolies over certain trades. Blind in Early Modern Japan illustrates the breadth and depth of those occupations, the power and respect that accrued to the guild members, and the lasting legacy of the Tokugawa guilds into the current moment.

The book illustrates why disability must be assessed within a particular society’s social, political, and medical context, and also the importance of bringing medical history into conversation with cultural history. A Euro-American-centric disability studies perspective that focuses on disability and oppression, the author contends, risks overlooking the unique situation in a non-Western society like Japan in which disability was constructed to enhance blind people’s power. He explores what it meant to be blind in Japan at that time, and what it says about current frameworks for understanding disability. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472055487
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Series:	Corporealities: Discourses Of Disability
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Wei Yu Wayne Tan is Associate Professor of History at Hope College.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Map of Japan in the Tokugawa (Edo) Period (1600-1868)
Map of Japan: Modern Regions and Prefectures
Abbreviated List of Historical Periods
A Note on Japanese Terminology and Names
Acknowledgments
Preface: A Personal Note
Introduction
Chapter 1
Japanese Ophthalmology: Medical Studies of Eye Conditions
Chapter 2
Eye Medicines: The Popular Culture of Cure
Chapter 3
The Blind Guild: Status and Power
Chapter 4
Non-Membership and the Challenge of Authority
Chapter 5
Texts and Performances: The Significance of One Blind Musician’s Career
Chapter 6
Healing by Touch: Blind Acupuncturists and Masseurs
Epilogue
Onward to the Meiji Period
Bibliography
Index
 

What People are Saying About This

Karen Nakamura

“One of the most significant new works in Japan disability studies in the past ten years . . . this history of the feudal guild structure of the blind in Tokugawa Japan has the potential to up-end how we think about blindness.”

Editorial Reviews

"Tan's analysis explores the intricate interplay of medical, social, and cultural factors that shaped the lives of the blind community, contributing substantially to the field of disability studies."

East Asian Science

"The book will reward a variety of readers, from those looking to understand general aspects of how Tokugawa society functioned, to those seeking information on blindness and blind people in Japanese history, to those interested in non-Western histories and views on disability, and many more."

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award

Disability History Association

Winner of the Honorable Mention for the President's Book Award
 

Social Science History Association

"The book is written in an engaging manner and is wonderfully illustrated with contemporary paintings, prints and photographs. . . . this is a book I will certainly revisit and recommend to anyone with an interest in the history of disability and Japanese society or the ways in which disability studies approaches have the potential to shed new light on experiences of disability beyond the global North and the present day."

LSE Review of Books

"Blind in Early Modern Japan is an important contribution to the recent historiography of disability and the nascent 'Blindness Studies.' The author's choice to address a topic outside of the 'Global North' demonstrates the scholarly value of studies of blindness from a global historical perspective." 

Canadian Journal of Health History

"Tan takes care to describe and transcribe the images in the captions below them, a necessary and very welcome accessibility feature...The focus on electronic resources especially adds to the accessibility of Tan's research and its utility to anyone who wants a deeper look at Tokugawa medical and social practices around blindness."

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies

"By drawing from a rich source base and employing new analytical frameworks, Tan takes topics familiar to Japan scholars—blind bards performing Heike, traveling blind female musicians, and the guild for blind men—and turns them into a bevy of new perspectives on what it meant to be blind in Tokugawa Japan." 

Journal of Japanese Studies

"Tan's work powerfully and insightfully documents the convergence of growing national and medical incentives that intersect in the early modern administration of blind-specific institutions of vocational rehabilitation."

Asian Journal of Law and Society

"...Tan’s book is an excellent opening for the history of blindness in Japan during its early modern period. Its theoretical frameworks, the power of lineages, and the background of consumer culture are excellent jumping-off points for historians of Japanese disabilities and non-European scholars who might follow."
—Isis (A Journal of the History of Science Society)

Isis

"Ably and admirably striding several disciplinary boundaries, Tan's book is an empirically rich and straightforward account of blindness during the Edo period. More than simply presenting Tokugawa Japan as a case study in the larger corpus of the history of disability, it encourages scholars to reconsider approaches to writing about blindness and visual impairment."

Social History of Medicine Kerry Shannon

"...Tan’s book is an excellent opening for the history of blindness in Japan during its early modern period. Its theoretical frameworks, the power of lineages, and the background of consumer culture are excellent jumping-off points for historians of Japanese disabilities and non-European scholars who might follow."

Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society

"Tan's elaborate sociohistorical analyses clearly delineate how blindness was conceptualized in Tokugawa society and what this exclusive group of blind men did to advance their social status through the powerful national guild. He succeeds in presenting the lives of blind figures by utilizing published primary sources and digitized historical, literary, and medical manuscripts..." 

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

"Highly recommended." 

CHOICE Reviews

"Ably and admirably striding several disciplinary boundaries, Tan's book is an empirically rich and straightforward account of blindness during the Edo period. More than simply presenting Tokugawa Japan as a case study in the larger corpus of the history of disability, it encourages scholars to reconsider approaches to writing about blindness and visual impairment."

Social History of Medicine

Winner of the 2023 Patricia Buckley Ebrey Prize in East Asian History prior to 1800

American Historical Association

"Consisting of six brief chapters, this clearly written and well-illustrated book offers an important window into conceptions of disability and the lives of people who are disabled."

American Historical Review

"...Tan’s book is an excellent opening for the history of blindness in Japan during its early modern period. Its theoretical frameworks, the power of lineages, and the background of consumer culture are excellent jumping-off points for historians of Japanese disabilities and non-European scholars who might follow."

Isis (A Journal of the History of Science Society)

"The book will reward a variety of readers, from those looking to understand general aspects of how Tokugawa society functioned, to those seeking information on blindness and blind people in Japanese history, to those interested in non-Western histories and views on disability, and many more."

Frank Mondelli

"Ably and admirably striding several disciplinary boundaries, Tan's book is an empirically rich and straightforward account of blindness during the Edo period. More than simply presenting Tokugawa Japan as a case study in the larger corpus of the history of disability, it encourages scholars to reconsider approaches to writing about blindness and visual impairment."

Kerry Shannon

"Highly recommended." 

CHOICE

2022-11-07
Tan, an associate professor of history at Holland, Michigan–based Hope College, explores the unique status of sightless people during Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868).

The debut author, intrigued by features meant to aid people who are blind and living amid the infrastructure of modern Japanese cities, was inspired to research the status afforded to these citizens during the Tokugawa era. Centering the work on the concept that disability is a social and political identity as well as a physical impairment, Tan examines how blind people chose to accept or reject their disabled status based upon their financial circumstances: “Their disabled identities were often understood through public perceptions that linked physical disablement to the entitlement of aid.” In a lengthy introduction, Tan explains how the governing structure of the shogunate, organized into occupation-based status groups, afforded blind people their own group ruled by the Kyoto guild: a medieval lineage of blind musicians. Guild membership allowed men to train not only as musicians, but also as acupuncturists and masseurs, gaining patronage from the aristocracy as they ascended the guild’s hierarchical ranks. Tan also effectively uncovers how the fees required for guild membership and promotion, as well as the gender discrimination that barred women from membership, meant that some blind members of Tokugawa society faced significant barriers to self-sufficiency. The author presents all this in a straightforward structure, devoting each chapter to a different topic covering how blindness was perceived by Japanese ophthalmologists, the choices available to the visually impaired in Tokugawa society’s popular medical culture, and the options open to blind women and to men who chose not to join the guild. Along the way, Tan creatively uses resources such as medical histories, travel gazetteers, and the writings of people with visual impairment to ably supplement the general paucity of firsthand accounts regarding the topic, drawing important insights into how society shapes the self-perceptions of disabled people.

A thoughtful, deeply researched contribution to disability studies.

Kirkus Reviews