Racializing Bodies through Science in Meiji Japan
The Rise of Race-Based Research in Gynecology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20050966 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yuki Terazawa (Johns Hopkins University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Pages | 83-102 |
| Publication date | 2005-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Building a Modern Japan (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9781403981110_5 |
| OpenAlex | W2477809036 |
| ISBN | 9781403981110 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 18 |
In his 1908 paper discussing the reproductively active years of women of various ethnic backgrounds, physician Yamazaki Masashige (1872–1950) emphasizes the idea that many different “races” reside in the Japanese empire other than the Japanese race, which he describes as “the race descended from the imperial line” (tenson shuzoku).1 These so-called inferior races included the Ainu, the Chinese in Taiwan, Taiwanese aborigines, and the people who inhabited the Ryūkyū islands (the Ryūkyūans). Discussing the relations between the Japanese and these other races, Yamazaki draws on Social Darwinist thinking: “According to the law in which the superior conquers the inferior, weaker races will be subordinated by stronger ones. These [inferior] races would either assimilate to a superior one or perish. [As such,] they will never preserve the original racial characteristics.”2 Believing that these non-Japanese “races” would eventually become extinct, Yamazaki felt it urgent to study their racial traits, including differences among the different races in the onset of menstruation and menopause, while these racial groups still existed. Yamazaki was one of numerous Meiji scientists who appropriated from Europe and the United States the notion of race as a scientifically valid category along with Social Darwinist ideas. Focusing on Yamazaki’s paper, I examine the way sexed and racialized bodies emerged from scientific and medical discourses in Japanese history
Ancient history · Empire · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Political science · Politics · Social Darwinism · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law
Health, race, and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870-1945
Volksgeist as Method and Ethic
The Idea of Race in Science
Culture, Ethnicity, and the State in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
Reconfiguring ModernityConcepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology
Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan
From Savage to Negro
Colonialism and the Sciences of the Tropical Zone
The Japanese nation in evolution
Heavenly Warriors
The early modern Japanese state and Ainu vaccinations
History of Physical Anthropology
Race and the Concept of Progress in Nineteenth Century American Ethnology
Samurai Darwinism
The politics of knowledge
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,21 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2025 (14) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |