Medicine at the margins

Colonial entanglements, knowledge hybridization, and medical identity in the Ryukyu Islands

Bibliographic Data

ID20252467
AuthorsXiaoxing Huang (0000-0002-4041-9629), Huang Xiaoxing (Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume13
Issue1
Publication date2026-12-31
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCogent Arts and Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2331-1983 • E-ISSN: 2331-1983
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/23311983.2026.2663245
OpenAlexW7160332310
LanguageEN
References cited12

This article explores the history of medicine in the Ryukyu Islands from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, positioning the archipelago within intersecting Chinese, Japanese and Western imperial orders. It argues that Ryukyuan medicine evolved as a hybrid system shaped by colonial marginality and transnational exchange. Through encounters with Chinese pharmacology, Japanese Kampō and local herbal traditions, practitioners localized and reconfigured external knowledge, producing therapeutic forms that fused textual, ritual and empirical elements. Medicine thus functioned both as a tool of colonial governance and as a means of asserting cultural identity and resistance. Comparative references to Taiwan, Korea and Pacific societies reveal how peripheral communities transformed medicine into a site of adaptation and creativity. The study contributes to medical anthropology and global health history by highlighting hybridity, localization and identity formation under asymmetrical power relations

Colonialism · Ethnic group · History of medicine · Medical knowledge · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Japanese History and Culture

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access