Statistics and Colonial Medicine: A Doubt and Controversy on Tuberculosis Statistics in Colonial Korea / 의사학

This paper focuses on the criticism of tuberculosis statistics published by the Japanese Government-general in colonial Korea and a research on the reality of tuberculosis prevalence by medical doctors from the Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at Keijo Imperial University (DHPMK). Recent studies have shown that colonial statistics shape the image of colonial subjects and justify the control to them. Following this perspective, this paper explores the process of producing the statistical knowledge of tuberculosis by medical scientists from DHPMK. Their goal was to find out the resistance to tuberculosis as biological characteristics of Korean race/ethnicity. In order to do so, they demonstrated the existence of errors in tuberculosis statistics by the Korean colonial government and devised a statistical method to correct them based on the conviction that the Western modern medicine was superior than Korean traditional medicine as well as the racist bias against Korean. By analyzing how the statistical concepts reflected these prejudices, this paper argues that the statistical knowledge of tuberculosis created images that Japanese people was healthier and stronger than the Korean people and justified the colonial government's control over Korean.

Yun Il-sun's Studies in Japan and Medical Research during the Colonial Period / 의사학

In this article, I looked at the life of Yun Il-sun, a representative medical scientist of modern Korea, and examined the following problems. First, I took note of the position of the Korean people in the academic system of the Japanese colonial empire and restored the life of Yun Il-sun as specifically as possible. Yun was educated among Japanese people from elementary school to university. Although he received the best education at Old System High School and Imperial University and grew to be a prominent medical scientist, he could not overcome his identity as a colonized. Yun Il-sun, who moved from Keijo Imperial University to Severance Union Medical College, involved in activities founding of the Korean Medical Association and the Korean Medical Journal. Second, I the meaning of ‘culture’ to the intellectuals in the periphery. Old System High School and Imperial University where Yun Il-sun was educated were the hotbed of ‘culturalism.’ Yun's college days were the heyday of Taisho Democracy, and students were attracted to Marxism, Christian poverty movement, Buddhist cultivation movement and so on. Yun sought to overcome the ideological of young people through the acquisition of ‘culture.’ The ‘culture’ emphasized by Yun had an enlightenment characteristic that emphasized education, but it also functioned as a‘identity culture of educated elites.’ Third, I used the concept of ‘colonial academism’ and examined the aspects and characteristics of the colonial-periphery academic field, focusing on medicine. Yun Il-sun was a Korean professor at the Keijo Imperial University. He founded an academic society and published an academic journal for Koreans. He attempted to reproduce scholarship by doctoral dissertations. At the same time, several facts show that he was also in the affected area of ‘colonial academism’: the fact that he was kicked out of the Keijo Imperial University, the fact that the Korean Medical Association and the Korean Medical Journal were banned by Governor General, the fact that his students asked for doctoral degrees from Kyoto Imperial University where he studied. Yun Il-sun crossed the limits of ‘colonial academism’ and acted as the agent of empire. This was made possible by the characteristics of the academic discipline of medicine, the environment of the Severance Union Medical College, and personal traits of superior ability and indifference to politics. I the postcolonial evolution of the ‘colonial academism’ and ‘culturalism.’ The mix of continuity and discontinuity from ‘colonial academism’ and the hybrid of Japanese academism and American academism, the Korean characteristics of ‘postcolonial academism.’ Yun tried to harmonize the American academism with the Japanese academism and the purity of academism. This effort was revealed as an emphasis on basic medicine and natural sciences. As combined with culturalism and indifference to politics, he was recognized as the symbol of ivory tower and academism.

Research by Psychiatrists of Chosun Chongdokbu Hospital and Keijo Imperial University in Korea during Japanese Colonial Rule / 신경정신의학

Eighty-three of 114 original articles and abstracts of research published by neuropsychiatrists of Chosun Chongdokbu Hospital (the Japanese colonial government hospital in Korea) and Keijo (Seoul) Imperial University Hospital during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) in journals including Shinkeigaku-zassi (Neurologia), Seishin-shinkei-gaku zassi (Psychiatria Et Neurologia Japonica), and The Journal of Chosun (Korea) Medical Association were reviewed. Most articles were on clinical research based on descriptive and biological psychiatry while only 4 articles were on dynamic psychiatry, probably because Japanese pioneers in psychiatry had introduced German psychiatry into Japan during the 1880s. The first paper was written by Dr. Shim Ho-sub. Professor Kubo of Keijo (Seoul) Imperial University published most articles, followed by Dr. Hikari, Dr. Hattori, and Dr. Sugihara. There were more articles on symptomatic psychosis and morphine addiction, followed by general paralysis, schizophrenia, neurological diseases, narcolepsy, epilepsy, and neurasthenia. The meaningful articles even for today were comparative studies between Japanese and Koreans and articles on opioid use disorder in Korea. Authors reported a markedly lower rate of psychotic inpatients in the population of Koreans compared with Japanese. Japanese researchers argued that, because of simpleness in social life in Korea and less violence or excitement in symptoms, Korean mental patients could be cared for by family or members of the community, or be treated by shamanism rather than bringing them to a public mental hospital, and poverty also prohibited hospital care. Finding of higher ratio of schizophrenia to manic-depressive psychosis among Koreans than Japanese was discussed in relation to delayed cultural development of Korea compared to Japan. In addition, traditional customs prohibiting marriage between relatives in Korea was related to low prevalence of manic-depressive psychosis, local endemic malaria was related to low prevalence of general paresis, and poor general hygiene was related to high prevalence of epilepsy. Unclear (undifferentiated) form of psychotic symptoms including hallucination and delusion was reported in more Koreans than Japanese. Also Korean patients showed a more atypical form in diagnosis. Authors added that they had found no culture-specific mental illness in Korea. However, no Korean psychiatrists were included as author in such comparative studies. Comparative studies on constitution between Koreans and Japanese mental patients and prisoners were also unique. However, no Korean psychiatrists participated in such comparative studies. In studies on morphine addiction in Koreans, Japanese researchers argued that such studies were necessary to prevent introduction of morphine-related criminal phenomena to Japan. Meanwhile, Dr. Kubo had left a notion on adaptation problems of Japanese living in the foreign country, Korea. Nevertheless he reported nothing about psychosocial aspects of mental illness in relation to political, cultural, and economic difficulties Koreans were experiencing under the colonial rule of Japan. These general trends of studies based on German biological and descriptive psychiatry and policies of colonial government to isolate "dangerous" mental patients in hospital appeared to reflect colonial or ethnopsychiatry of those days. These policy and research trends seem to have worsened stigma attached to mental disorders. Japanese tradition of psychiatric research was discontinued by return home of Japanese scholars with the end of WWII and colonial rule.

Racism of "Blood" and Colonial Medicine: Blood Group Anthropology Studies at Keijo Imperial University Department of Forensic Medicine / 의사학

This paper attempts to explore implications of Colonial medicine's Blood Type Studies, concerning the characteristics and tasks of racism in the Japanese Colonial Empire. Especially, it focuses on the Blood Group Anthropology Studies at Keijo Imperial University Department of Forensic Medicine. In Colonial Korea, the main stream of Blood Type Studies were Blood Group Anthropology Studies, which place Korean people who was inferior to Japanese people in the geography of the race on the one hand, but on the other, put Koreans as a missing link between the Mongolian and the Japanese for fulfillment of the Japanese colonialism, that is, assimilationist ideology. Then, Compared to the Western medicine and Metropole medicine of Japan, How differentiated was this tendency of Colonial Medicine from them? In this paper, main issues of Blood Group Anthropology Studies and its colonial implications are examined.

Physical Anthropology Studies at Keijo Imperial University Medical School / 의사학

Medical research during the Japanese Colonial Period became systematic and active after the Keijo Imperial University Medical School was established in 1926. Various kinds of research were conducted there including pharmacological, physiological, pathological and parasitological research. The Keijo Imperial University was give a mission to study about Korea. Urgent topics for medical research included control of infectious diseases, hygiene and environmental health that might have affected colonizing bodies of the Japanese as well as the colonized. The bodies of Koreans had been studied by Japanese even before the establishment of the University. The Keijo Imperial University research team, however, organized several field studies for physical anthropology and blood typing research at the national scale to get representative sampling of the people from its north to its south of the Korean peninsula. In the filed, they relied upon the local police and administrative power to gather reluctant women and men to measure them in a great detail. The physical anthropology and blood typing research by the Japanese researchers was related to their eagerness to place Korean people in the geography of the races in the world. Using racial index R.I.(= A%+AB%/B%+AB%), the Japanese researchers put Koreans as a race between the Mongolian and the Japanese. The preoccupation with constitution and race also pervasively affected the medical practice: race (Japanese, Korean, or Japanese living in Korea) must be written in every kind of medical chart as a default. After the breakout of Chinese-Japanese War in 1937, the Keijo Imperial University researchers extended its physical anthropology field study to Manchuria and China to get data on physics of the people in 1940. The Japanese government and research foundations financially well supported the Keijo Imperial University researchers and the field studies for physical anthropology in Korea, Manchuria and China. The physical anthropology research was actively conducted hand in hand with imperialistic expansion, and driven by zeal for measuring the body.