Presenter: 藤本大士 (Hiro Fujimoto, Kyoto University)

Discussant: Garrett Washington (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

This book is the first comprehensive study of the medical activities of American Protestant missionaries in Japan. Beginning in 1859, they offered medical care and education to Japanese people and established several hospitals, some of which still survive today, such as St. Luke’s International Hospital. However, historians have tended to overlook these activities since they have assumed that the Japanese medical community was strongly influenced by German doctors rather than American doctors. Medicine and Christianity situates these American missionaries in the history of medicine in Japan and considers the full range of their activities, including medical education for women, nursing training, postgraduate training for doctors, public health programs, and charity medicine.

幕末からアジア・太平洋戦争後に至るまで、多くの医師資格をもつプロテスタント宣教師がアメリカより日本に派遣され、医療を通じて人々にキリスト教を広めていった。ドイツの強い影響下にあった明治期以降の日本医学界において、アメリカ人医療宣教師たちはいかにその活動を拡大していったか。日々の診療のみならず、医学・看護教育、慈善事業・公衆衛生事業など多岐にわたる彼らの活動とその変遷を検証する。

New Books from Japan #2

『首都の議会　近代移行期東京の政治秩序と都市改造』

The Governing Assembly of the Capital City　

Presenter: 池田真歩 (Maho Ikeda, Hokkai-Gakuen University)

Discussant: Jordan Sand (Georgetown University)

What did the governing assembly mean to the capital city of Tokyo? With the transition from Edo to Tokyo, the status system was dismantled and the structure of the city's leadership class and the nature of its political power were reconstituted, as were the major points of contention attending the governance of the metropolitan region. By examining the negotiations between various interest groups across time, this book elucidates the role of the Tokyo assembly during the period of transition from the early modern period to the modern period.

首都東京にとって議会とは何か。江戸から東京へ移行するにあたって、身分制も解体し議会指導層の構成やその政治指導の特質が再編されていくなかで、議会での争点も多岐に変遷していった。そうした諸集団のあいだの相互交渉を通時的に分析し、近世・近代移行期の首都における議会の相貌を描きだす。