This study examines the life and research of Miki Sakae, a historian of Korean medicine, to explore the relationship between the study of medical history in Korea and Japan. Miki’s investigation and research on old medical books conducted in colonial Korea became the starting point and foundation for the study of the history of Korean medicine. However, due to the peculiarity of being ‘a Japanese who studied the history of Korean medicine,’ there was no sufficient research on him.
The gist of his research can be summed up as: ‘You cannot talk about Japanese and Chinese medicine without knowing the medicine in the Korean Peninsula.’ This was a challenge to the Japanese medical history circles that tended to understand and interpret the history of medicine centered on their own country. Miki defines the Korean Peninsula as an important place in East Asian medicine, based on the understanding that medicine does not spread from one center to other places, but moves and mixes with other systems of medicine like water flows and creates new things through it. By paying attention to the medical interrelation between Korea and Japan, which had continued from the ancient times, Miki recognized that the problem of disease is a problem of culture and people. In particular, focusing on infectious diseases in Korea, he attempted to prove the influence and relationship between Korea and Japan.
Since Miki lived in Korea during the Japanese colonial period and was a physician who majored in Western medicine, his study of traditional Korean medicine was rather limited. However, despite the Japanese medical community’s indifference after the defeat in the Second World War, he did his best to introduce the value of traditional Korean medicine to the academic community in Japan and left meaningful data to the future generations. This study focuses on medical studies from the perspective of the history of Korea-Japan relations that Miki pursued, and explores the changes in his attitude toward Korean medicine, the patterns of exchanges that is found in the history of Korean-Japanese medicine he studied, as well as the spread of infectious diseases.

This study examines the life and research of Miki Sakae, a historian of Korean medicine, to explore the relationship between the study of medical history in Korea and Japan. Miki’s investigation and research on old medical books conducted in colonial Korea became the starting point and foundation for the study of the history of Korean medicine. However, due to the peculiarity of being ‘a Japanese who studied the history of Korean medicine,’ there was no sufficient research on him.
The gist of his research can be summed up as: ‘You cannot talk about Japanese and Chinese medicine without knowing the medicine in the Korean Peninsula.’ This was a challenge to the Japanese medical history circles that tended to understand and interpret the history of medicine centered on their own country. Miki defines the Korean Peninsula as an important place in East Asian medicine, based on the understanding that medicine does not spread from one center to other places, but moves and mixes with other systems of medicine like water flows and creates new things through it. By paying attention to the medical interrelation between Korea and Japan, which had continued from the ancient times, Miki recognized that the problem of disease is a problem of culture and people. In particular, focusing on infectious diseases in Korea, he attempted to prove the influence and relationship between Korea and Japan.
Since Miki lived in Korea during the Japanese colonial period and was a physician who majored in Western medicine, his study of traditional Korean medicine was rather limited. However, despite the Japanese medical community’s indifference after the defeat in the Second World War, he did his best to introduce the value of traditional Korean medicine to the academic community in Japan and left meaningful data to the future generations. This study focuses on medical studies from the perspective of the history of Korea-Japan relations that Miki pursued, and explores the changes in his attitude toward Korean medicine, the patterns of exchanges that is found in the history of Korean-Japanese medicine he studied, as well as the spread of infectious diseases.

The purpose of this study is to understand the reality of imperial medicine by exploring the strategic attitude of the Japanese authority targeting the public who were not patients of Hansen's disease. For this purpose, this study examines the mass media data related to Hansen's disease published in Korea and Japan during the Japanese colonial rule. Research on Hansen's disease can be divided into medical, sociohistorical, social welfare, and human rights approach. There are medical studies and statistics on the dissemination of medical information about Hansen's disease and management measures, the history of the management of the disease, guarantee of the rights of the patients and the welfare environment, and studies on the autobiographical, literary writings and oral statements on the life and psychological conflicts of the patients. Among existing research, the topics of the study on Hansen's disease under the Japanese colonial rule include the history of the Sorokdo Island Sanatorium, investigation on the forced labor of the patients in the island, human rights violations against the patients, oral memoirs of the patients and doctors who practiced at that time. All of these studies are important achievements regarding the research on the patients. An important study of Hansen's disease in modern Japan is the work of Hujino Utaka, which introduces the isolation of and discrimination against the patients of Hansen's disease. Hujino Utaka's study examines the annihilation of people with infectious diseases in Japan and its colonies by the imperial government, which was the consequence of the imperial medical policies, and reports on the isolation of Hansen's disease patients during the war. Although these researches are important achievements in the study of Hansen's disease in modernity, their focus has mainly been on the history of isolation and exploitation in the Sorokdo Island Sanatorium and discrimination against the patients within the sanatorium, which was controlled by the director of the sanatorium. Consequently, the research tends to perceive the problem within the frame of antagonism between the agent of imperialism and the victims of exploitation by the hands of imperialism. Hence, it has limitations in that it has not fully addressed the problem of the people who were not Hansen's disease patients and as such, existed somewhere in between the two extremes in the process of administering medicine under the imperial rule. The purpose of this study is to identify the direction of imperial medicine in the history of Hansen's disease in Japan and to comprehend the characteristics of policy on Hansen's disease developed by Mitsuda Kensuke, who was behind the policy of imperial medicine, and examine the process of imperial medicine reaching out to the people (of Japan and its colonies). To achieve the goal, this study explores how the agent of imperial medicine gain the favor the public, who are not Hansen's disease patients, by means of the mass media. Specifically, this paper examines data in the Japanese language related to Korean patients of Hansen's disease including the mass media data on Hansen's disease in the source book titled The Collection of Data on Hansen's Disease in Joseon under the Colonial Rule(8 volumes) compiled by Takio Eiji, which has not been studied until now. It also reviews the cultural and popular magazines published in Japan and Joseon at that time.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group* ; Communicable Diseases ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Hand ; History, Modern 1601-* ; Human Rights ; Humans ; Japan ; Korea ; Leprosy* ; Mass Media ; Periodicals as Topic ; Public Opinion* ; Public-Private Sector Partnerships ; Social Welfare