The Development of Psychoanalytic Research in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at Keijo Imperial University: Psychiatry in the Japanese Empire
- Author:
Gieop MOON
1
Author Information
- Publication Type:Article
- From:Korean Journal of Medical History 2026;35(1):77-112
- CountryRepublic of Korea
- Language:Korean
- Abstract: This study examines the reception and eventual decline of psychoanalysis, which remained outside the psychiatric mainstream in prewar Japan, in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at Keijo Imperial University. It traces the scholarly formation of Kubo Kiyoji, who led the department, and the development of psychoanalytic research within the department. It focuses on the personal and intellectual networks of Japanese psychiatry and on Keijo Imperial University’s position within the academic hierarchy. Kubo encountered psychoanalysis through Eugen Bleuler, director of the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, while studying in Zurich. This exposure provided him with an intellectual framework distinct from the German psychiatry tradition that was dominant in Japanese psychiatry. Consequently, the research output of the Department of Neuropsychiatry at Keijo Imperial University reflected Kubo’s interests. The department produced articles introducing psychoanalytic theory and clinical case reports through the early 1930s. At the same time, Kubo adopted psychoanalytic theory eclectically rather than embracing it in its entirety, similar to Bleuler, who had maintained a cautious distance from Freud since the mid-1910s. Furthermore, Japanese psychiatry was shaped by a hierarchical structure centered on Kure Shuzo, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, within which psychoanalysis remained non-mainstream. Under these conditions, psychoanalytic research at Keijo Imperial University did not become a sustained departmental program and did not develop into sustained collaboration with Tohoku Imperial University, where psychoanalysis was actively pursued. Instead, the department’s research gradually shifted toward somatic therapies and other fields with more visible findings, a shift better suited to the department’s academic position. Consequently, the discontinuation of psychoanalytic research at Keijo Imperial University was not simply the result of a change in Kubo’s personal interests. Rather, it reflected the structural conditions under which Keijo, as a peripheral imperial university, had to concentrate its resources on research fields more favorable to securing academic prestige. By tracing this case, this study suggests that research in the medical faculty of Keijo Imperial University was affected not only by the personal and intellectual networks of medicine in the Japanese Empire, but also by Keijo’s position as a peripheral imperial university.
