Medical Women in the Japanese Empire

Fujimoto, Homei, and Nakamura bring together the perspectives of women engaging in professional medical work across the expanse of the modern Japanese Empire (1868–1945). Through translations of primary source documents in three East Asian languages, this collection provides a window into the experiences of women working in a variety of medical professions, including doctors, nurses, midwives, and nutritionists. The voices of these women, collected from books, magazines, diaries, roundtable discussions, and oral histories, speak of the challenges, hopes, triumphs, and at times despair that women faced in their medical studies and workplaces.

While the women represent a kaleidoscope of political views both critical and supportive of the Japanese empire, this book demonstrates the significance of the Japanese nation and empire for many of these women. Their stories show how they pushed boundaries, traversed national or regional borders in search of medical opportunities, or attempted to carve out new spaces for women through their service as medical professionals.

This work, which includes little studied sources never before accessible in English, will appeal to scholars and students of history, Asian studies, gender history/studies, and the history of science, technology, and medicine.

Hiro Fujimoto is Assistant Professor at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany. He works on the history of medicine in modern Japan from global and gender perspectives. He wrote several articles in Japanese and English, including “Women, Missionaries, and Medical Professions” (Japan Forum, 2020).

Aya Homei is Reader in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. She researches the history of medicine and science in modern Japan, focusing on population and reproduction. Her recent publications include Science for Governing Japan’s Population (2023).

Ellen Gardner Nakamura is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She specializes in the social history of medicine in nineteenth-century Japan. Her most recent monograph is Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation: Contesting Modernity in the Late Nineteenth Century (2025).