The Center for Integrated Japanese Studies (CIJS) at Tohoku University opens its Multi-Life Humanities Seminar Series with a talk on the historical formation of folk medicine in Japan, and questions the idea that remedies based on medicinal plants simply preserve an inherited popular tradition.

Historian Alexander Bay will examine how folk medicine was constructed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the 1920s and its roots in Edo-period learned medicine. Drawing on health survey data and historical texts, the lecture traces changing ideas and practices back to writings on famine relief and materia medica. It also considers how advocates used earlier sources to challenge Japan's dependence on imported Western medicine and connect Japanese medicinal plants with national identity.

This event is part of the CIJS collaborative research project "Multi-Life Humanities: Possibilities and Challenges," which explores how non-human forms of life shape Japanese history, society and culture.

Participants may attend on campus or via Zoom. The talk will be in English, followed by a Q&A in English and Japanese. Admission is free, but advance registration is required.

Date: November 13, 2026
Time: 2:30 - 4 p.m. (JST), Doors open at 2 p.m.
Venue: Large Conference Room, 2nd Floor, Graduate School of Arts and Letters Building, Kawauchi Campus, Tohoku University (map)
Also available online via Zoom.

To register: Google Form
Max capacity: Approximately 70 people.
Language: English (lecture); English and Japanese (Q&A and discussion).

About the Speaker:

Alexander Bay is a historian of public health, medicine and disease of modern Japan and the Chair of the Department of History at Chapman University. In addition to journal articles on waste management, disease prevention and parasites, among other topics, his monograph Beriberi in Modern Japan: The Making of a National Disease (University of Rochester Press, 2012) traces the interplay between scientific debates, public health and the building of the Japanese empire. Bay is currently working on a project about the history of folk medicine in Japan.