Articles

Interacting with Disease in Tokugawa Japan: How Diseases Influence Culture and Culture Influences Diseases

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Abstract

In modern society, getting sick is often just a minor inconvenience, with medicines readily available for many illnesses and recovery often requiring little more than rest. More serious contagious disease outbreaks arecontained thanks to vaccination, sanitation, and quarantine practices. However, this wasn’t always the case, as seen in Tokugawa Japan (1603 – 1868), where diseases were as feared as earthquakes and tsunamis. With limited understanding of disease’s causes and prevention, people turned towhatever means possible to help them and their loved ones avoid getting sick and survive being sick.

In this article, I aim to explore common interactions with and interpretations of disease throughout the Tokugawa Period by analyzing depictions of smallpox, leprosy, and cholera in printed media from the period. I also aim to examine the cultural impacts of illness and epidemics on Tokugawa Japan. Much in the same way popular culture and modern society have been irrevocably changed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic,Tokugawa Japan was influenced by the presence of these diseases, and perceptions of diseases were influenced by changes in Tokugawa Japanese society. With this article, I wish to explore how illness shaped, and was shaped by, pre-modern Japanese society

Keywords: Japan, Tokugawa Japan, Disease, Contagion, Epidemic, Anthropology, Smallpox, Cholera, Leprosy

How to Cite:

Hale, C., (2026) “Interacting with Disease in Tokugawa Japan: How Diseases Influence Culture and Culture Influences Diseases”, Footnotes: A Journal of History 8, 20-37.