The Early Thought of Gotō Shimpei and the Origins of State Hygiene in Japan, 1879–1890

Abstract In this article, I examine the genesis of theories on state hygiene (kokka eisei 国家衛生) as formulated by Gotō Shimpei 後藤新平 (1857–1929). I show how Gotō’s formulation of his famed but fraught concepts of state formation extended from his experiences as a doctor in Aichi prefecture and as a medical official serving the Japanese state. It was during this time that Gotō first developed both a theoretical framework and a practical schema for Japan’s hygienic modernization. This involved promoting doctors to government positions whereby they would create public (health) policy and oversee its implementation by hygiene police, agents who acted as intermediaries between state and subject. Gotō’s experience as a public health official also informed his later belief that detailed ethnographic accounts of local life would abet the government’s project of engendering fidelity to the nation. Using the underexplored regional health surveys that he composed while a young bureaucrat, I analyze how Gotō came to believe that mapping local life would enable government officials to amalgamate and fuse customary health practices to the larger goals of the Meiji state. I then show how such ideas were reflected in Principles of National Hygiene (Kokka eisei genri 国家衛生原理 1889), Gotō’s most famous theoretical treatise. The aim in this article is thus to contextualize the development of Gotō’s thought within his work as a doctor, bureaucrat, and a hygiene ethnographer to illuminate how his approach to public health developed within the crucible of a modernizing Japan.