The Japanese Colonial Medicine as Seen Through the Life of Fujita Tsuguakira

Choi, Kyu Jin

Abstract

Fujita Tsuguakira was a man who established Jahyeuiwon, a governmental medical facility, during the Residency-General Period and took over the presidency of a committee in the Japanese Government-General of Chosun after Chosun was annexed to Japanese. In addition, he is a man well qualified to be placed on the top of the list when discussing the Japanese colonial medicine in Chosun, considering his personal history of getting evolved in the colonial rule of Taiwan for seven years as an army surgeon. He led the colonial medicine in Chosun for nine years before and after the Japanese annexation of Korea. He was engaged in almost all the areas related to the colonial medicine such as anti-cholera projects, Hansung Sanitation Union, Deahan Hospital, Chosun Chongdokbu Hospital, Jahyeuiwon, medical schools affiliated to the Japanese Government-General of Chosun. In all respects, his life was in sync with the expansionist strategies of Imperial Japan. Especially, his deeds in Chosun was an "active aid to the instructions" from Army Minister Terauchi Masatake" as Sato Kozo testifies. Fujita was chosen by the military, and so he faithfully served the role given from it. The rewards that he received form the military attest to this fact. He took the position of Surgeon General in Army Medical Service on September, 1912, the top place that an army surgeon could hold. The position was first given to the officer who worked outside Japan proper, and he was the only army surgeon with no doctorial degree to receive such title except for Ishiguro Tadanori who was the first army surgeon in Japan. To sum up, Fujita was not a "doctor" but a "military officer". His walk of life mainly lay in the role of an aider adjusted to the ups and downs and the speeds of the plans of Imperial Japan to invade the continent. Therefore, the Japanese colonial medicine controlled by such man as Fujita in Chosun was inevitably studded with the military things. As a chief in the army medicine, what was important to him was the hospitals for managing the armed troops and projects for preventing infectious disease that could threaten the military sanitation. As a result, the medical service for those under the colonial rule was naturally put on the back burner. This study was conducted mainly based on Fujita's memoirs called Army Surgeon General Fujita Tsuguakira (1943), and accordingly it would be not without limitations. However, as he is a man who cannot be put aside when discussing the Japanese colonial medicine in Chosun, the records by this study of his life and past activities are expected to give no small amount of contribution to these discussions.