This content was created by Maren Ehlers.
Child bandaged after vaccination
1 media/Naika Hiroku, Bandaged Child (1)_thumb.jpg 2020-01-12T22:18:11-05:00 Maren Ehlers 18502c6775e5db37b999ee7b08c8c075867ca31d 35 2 From the textbook "Naika hiroku," vol. 14, by Honma Sōken, physician of Mito domain, 1866 plain 2020-01-12T22:32:51-05:00 Waseda University Kotenseki Database, https://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ya09/ya09_00777/ya09_00777_0014/ya09_00777_0014.html 20200112 215152 20200112 215152 Maren Ehlers 18502c6775e5db37b999ee7b08c8c075867ca31dThis page is referenced by:
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Children's Bodies
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Maren Ehlers
In Tokugawa Japan, all children were part of a household, and households were organized into status groups. Every household head (typically, but not always, a man) belonged to or was at least affiliated with an occupational group that mediated his or her status and relationship with the feudal authorities. Such status groups exercised considerable autonomy as they could in- and excluded members, distribute tax burdens and duties, and draft their own law codes. Status group members were also required to watch over one another, both for the sake of the group's shared interests and the stability of warrior rule. Through their parents, children were all situated within this system of group autonomy and feudal control.
But the smallpox vaccine existed independently from Tokugawa rule and its social foundations. It cared about children's bodies, not their status. Any child, whether samurai or outcaste, boy or girl, could become a link in the chain of transmission as long as the body had not yet been immunized. Vaccinations thus created impermanent networks between children that followed biological imperatives only and broke through such social constructs as territories, status identities, and family lines.
If physicians wanted to perpetuate the vaccine and rally sufficient numbers of children, they had to take advantage of the vaccine's undiscriminating nature. At the same time they also needed to work through the structures of Tokugawa society that regulated access to children's bodies. To exercise pressure on reluctant parents, vaccinators relied on domain administrators, the headmen of villages and town blocks, five-peoples' groups, and other officials and bodies of control. They also had to insist on strict compliance with the rules of their own professional networks because random transmission would have meant a lack of monitoring and quickly led to extinction of the vaccine.
To explore the subject of vaccinations of outcastes, go directly to the page "Vaccinating Across Status Boundaries." Or stay on the pathway "The Networks and Vehicles of Transmission."
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