Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

The Case of Saga Domain

The case of Saga domain (Hizen province) illustrates the risks of sharing the smallpox vaccine widely without establishing a sound framework for maintaining accountability and coordination. Saga domain's vaccination office (intōkata), founded in 1849 and located in the castle town, initially transmitted the vaccine to multiple physicians and allowed them to conduct their own vaccinations. But by the summer of 1850 the vaccine had gone extinct, and the domain government reacted by ordering the re-concentration of operations to the vaccination office in town, arguing that many receiving physicians had failed to "connect" their chain of transmission and parents had gotten confused about where to take their children. It seems that a high number of inexperienced vaccinators actually increased the risk of extinction, especially if they acted without any bureaucratic apparatus coordinating their efforts. At the time, Saga domain was able to obtain a re-transmission from Koshiro, one of its branch domains [Aoki, 2018, p. 128].


Vaccinations in Saga benefited from a relatively high degree of governmental centralization. Whereas town and village physicians took the lead in Fukui and built a professional network of vaccinators across domain borders, in Saga it was domain doctors who were in charge, and their sphere of influence overlapped with that of the domain. The samurai leaders of Saga's three branch domains shared the lord of Saga’s interest in vaccinations, and were willing to place their subjects under the control of the medical office that was in charge of coordinating vaccinations in the main part of the domain [Aoki, 2018].
 

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