<Article>Japanese Eugenics and the Role of Psychiatrists

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  • <論文>わが国の優生学・優生思想の広がりと精神医学者の役割 : 国民優生法の成立に関連して

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The study of eugenics, which dates back to F. Galton (1822-1911), spread in European countries and the United States after World War I and was associated with the growing nationalism of the times. Germany's eugenic policy had the greatest direct influence on Japanese eugenics. German studies of eugenics (Rassenhygiene) evolved into compulsive sterilization legislation (1933) with help from prominent German psychiatrists, who had been studying psychiatric genetics and had already gained international reputations. The main victims of this legislation were the mentally ill and the mentally retarted. Japanese psychiatrists, however, played no decisive role in Japan's eugenic legislation of 1940. In general their attitudes towards the legislation were negative : they were sceptical about the effects sterilization would have on psychiatric patients as well as the scientific foundation of such a policy. As a result the number of sterilizations performed on psychiatric patients in Japan during World War II (1941-1945) remained rather small when compared to the number of sterilizations performed in other countries during the same period. Having said this, it must be pointed out that Japanese psychiatrists had little room to take either a political or a practical part in this eugenic policy : genetic studies of psychiatry, which should be the base of the eugenic legislation, were poor and Japan, at that time, was more concerned with malnutrition and infectious diseases, e.g. tuberculosis, than it was with psychiatric illnesses.

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