Case Histories of a Psychiatric Hospital in Tokyo, in Pre-war Showa

Abstract

This article introduces “case histories” of psychiatric hospitals, a genre of resources that has not been utilized in Japan by historians of psychiatry. The features of this genre of material and the possible ways of its use will be discussed. The archives of Ohji Brain Hospital（1901­-1945），now housed at the Komine Institute in Tokyo, will be the particular focus of this work, and from its diverse materials, the case histories of individual patients will be analyzed. Thus far, case histories have been mainly exploited in Anglo­American psychiatry history, and this new type of material has transformed Anglo­American historiographies. Therefore, this paper presents the results of applying the two new major research methodologies that have developed in Britain and North America, namely the quantitative analysis of the demography of the patients and the qualitative examination of the power of the therapeutics given in the hospital.