Abstract
This paper examines how radiation medicine has contributed to the popularization of hot springs in modern Japan. In the early 20th century, radium was a precious material used for medical purposes, and people wanted to use it for therapeutic purposes as well as to enhance their health, without knowing about its harmful effects. Radium hot springs became fashionable in Japan and its colonies in the 1910s. The boom of "radium hot springs" was generated through the relationship between Japanese scholars, national policy, and local villages. In 1909, medical scientist Kaichiro Manabe, and physicist, Denichiro Ishitani, found "radium emanation" (radon) in several hot springs and reported that these highly reputed hot springs contained radium emanation. At the Atami hot spring, Manabe lectured that radium provided the real potency behind the hot spring and determined the hot spring's life and death. Manabe presented a modern scientific explanation for the hot spring's traditional values. As scholars reported that radium provided the real potency of hot springs, local hot spring villages seized on the scientific explanation and connected their developments with national policies. This paper illustrates how the discourse about radium, which came from the field of radiation medicine, connected traditional and modern values as well as the central and regional terrains.
