恐慌期農村医療の展開過程 : 医療組合運動から国民健康保険法へ(2000年度シンポジウム 人口の窓から見る近代日本農業史)

抄録

The medical unions' movement in Japan was developed from the 1920s to 40s and is thought to have played an important role in the enactment of the National Health Insurance Law legislated in 1938. The purpose of this essay is to consider the relationship between the movement and the enactment of the law. On the topic of the National Health Insurance Law, Takashi Saguchi has considered it as an extension of the Health Insurance Law instituted in 1922 for laborers as a sickness insurance [Saguchi, 1995, pp.21]. Takeshi Kawakami has also addressed both the medical unions' movement and the National Health Insurance Law, although these are not mutually related. He argues that the purpose of the enactment of the law changed, on the one hand, from proving medical problems in rural regions, to the growing the health population and soldiers, on the other [Kawakami, 1965, pp.423-4]. These arguments are based on a "top - to - bottom system", focusing, for example, on the political institutions and policies, and therefore emphasizing the integration of the nation into the state during the period of "total war". My argument regarding the medical unions' movement targets the bottom, that is to say, the medical unions' movement propelled by peasants and agrarians to save themselves from diseases during the crisis. I would particularly like to stress that the movement formed a kind of "spontaneous" regional system of solidarity, which served as the foundation for organizing unions belonging to the National Health Insurance Law. In other words, the understanding of this law should not be restricted to the system of total war, but should be derived from the peasants' and agrarians' spontaneous movement during the period of economic crisis.