Sibasaburou Kitasato and the Kitasato Institute

Abstract

Dr.Shibasaburo Kitasato officially established the Kitasato Institute in 1914, but the long history exists before then.
Shibasaburo Kitasato was born in 1853 in Kumamoto Prefecture. He received strict home discipline and instruction from Constant George van Mansveldt at Kumamoto Medical School. After graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1883, he went to Robert Koch’s laboratory in 1886 and achieved in the field of preventive medicine, especially immunology, where he successfully grew a pure culture of tetanus bacilli, followed by his discovery of the serotherapy used to treat that disease. After returning from Germany in 1892, he established Japan’s first private medical research facility for infectious diseases supported by Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio University and others both materially and spiritually. This institute made great progress and was placed under the control of the Japan Hygiene Society in 1899. In 1914, as the government transferred the Institute under the University of Tokyo, Kitasato and his followers resigned and started the Kitasato Institute.
The Spirit of Kitasato, which he developed over a life time - to investigate with a pioneering spirit, be appreciative in your dealings with people, possess wisdom and be a person of practical science, as well as to persist with an unwavering spirit - has been continuously handed down from generation to generation at the Kitasato Institute · Kitasato University and Keio University.
Now approaching our centennial of the founding of the Institute, a landmark moment, we take the Spirit to heart once more and I am sure the Institute will evolve eternally.