NOTE SPECIAL TIME
Kathryn Tanaka (University of Hyogo) The Fruit of Illness: Politics, Patient Labor and Poetry in Twentieth Century Japanese Leprosaria
In the early twentieth century, the Japanese government established a system of public sanatoria designed to quarantine people diagnosed with Hansen’s disease who had no means of family support. The institutions were founded with the idea patients would be active in maintaining the hospital community, which meant that residents whose cases were relatively less advanced did a variety of jobs around the institution. These ranged from farming and caring for animals to running medical experiments, cleaning bandages, and caring for residents who were seriously ill. Patient labor became a part of daily life, with many residents including references to their work in poetry they wrote. This presentation examines the way patient labor contributed to the community, and the ways in which literature reflects the ways in which people with Hansen’s disease understood labor as both a form of mutual aid in institutional communities and as a source of exploitation by an institution that was understaffed.
