-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Susan L Burns, Wei Yu Wayne Tan. Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity., The American Historical Review, Volume 130, Issue 1, March 2025, Pages 418–419, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae542
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
An observant visitor to Japan will quickly notice the many accommodations in cities and towns around the country made for visually impaired people. In Tokyo, for example, one routinely encounters braille on elevator panels, audible pedestrian crossing signals, and tactile paving on sidewalks to aid those with vision issues in navigating the city. Such developments are noteworthy given that people with mobility issues still have considerable difficulty accessing even major subway and train stations in Japan due to the lack of elevators and wheelchair lifts. Wei Yu Wayne Tan’s book Blind in Early Modern Japan sheds light on the deep history of blind people in Japan by exploring the social and political conditions that shaped the lives of visually impaired people in the early modern period. Building on the work of musicologist Gerald Groemer, much of this work centers on the “guild of the blind,” an organization that integrated those with vision impairment into the Tokugawa status system. Significantly, this was the only social group for people with a disability that benefited from this form of institutional protection, problematic though it was. Tan goes beyond Groemer’s important body of work by exploring the medical discourse surrounding blindness, as well as the involvement of blind people in other occupations including moneylending, acupuncture, and massage. Consisting of six brief chapters, this clearly written and well-illustrated book offers an important window into conceptions of disability and the lives of people who are disabled.
