Discussion
On September 16, 2025, the 297th Japan Specialist Seminar was held in hybrid format at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of International Studies and via Zoom. Hiro Fujimoto, Research Scholar and Lecturer at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, presented on “Women Doctors of Imperial Japan and Their Overseas Activities.”
The lecture highlighted how Japanese medical history has focused almost exclusively on men, leaving women doctors understudied due to their small numbers and the scarcity of sources, especially in colonial Taiwan and Korea. Yet pioneers such as Ogino Ginko, Japan’s first licensed woman doctor, and Yoshioka Yayoi, founder of the Tokyo Women’s Medical School, reveal how women entered the profession, established networks, and pursued careers both in Japan and abroad. Many worked in rural areas or overseas in places like China, Korea, and Brazil, aligning with Japan’s imperial expansion, though women made up less than 5% of physicians by 1945.
Discussion touched on women doctors’ views on contraception, the role of overseas study for Korean and Taiwanese students, and the intersection of gender, medicine, and empire. The speaker emphasized that women contributed to Japanese medical culture not only as practitioners but also through nursing, preventive medicine, and transnational networks, showing how gender perspectives reshape the history of medicine in modern Japan.
