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Research ArticleArticle

Picturing the Politics of Pharmaceutics

The Pharmacists, the Physicians, and the Unfinished Business of Prescribing-Dispensing Separation in Modern Japan, 1868–1937

Isaac C. K. Tan
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals, September 2022, 64 (1) 29-64; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/hopp.64.1.29
Isaac C. K. Tan
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University. More information can be found in his academic blog ();
Roles: PhD candidate in modern Japanese history
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Abstract

This article historicizes the practice of separating drug dispensation from medical practice in Japan, focusing on its trajectory from the Meiji period (1868–1912) to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. I argue that the prescribing-dispensing separation debate highlighted the paradoxical modern experience of Japan, where information on the prescribing-dispensing separation became embroiled in discourses expounding on the local/Westernization (self/other) binary. The prescribing-dispensing separation dispute codifies the professional identity and the roles of the modern pharmacist—an important chapter in the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry and medical professionalization in Japan. Recognizing that the modern pharmacists underwent a nonlinear professionalization as determined by interactions with other social players (i.e., politicians, physicians, journalists) in different discursive spaces (i.e., professional conferences, Imperial Diet sessions), I have turned to professional publications and newspapers in the major cities of Tokyo and Osaka, where the prescribing-dispensing separation movement was most active. By examining the material and working cultures of major participants in the medical industry (i.e., the pharmacists, physicians, medicinal traders, and the politicians), this article interrogates the production of knowledge in the transformative modernizing process of the apothecary and the pharmaceutical industry.

Keywords:
  • prescribing-dispensing separation
  • modern Japan
  • modernization
  • pharmaceutical industry
  • medical professionalization
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History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals: 64 (1)
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals
Vol. 64, Issue 1
7 Sep 2022
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Picturing the Politics of Pharmaceutics
Isaac C. K. Tan
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals Sep 2022, 64 (1) 29-64; DOI: 10.3368/hopp.64.1.29

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Picturing the Politics of Pharmaceutics
Isaac C. K. Tan
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals Sep 2022, 64 (1) 29-64; DOI: 10.3368/hopp.64.1.29
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  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Recruiting the Politicians: Legalization of the Prescribing-Dispensing Separation Practice
    • Resisting the Physicians: Militarization of the Prescribing-Dispensing Separation Rhetoric
    • Rallying the People in Print: Popularization of the Prescribing-Dispensing Separation Movement
    • Epilogue
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Keywords

  • prescribing-dispensing separation
  • modern Japan
  • modernization
  • pharmaceutical industry
  • medical professionalization
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