BLIND IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN

Tan, an associate professor of history at Holland, Michigan–based Hope College, explores the unique status of sightless people during Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868).

The debut author, intrigued by features meant to aid people who are blind and living amid the infrastructure of modern Japanese cities, was inspired to research the status afforded to these citizens during the Tokugawa era. Centering the work on the concept that disability is a social and political identity as well as a physical impairment, Tan examines how blind people chose to accept or reject their disabled status based upon their financial circumstances: “Their disabled identities were often understood through public perceptions that linked physical disablement to the entitlement of aid.” In a lengthy introduction, Tan explains how the governing structure of the shogunate, organized into occupation-based status groups, afforded blind people their own group ruled by the Kyoto guild: a medieval lineage of blind musicians. Guild membership allowed men to train not only as musicians, but also as acupuncturists and masseurs, gaining patronage from the aristocracy as they ascended the guild’s hierarchical ranks. Tan also effectively uncovers how the fees required for guild membership and promotion, as well as the gender discrimination that barred women from membership, meant that some blind members of Tokugawa society faced significant barriers to self-sufficiency. The author presents all this in a straightforward structure, devoting each chapter to a different topic covering how blindness was perceived by Japanese ophthalmologists, the choices available to the visually impaired in Tokugawa society’s popular medical culture, and the options open to blind women and to men who chose not to join the guild. Along the way, Tan creatively uses resources such as medical histories, travel gazetteers, and the writings of people with visual impairment to ably supplement the general paucity of firsthand accounts regarding the topic, drawing important insights into how society shapes the self-perceptions of disabled people.

A thoughtful, deeply researched contribution to disability studies.