Japan in the Tokugawa (Edo) Period, 1600–1868. Map created by Mark Cook.

Regions and prefectures in modern Japan. Map created by Mark Cook.

Fig. I.1. Sketches of the faces of blind men and women by prolific Japanese woodblock print artist Katsushika Hokusai. The faces appear to be those of elderly blind people. It was common for sighted people to form their impressions of blindness by observing the physical appearance of a blind person. Hokusai illustrates that blindness is etched onto each face as an identity marker of physical difference and as a brand of impairment. No two faces are alike; each face is imbued with its individuality. The variety suggests the appearances of various degrees of impairment affecting one or both eyes, including visible scars around the eyes, eyelids completely or partially sealed, blank stares, and deformed eyes. The Japanese scripts above include words referring to blindness: ko (blind or blindness), mekura (dark eyes), and akimekura. The kanji characters of akimekura say “internal obstruction”; the accompanying kana characters mean “blind but with clear and normal-looking eyes,” a reference to the medical diagnosis of what are likely cataracts. From Hokusai manga, vol. 8 (Nagoya: Katano Tōshirō, 1878). National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Fig. 1.1. Pages from a medical text including an image of the “five spheres” of the eyes. From Secret Records: The Dawn of Eye Treatments (a Majima text by Majima Daikōbō; Japanese title: Ganryō tōun hiroku). Main Library, Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive.

Fig. 1.2. Pages from a medical text depicting the “eight boundaries” of the eyes. From Secret Records: The Dawn of Eye Treatments (a Majima text by Majima Daikōbō; Japanese title: Ganryō tōun hiroku). Main Library, Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive.

Fig. 1.3. Pages from a medical text. Left: A view of one dissected eye (according to the interpretations of Dutch-method medicine). Right: Views of eyelids and tear ducts. Compared with traditional Japanese renditions of the “five spheres” and “eight boundaries,” the eye depicted here has a well-defined spherical shape and a solid form. For this reason, the eye is called an “eyeball.” It is drawn with details organized around the emergent truths of dissection discussed in European texts (and oriented around the pivot of anatomical science), emphasizing a new materiality. The image shows six major tendons connecting the eye to the orbit. The seventh extension is described as a nerve conduit. The bluish matter of the eye is labeled as the “white membrane” (which appears to be the sclera). From Sugita Ryūkei, A New Treatise on Ophthalmology (Japanese title: Ganka shinsho), 1815. Main Library, Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive.

Fig. 1.4. Pages from a medical text. The drawing on the left depicts the optics of what we know to be farsighted vision. The text says that in farsighted vision, the light rays converge at a point behind the convergence point in “normal” vision. (In nearsighted vision, the opposite happens: the light rays converge at a point before the “normal” convergence point.) The key phrase in the text says that a person with this condition “cannot see clearly.” The text suggests that vision can be corrected by adjusting the distance between the eye and the object. Though the actual science of vision is far more complex, the images and text in each frame indicate a new approach that translates vision and visual impairment into optical representation. These representations inspired by Dutch-method medicine mark a shift away from the traditional understanding that a person could see things when the eyes received blood from the liver. From Honjō Fu’ichi, A Guide to Ophthalmology (Japanese title: Ganka kinnō), 1831. Main Library, Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive.

Fig. 2.1. A popular illustrated medical sheet about measles from 1862, when the Japanese measles epidemic was proclaimed as the epic crisis of a generation. The text outlines the clinical stages of measles infection. At first, a person will start to feel terrible and suffer from unquenchable thirst. By the fifth and sixth days, the victim will lose the appetite for food and cease eating, causing much worry. From the tenth through twelfth days, the person’s condition will significantly improve. However, even after the symptoms of measles have abated, the person has to follow a strict regimen in order to completely recover and avert a relapse. For seventy-five days in the convalescent period, the person has to abstain from certain actions and food items: sex, bath, moxibustion (a medical therapy involving the burning of moxa on meridian points on the body), wine, and buckwheat. Other taboo foods include burdock root, spinach, sorghum, eggplant, and taro, while the following are recommended to boost the person’s constitution: daikon (radish), pickles, sweet potato, azuki bean, common bean, kelp (arame; sea oak is a type of kelp), lily, and others. From Utagawa (Mōsai) Yoshitora, An Account about Recovering from Measles (Japanese title: Hashika yōjō no den), 1862. National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Fig. 3.1. Image of blind musicians. Left: The female musician is described as a jomō (blind woman; jomō reverses the usual word order of mōjo)—the Japanese kanji characters are glossed as mekura (dark eyes), a reference to her blindness. Less is known about blind female musicians of the medieval period than about blind male musicians, but it is likely that blind female musicians performed music with drumbeat, as seen here. Right: The male musician is described as a biwa hōshi (blind male musicians who played the biwa and specialized in Heike music). His head is shaven, and he is dressed like a Buddhist cleric, a physical appearance consistent with the image that early blind male musicians were musical, religious performers. The verse next to the man narrates the scene from The Tale of the Heike about the Heike’s retreat from Fukuhara, the clan’s capital, with smoke rising as the palace goes up in flames. The verse next to the woman honors the ancestry of Iwazu Saburō, the father of the Soga brothers and the male heir of the Itō clan with links to Emperor Uda, who ruled in the late ninth century. This verse comes from The Tale of the Soga Brothers and suggests that blind female musicians had a role in performing the tale. From Poetry Contest of All Kinds of Artisans and Professionals (Japanese title: Shokuninzukushi utaawase; undated manuscript likely produced in the late medieval period or early Tokugawa period). National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Fig. 3.2. Image of the guild’s stone-stacking rite, as imagined by the illustrator. The protocols of the guild’s rituals can be reconstructed from Records of Enpekiken (Japanese title: Enpekiken ki), a seventeenth-century source written by Kurokawa Dōyū under his literary pseudonym, and from Hayami Shungyōsai’s The Illustrated Compendium of Festivals of Various Provinces (1806) of the late Tokugawa period. Left: Three blind men are gathered at a riverbank at Shijōgawara. Their heads are shaven, and each person has a walking staff. The leftmost person is stacking stones, the blind man next to him is gathering stones, and a third blind man (perhaps the oldest) stands in the foreground. Two samurais bearing swords may be observers of the rite and serve the blind men as sighted guides. This ritual activity would have followed a grand performance of offerings and music at the guild’s headquarters. Illustration by Hayami Shungyōsai from The Illustrated Compendium of Festivals of Various Provinces (Japanese title: Shokoku zue nenchū gyōji taisei), vol. 2 (1806). National Archive of Japan Digital Archive.

Fig. 3.3. A gathering of guild members at a Myōonkō ceremony, from an illustrated travel guidebook typical of the late Tokugawa period. This illustration shows a local guild group at Nanatsudera (a temple) conducting the ritual of Myōonkō (also called Bentenkō) to honor the patron deity of music. The text says that the rite was held on the fifteenth day of the tenth month. The blind musicians are sitting on the floor around a central space in an L-shaped configuration. The arrangement is determined by the men’s ranks. Left: Three men with their heads shaven are low-ranked members (this is clear from their lack of headgear; the higher the rank, the more elaborate the dress code). Right: The blind musician playing the biwa appears to be a senior guild member, presumably playing Heike music, the music of choice at ceremonies. Scrolls showing venerated blind musicians hang in the background. Sighted onlookers have been invited to the venue to observe the rite—the participation of sighted people as audience members was probably common. From Okada Kei et al., Illustrated Gazetteer of the Famous Places of Owari (Japanese title: Owari meisho zue), edited by Wakayama Zenzaburō (Nagoya: Nagoya Onkokai, 1933). National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Fig. 4.1. Illustration of blind female musicians and other travelers by Utagawa Hiroshige, from Illustrations of Detailed Views of the 53 Stops of the Tōkaidō. The scene is Ōiso, one of the stops in the series. The three women huddled in the foreground are blind female musicians (the characters say goze tabi kasegi, or blind female musicians traveling to earn their livelihoods). They wear blue cloth shades over their heads, probably to shield their faces from sunlight. The women each have a shamisen, the musical instrument associated with their profession and musical genres, and at least two of the women walk with staffs and with cloth rucksacks tied around their torsos. Next to them are two traveling priests and a village physician. From Utagawa Hiroshige, Illustrations of Detailed Views of the 53 Stops of the Tōkaidō (Japanese title: Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi saiken zue; late Tokugawa period). National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Fig. 5.1. An artist’s depiction of a blind musician’s koto musical performance. The kanji inscription at the top right says o-oku (possibly referring to a samurai’s inner chamber of women) hizikome (this is the first koto performance of the new year). At the start of the new year, blind musicians were known to travel around cities, towns, and villages to perform music and also to conduct rites, which were accompanied by musical performances. From Utagawa Kuniyoshi, A Blind Musician Plays the Koto to a Gathering of Women Dressed in Ornate Kimonos (1849/1852; exact year unknown). From the Wellcome Collection.

Fig. 5.2. Image of a Heike text linked to the Maeda lineage (Maeda-ryū fushitsuki Heike monogatari; likely from the late nineteenth century). This text (with verses from “Kochōhai”) shows the notational style of the Maeda lineage with predominantly kanji notations written next to vertical verse lines. The mix of linear strokes and kana and kanji notations is not uncommon. Neither Hatano nor Maeda texts exclusively used one style of notation. National Diet Library Digital Collections.

Fig. 6.1. “A blind Japanese masseur with a pipe in his mouth and a long pole in his hand.” A photograph likely from the late nineteenth century shows a “blind rubber” (blind masseur) of the Meiji period with recognizable characteristics of blind masseurs from the Tokugawa period: as seen here, his head is shaven, and he walks with a staff and blows a whistle. Foreigners who visited Japan during the Meiji period were impressed with blind masseurs or, as they were also called, blind shampooers—because massage was called shampooing. American geographer Frank Carpenter published a vivid account of his encounter with massage at a hotel in Tokyo. “I am very tired, and I have just heard the whistle of the blind shampooer on the streets outside my hotel. I have clapped my hands, called a servant, and ordered a shampoo. . . . He [the blind shampooer] now begins to pass his hands over my body. He first seeks out two spots at my shoulders, and into these his thumbs go, it seems to me, almost to the joints. The places he touches are evidently nerve centers; for, as he gouges them, my whole frame quivers” (Carpenter, 1888–89, 216). From the Wellcome Collection.

Fig. 6.2. Image of a blind masseur. In the right frame, Kinbē, marked by the character kin (a reference to Kinkin Sensei), appears to be receiving a back massage given by a blind masseur. From Koikawa Harumachi, Dreams of Splendor of Master Flashy (Japanese title: Kinkin sensei eiga no yume; 1775). National Diet Library Digital Collections.