Privileges for Radical Social Service: The Careers of Three Doctors From Tokyo Imperial University

Abstract

This study explores how radical students from the Faculty of Medicine at Tokyo Imperial University emerged as social activists fighting for egalitarian access to medical services. I focus on Komiya Yoshitaka (1900-76), Soda Takemune (1902-84) and Shiga Hidetoshi (1902-2004), who became leaders of state agencies for public hygiene and low-cost clinics in post-1945 Japan. By analysing their careers, I highlight that their professional privileges and elite social networks were critically important in the pursuit of their vision. In doing so, I consider how specific social environments at particular moments of early-twentieth-century Japan facilitated their accomplishments.