An update of the Hansen's Disease Library of Tama Zenshoen Asylum.
(I misspelled the name of the institution in my previous mail- sorry,
Tama "Zenshoen" is correct)
I did not know the library (the patient-led one) will be closed on
March 31 until I revisited their website yesterday. I was really
startled- I was planning of visiting there for my research soon.
At this moment, I am not able to capture the entire picture of this
issue. Seems so many problems are interwined.
According to information gathered from the posts on the library BBS,
the board of the self-governning council of the asylum decided to
close the library at their meeting of March 2005. They planned to
transfer the collection to the Hansen's Disease Museum under
innovation, around when the museum opened in the spring of 2007.
The library was founded by Kaoru Matsumoto, the former chairman of the
council. He stressed the importance of collecting the resources by the
own hands of the patients, but the asylum community was not very
enthusiastic about this plan. Matsumoto and some collaborators kept
collecting the resources as a part of the activities of the council,
and they finally obtained a small building within the aslyum in 1973
by an external grant- an independent storage and reading space.
Matsumoto retired in 1987 and passed away in 2005. His project was
passed to his younger successor, Michisuke Yamashita. He has been
working passionately for the archive, but is 78 years old now.
All that I can say now is, to be honest, I am wondering what I can do.
realted links (Japanese only)
Hansen's Disease Library: http://www.tenro.net/lib_hansen/
Hansen's Disease Museum: http://www.hansen-dis.or.jp/
Yayoi Mashimo
Interim lecturer, art history
Japan Lutheran College, Tokyo
[log in to unmask]
On 3/17/08, m. miles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> .
> This is useful information on the Archive of written sources on leprosy at
> Tama Zenseien asylum. It's quite striking that there are two resource
> libraries there, one being operated by people with leprosy -- and the
> management is smart enough to see merit in keeping the two centres
> independent of each other. If they invite some "management consultants", no
> doubt they will be told to put the two centres together (and watch the
> professionals throwing away all the 'non-scientific' opinions of the
> elderly leprosy sufferers!)
>
> If it were British or American management consultants, they would probably
> also advise throwing away all materials that are not in English -- but at
> least the Americans might think of paying for Japanese materials to be
> translated to English, and keeping the copyright. (Then, when the originals
> have been thrown away, they will sell the translation back to Japan, for a
> good price). If the consultants were from West Bengal (as recently lamented
> by Anita Ghai, in the context of naked patients at a mental hospital), they
> might suggest saving money by removing the clothes from people having
> leprosy -- "if they have no nerves in their skin with which to feel
> anything, they won't feel cold"! (Who needs irony, when one can have
> management consultants?) But it seems that the Tama Zenseien management
> already has some brains of its own, without needing to hire any.
>
> At the www.leprosyhistory.org site, something more can be found on Tama
> Zenseien -- that site lists archives of material on leprosy from around the
> world. The site search mechanism is a bit odd, but Tama Zenseien is there
> at least under 'Leprosaria'. It gives a page of lightly documented history
> (in English) from the foundation of Zensei Hospital in 1909 (with change of
> name to Tama Zensho-en in 1941), through to the number of patients in 1995.
>
> Hold on to your Japanese material!! There is still a need for some Asian
> cultural things that have not been mangled by translation, or kicked around
> by Hollywood. Recently I was looking at an article by one of the people in
> the disability field who tries to explain to Westerners some of the
> differences in the Japanese outlook on disability and therapy: IWAMA,
> Michael K (2005) Situated meaning. An issue of culture, inclusion, and
> occupational therapy. In: F Kronenberg, SS Algado & N Pollard (eds)
> Occupational Therapy without borders. Learning from the spirit of
> survivors, pp. 127-139. Edinburgh: Elsevier, Churchill Livingstone.
> [The Asian author, now working in Canada, examines the "individualistic,
> autonomous, analytic, monotheistic, materialistic, and rationalistic
> tendencies" deeply embedded in Western assumptions, training, practice and
> measurement in Occupational Therapy, and notes a sharp conflict with the
> cultural and conceptual foundations of the East Asian societies (comprising
> roughly half the human population), with Japan as a particular example. He
> shows diagrammatically the "East Asian version of the cosmological myth",
> in which the animal, vegetational, human and spiritual entities are a co-
> existent, inter-active unity. By contrast, the "Western variation of the
> cosmological myth", is portrayed as an hierarchy with one radically
> transcendent deity, separated from the individual human self, which is in
> turn set apart from the other humans, who collectively attempt to have
> dominion over the animals and natural environment. The Western version
> underpins a notion of 'occupation', as the activity of an independent self,
> busily doing, mastering, controlling, gaining victory (...over the others,
> the environment, the world, the universe). Such notions may appear
> meaningless, mad, or seriously destructive, when viewed by societies that
> value social dependence and interdependence, and are "oriented toward a
> harmonious existence with nature and its circumstances."]
>
> Is that perhaps too sharp a contrast between the world views?
>
> The ageing population in the ongoing Japanese asylums is another
> interesting factor. That reminded me of another 'interpreter' of Japanese
> thinking about disability: IWAKUMA, Miho (2001) Ageing with disability in
> Japan. In: M Priestley (ed) Disability and the Life Course. Global
> perspectives, 219-230. Cambridge UP.
> [Reports interviews with "more than thirty" older Japanese people with
> disabilities, mostly men with spinal cord injuries, discussing a variety of
> topics, with some analysis. Their thoughts on ageing with disability
> naturally reflect their 'life stance' or philosophy. A common theme was
> that interviewees felt they were better prepared for the problems of ageing
> than the non-disabled population. They already had plenty of experience of
> coping with physical difficulties, and of dependency on others (especially
> wives), and of facing uncertainty about the future. A number of
> interviewees had been close to death and had survived against pessimistic
> prediction; so they no longer feared death or the future.]
>
> The question of dependency on other family members (mostly wives) is a
> growing issue in many countries, as women are increasingly expected to have
> a career in paid work, while governments everywhere are keen not to lose
> the services of unpaid carers at home. This too has recently been studied
> in Japan: Traphagan, John W (2007) Moral discourse and old age disability
> in Japan. In: B Ingstad & SR Whyte (eds) (2007) Disability in Local and
> Global Worlds, 259-286. Berkeley: University of California Press.
> [The increase of elderly and very old people in Japan, as in many other
> countries, has generated a growing need for care related to disabilities,
> ageing and senility, while concurrent social trends have altered
> traditional assumptions about women's roles in such care, and state
> participation in care funding. Based on fieldwork in the 1990s, Traphagan
> analyses and discusses this complex and evolving field, the concepts of
> disability, moral discourses, and discontinuities of thought and practice,
> in modern Japan.]
>
> There is much to be learnt from the similar and different ways in which
> people across the world are facing up to these issues. (I don't know
> whether any of these articles or chapters gives an accurate reflection of
> the complexities in Japan; but they are probably better than guesswork.)
>
> best, miles
________________End of message________________
This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies).
Enquiries about list administration should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Archives and tools are located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can VIEW, POST, JOIN and LEAVE the list by logging in to this web page.
|
