A Modern Japanese History of Self-Starvation: A Text Analytics of the Major Newspaper, 1872-2018

Shizuka Kono, Tokyo Metropolitan University

This paper explores how Self-Starvation (hereafter SS) has come to be understood as a mental illness in modern Japan. I found the process could be divided into three phases. Phase 1. From late 19th to early 20th century, the SS was understood in religious or political framings. Especially when the intention of the SS doer (mostly female) were obscure, it was understood as ascetic prayers to fulfill some worldly interests (healing of illness, husband’s return, etc). From 1920s to 1930s, hunger strikes (mostly by male) occurred frequently, and the newspaper wrote big of the SS took the strikers lives away. Phase 2. In the late 20th century, the framings of the SS understanding were changed. The medical framing grew in this period, along with the diffusion of the psycho-medical diagnostic names of ‘Anorexia Nervosa’ . But simultaneously, some other framings (feministic, educational, and esthetic framings) occurred, and formulated their unique ways of looking after the SS doers. Phase 3. From the end of the 20th century until now, the medical framing grew bigger along with the diffusion of the diagnostic names of ‘Eating Disorders’, and the new framing of welfare appeared. In this phase the state administrations shift their policy accent from the clarification of the SS pathogenesis to the SS doer’s social rehabilitation. Most of the Japanese preceding sociological studies of the SS were based on the medical framing, and formulating their theories from very few instances. In contrast to it, e.g., 13,000 (approx.) newspaper articles which are extracted from the online digital databases of Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun. And the dataset contains the SS instances apparently before the rise the medical framing. I believe this study establishes a firm ground for further developing the sociological-historical study of the SS.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 86. Health, Medicine and Body