A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEDICINE IN JAPAN

Historically Japan grew up within a cultural environment in eastern Asia in which China was the centre. However, the isolation of the Japanese islands has made for an unusually unified and self-contained history. Protected from the play of competing civilisations or the periodic disruption of foreign invasion, the Japanese people in historic times have lived a relatively undisturbed existence. Yet their culture has undergone a succession of fundamental changes that transformed it from a primitive tribal society prior to the sixth century into a nation of aristocratic bureaucrats from the seventh through the twelfth centuries; later, into a land of contending feudal powers; and finally, into its present condition as a modern nation state.