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[[File:Deshima.jpg|thumbnail|360px|left|Deshima island in Nagasaki Bay in 1825]]
Western medicine slowly filtered into Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1858). While Japanese variants of Chinese medicine dominated Japanese medical practice, western medicine made significant inroads and penetrated Japan. Historian John Bowers claims that Western medicine ultimately triumphed over Chinese medicine due to the perseverance of Japanese students, scholars and European physicians stationed at Deshima. This paper will examine the Over this time period, Japan experienced a gradual expansion of western medicine throughout Japan due to the concerted and examine dedicated efforts of some of its the most important Japanese medical practitioners and advocates.
Medicine during the <i>Edo</i> period became increasingly Balkanized as five separate schools of medicine were practiced in Japan. Each of these schools was based on the Chinese medical tradition. In the sixth century, Chinese medicine, <i>kanpō</i>, was brought to Japan by Buddhist priests.<ref>Lock, <i>East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan</i>, 27.</ref> <i>Kanpō</i> utilized Chinese herbs, acupuncture, moxibistion and massage. Chinese medicine was based on the principle that the body, like the universe, can potentially achieve “a state of dynamic equilibrium if no strain is imposed on the system.”<ref>Lock, <i>East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan</i>, 32.</ref> Unfortunately, the body was constantly disturbed by internal and external influences which manifest themselves as either deficiencies (ying) or excesses (yang) of energy. Because patients were seen as part of nature, illness was caused by these continual environmental forces acting on their bodies.<ref>Lock, <i>East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan</i>, 32-33.</ref> Physicians working in the Chinese system focused on categorizing illness under a complex set of groupings that demonstrated the relationships between man and the universe. The Chinese medical system did not bother portraying the body in an anatomically accurate way because it was far more concerned with the “functional interrelationships between the parts of the body.”<ref>Lock, <i>East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan</i>, 34.</ref> While Japanese physicians in the five separate sects adopted and modified the Chinese medicine, the theoretical foundations for kanpō remained tied to Chinese medicine.
