The Japanese Patent Medicine Trade in East Asia
The Japanese Patent Medicine Trade in East Asia
Women’s Medicines and the Tensions of Empire
This chapter explores modern Japan’s pharmaceutical interest in and competition over women’s bodies in the 1920s and 1930s, analysing how patent drugs as “medical commodities” promoted multiple and competing representations of health and femininity not only to citizens but also to its colonial consumers. These commercial tonics contested the racialized and politicized Japanese bioscience and its hierarchies, presenting cosmopolitan ideals of health and beauty. Yet, when political shifts required it, the medical capitalists easily transitioned to marketing their products for child-bearing imperial female subjects.
Keywords: Japanese Empire, Medical commodities, Advertisements, Patent medicine, Women’s health
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