scholarly journals Radium traffic: radiation, science and spiritualism in early twentieth-century Japan

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-45
Author(s):  
Maika Nakao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Folk Belief ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Radiation Science ◽  
Radiation Medicine

AbstractThe emergence of modern health-related commodities and tourism in the late Meiji and Taishō eras (1900s–1920s) was accompanied by a revival of spiritualist religions, many of which had their origins in folk belief. What helped this was the people’s interpretation of radiation. This article underscores the linkages between radiation, science and spiritualism in Japan at the time of modernisation and imperialism. In the early twentieth century, the general public came to know about radiation because it was deemed to have special efficacy in healing the human body. In Japan, the concept of radiation harmonised with both Western culture and Japanese traditional culture. One can see the fusion of Western and traditional culture both in people’s lives and commercial culture through the popularity and availability of radium hot springs and radioactive commodities. Radium hot springs became fashionable in Japan in the 1910s. As scholars reported that radium provided the real potency of hot springs, local hot springs villages seized on the scientific explanation and connected their developments with national policies and industries. This paper illustrates how the discourse about radium, which came from the field of radiation medicine, connected science and spiritualism in modern Japan.

Impact Erasure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bachner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

This chapter analyzes the use of inscriptive metaphors in trauma theories, from Freud’s psychoanalytical models of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to contemporary theorists such as Agamben, Caruth, Hirsch, and Lyotard. As an unregistered shock that continues to haunt the individual, trauma is an inscription whose impact leaves no trace. Accordingly, the inscriptive metaphors deployed in theories of trauma tend to multiply since they are caught in the dilemma of representing trauma without sacrificing a definition of trauma as the unrepresentable par excellence. For a thorough analysis of the ways in which trauma turns inscriptive, this chapter zooms in on a scandalous counterpoint: that between the number tattoos of Holocaust victims and the mark of circumcision. Whereas the number tattoo brands and produces a human body as inhuman, but can be rewritten as a corporeal memorial, circumcision can be misconstrued as traumatic mark, as a supplement to castration, but can also serve as a model for an ethical thought.

Oral Narratives from the Early Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 383-394
Author(s):  
Adrienn Gecse
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
To Come

The stories introduced in this chapter tell about the life of various monks, the teachers of the storyteller who was the then-ninety-two-year-old G. Sukhbat in Erdenetsogt district of Bayankhongor Province. Through the narratives we get a glimpse of the early twentieth-century Mongolia, when religion and religious values became worthless or rather dangerous in the eyes of those in power. Western principles came to the front, became superior, and traditional culture was eliminated for its outdatedness and primitivity. Because religion was considered the main carrier of traditional Mongolian culture, neither monks nor their followers and monasteries could escape the punishment. Various sources quote somewhat differing figures, but undoubtedly, due to the so-called Modern Mongolia project, tens of thousands of people lost their lives in the purges. The 1990s meant a huge transformation into a free society and the rediscovery of traditions and religion. Because of the circumstances, monks and others followed the traditional way of preserving their heritage that is through keeping the knowledge within for future generations to come, similarly to the stories told as follows. They did not get written down, and they emerged to the surface and became more widely known only after the passing of the danger. Only thanks to the strength and persistence of monks and laypeople could these stories emerge to be learned from.

Atkinson, Madge (1885–1970)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Carter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Dance Language ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Movement ◽  
Systematic Development ◽  
The Times

A dancer, choreographer, educator, and writer, Madge Atkinson worked during the second and third decades of the twentieth century on the development of the dance form known as Natural Movement. Based in Manchester, she was active in the theater, presented her own choreographic work from her studio, established a school, and taught widely. Atkinson was concerned with the systematic development of skill and artistry, based on an extension of the natural functions of the human body. Her work was disseminated nationally and internationally through the teaching of graded syllabi and the craft of choreography. She made a significant contribution to dance in the early twentieth century through her role as a female artist and her privileging of a holistic but skilled approach to movement, from which evolved a new dance language. In accord with the ethos of the times but in her own unique way, she constructed and contested the concept of the "natural" in theater dance.

Some Polish Composers of To-Day

Tempo ◽  
1948 ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Andrzej Panufnik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Group ◽  
Karol Szymanowski

It is ten years since KAROL SZYMANOWSKI died at fifty-four. He was the most prominent representative of the “radical progressive” group of early twentieth century composers, which we call “Young Poland.” In their manysided and pioneering efforts they prepared the fertile soil on which Poland's present day's music thrives.

V1214: Edward Loughborough Keyes: An Early Twentieth Century Leader In Urology

2004 ◽  
Vol 171 (4S) ◽  
pp. 320-320
Author(s):  
Peter J. Stahl ◽  
E. Darracott Vaughan ◽  
Edward S. Belt ◽  
David A. Bloom ◽  
Ann Arbor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

New insights into the controversy surrounding marine biological laboratory (Marine Station) facilities in the Firth of Clyde in the early twentieth century

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-170
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Marine Biological Laboratory ◽  
Biological Station ◽  
Marine Biological ◽  
Biological Laboratory ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Marine Station ◽  
Regius Professor ◽  
Adjacent Island

Three letters from the Sheina Marshall archive at the former University Marine Biological Station Millport (UMBSM) reveal the pivotal significance of Sheina Marshall's father, Dr John Nairn Marshall, behind the scheme planned by Glasgow University's Regius Professor of Zoology, John Graham Kerr. He proposed to build an alternative marine station facility on Cumbrae's adjacent island of Bute in the Firth of Clyde in the early years of the twentieth century to cater predominantly for marine researchers.

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