In his first monograph A Medicated Empire, Timothy M. Yang examines the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the nation-state by spotlighting one entrepreneur, Hoshi Hajime (1873–1951). Today, his name is best known as the father of Hoshi Shin’ichi (1926–1997), the most successful science fiction writer in Japan, but Hajime found great commercial success by founding Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, which formally started in 1911 and whose ownership was eventually transferred from the Hoshi family in 1952. By tracing the work of Hoshi Hajime and his company, Yang illustrates how an energetic industrialist started a business and tried to expand it during the rise of the Japanese Empire from the late Meiji era to the early Shōwa era.
This book consists of four parts and eight chapters. In Part I, the author sketches the prehistory and the beginning of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals. Born in a rural area in Fukushima Prefecture, Hoshi Hajime went to Tokyo to study business. Like contemporary ambitious men, he also traveled abroad and entered Columbia University for further study. He completed his Master’s course in 1901 and gained expertise in management and business. During his stay in the United States, Hoshi launched a newspaper and grasped an applied sense of enterprise. This international experience shaped his career, but, at the same time, his business dealings were largely indebted to his extensive network of leading figures in Japan, such as Itō Hirobumi and Nitobe Inazō. Among them, Gotō Shinpei was the most decisive for Hoshi’s career, since Gotō strongly supported Hoshi’s newspaper business in the United States as well as his future work in Taiwan. After returning to Japan, in 1906 Hoshi chose medicine as his new business and rapidly achieved commercial success, resulting in the establishment of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals in 1911.
In Part II, Yang analyzes the early success of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals in terms of marketing, advertising, and logistics. Since the company entered the pharmaceutical market much later than major drug firms such as Takeda and Shionogi, it targeted not prescription drugs but instead patent and household drugs. To make his medicines widely known, Hoshi spent much money on advertisements whose effectiveness he had learned about in the United States. In addition, Hoshi designed his products not only to combat disease but also to maintain good health. In so doing, Hoshi’s medicines became commonplace on the shelves of households in Japan as well as in Taiwan and Korea. Hoshi’s marketing success also rested on progressive logistics. Based on his study in the United States, he adopted the franchise system in Japan much earlier than other companies. To promote competition and generate loyalty among stores and sellers, Hoshi published a newspaper, circulated it among the franchise stores, and introduced the concept of recognizing outstanding franchisees—this newspaper serves as one of the main primary sources in this book.
In Part III, the author elucidates the failure of Hoshi’s opium business in Japan’s colony of Taiwan. Following the considerable marketing success of his patent drugs, Hoshi tried to expand his company by selling this as a new product line. Since Hoshi had close connections to Gotō Shinpei and other prominent politicians, he successfully obtained exclusive government permission to deal in opium in Taiwan. However, opium was known not only for its medical effectiveness but also for addiction. In 1925, suspicions over Hoshi’s involvement in opium trafficking brought about harsh criticism of his company. As Yang points out, the scandal partly resulted from the ongoing political strife between Gotō Shinpei and Katō Takaaki—Katō had become prime minister in 1924 and tried to dismiss the influence of Gotō and his rival political party. After this disgrace, Hoshi was unable to manage the issue of unpaid salaries and factory shutdowns. These facilitated large-scale labor movements supported by prominent labor activists and again brought about severe criticism of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, resulting in its bankruptcy in 1932.
In Part IV, Yang explores Hoshi’s next business challenge, which came about in Taiwan after the insolvency. Learning from the failure of the opium business, Hoshi tried to find a new commodity that would never cause a scandal like opium. He decided to invest in the cultivation of cinchona, a raw material of quinine, the most effective drug for malaria at that time and, unlike opium, one with no serious downsides. Hoshi emphasized the humanitarian value of quinine and the importance of cinchona production by stating that his new business would contribute to the self-sufficiency of the Japanese Empire, since its production was then dominated by the Netherlands. When he set up new cinchona plantations in Taiwan, he used the expertise he had learned in the United States. Hoshi believed that winning over the Taiwanese was crucial to success in Taiwan. By following the example of US policy toward Indigenous Americans, he offered not only wages but also educational opportunities to the local workers, and this strategy resonated with the colonial policy of Gotō Shinpei. Hoshi’s new business was supported by leading figures, including Nagai Ryūtarō, a prominent militaristic politician who served in several ministerial positions, as well as Tōyama Mitsuru, an influential right-wing activist. During the period of national mobilization, Hoshi’s patent medicines were also nuanced with nationalism and militarism, and he even used the name Tōyama on his products to emphasize his contribution to the nation.
In the Epilogue, the author describes the contrasting fates of pharmaceutical companies in postwar Japan. By 1950, most drug firms had revived production and sales, but Hoshi Pharmaceuticals was an exception. Since the company was committed to the production of morphine, which General Headquarters (GHQ) strictly prohibited, Hoshi’s production lines were brought to a standstill. With Hoshi’s death in 1951, his position was taken over by his son Shin’ichi, who soon sold the firm to Ōtani Yonetarō, later founder of the Hotel New Otani chain. Ōtani tried to restore Hoshi’s pharmaceuticals business, which still survives today under a different name as a minor player in the industry.
A Medicated Empire is a significant addition to the scholarship in modern Japanese history and the history of the Japanese Empire. Yang’s work is also pioneering in the history of medicine in Japan, since scholars have tended to focus on doctors and governmental medical policy while paying little attention to the pharmaceutical industry. Using different types of primary sources, he successfully demonstrates that Hoshi’s drug firm contributed to the “medicated empire”. Yang’s focus on Hoshi Pharmaceuticals inspires us to explore the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry, the Empire, and its colonies. One wants to know more about other drug firms, including major companies such as Takeda and Shionogi and relatively new companies such as Sankyō. How did Hoshi Pharmaceuticals compete with these rivals? Some of them seem to have engaged in colonial business more actively than Hoshi, by cultivating medicinal herbs in Asia and Latin America and developing medicines in their own laboratories, thereby contributing to the pharmaceutical infrastructure of the Japanese Empire. The history of the “medicated empire” will be more fully described with Yang’s work on Hoshi and scholars’ future research on Takeda, Shionogi, Sankyō, and others. Yang’s treatise serves as an excellent guide in examining the rise of the pharmaceutical industry in the Japanese Empire.
Building upon Yang’s achievements, scholars will be able to develop several other topics surrounding health and treatment that he does not examine in detail. With his spotlight on the Hoshi Pharmaceuticals business, he does not have space to fully examine how consumers responded to patent medicines. As some scholars have discussed, patent drugs have remained the preferred treatment option in modern Japan despite the rapid increase and spread of Western-style doctors. For example, Suzuki Akihito has analyzed the health survey of 1938 and points out that people relied on patent medicines much more than on doctors’ treatments or prescriptions (Suzuki Citation2008). Futaya Tomoko has also investigated what kinds of medicines consumers purchased by examining household account books (Futaya Citation2017, 54–57). These types of primary sources would help us explore the agency of consumers.
Again, A Medicated Empire is a welcome contribution to modern Japanese history. It will be useful for undergraduate students in enabling them to grasp the rapidly changing situations of the Japanese Empire through the microhistory of a specific company. This book is also a good example of modern Japanese historical writing in its reference to such important topics as colonialism and biopolitics.
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Hiro Fujimoto is a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at Kyoto University. He is the author of the Japanese language monograph Igaku to kirisuto-kyō: Nihon ni okeru Amerika purotesutanto no iryō-senkyō 医学とキリスト教:日本におけるアメリカ・プロテスタントの医療宣教 (Medicine and Christianity: American Protestant Missionaries and their Medical Work in Japan), published by Hosei University Press in 2021, as well as multiple peer-reviewed articles in English, including “Circulation of Medical Knowledge and Techniques through Film in Japan, 1929–1941” (EASTS 14, no. 3, 2020).
