“Our Army’s Greatest Foe Was Not the Fierce Aborigines but Malaria.”–page 161
Meiji 7-nen Seiban tōbatsu kaikoroku 明治七年生蕃討伐囘顧錄 [Memoirs Concerning the 1874 Campaign Against the Southern Barbarians].
Three photographic plates (incl. a port. of the author) & two maps, all on glossy paper. 211 pp. 8vo, rebound in modern cloth. [Tokyo: Privately Printed by the Author], 1920.
First edition, and very rare, of the memoirs of the Japanese campaign in Taiwan by the military doctor Ochiai (b. 1850); this book and his diary remain the best first-hand accounts of the medical aspects of this disastrous incursion.
Using the pretense of avenging the murder of Okinawan fishermen by Taiwanese aborigines in 1871, the Meiji government decided to enlarge its sphere of influence — the first of many attempts — by sending an expeditionary force of more than 3000 soldiers and laborers to Taiwan in 1874. “Militarily, the expedition was a stunning success, as the heavily armed Japanese Army easily routed the brave but poorly-equipped aborigines…However, Japanese attempts to establish a permanent base in the area were soon thwarted by a series of epidemics, particularly typhus, dysentery and malaria. These events are graphically recounted in both the diary and memoirs of the army surgeon Ochiai Taizo, who later became superintendent of the Bureau of Military Medicine (gun-i ryo)…
“The Taiwan Expedition of 1874 provides a classic example of the impact epidemics could have on military campaigns, as deaths from epidemics among the nearly 6,000 men who served were over 20 times higher than battlefield deaths. Even though the Japanese army’s superior firepower ensured its tactical success against Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes, the inability to adjust to a new environment and poor camp sanitation doomed to failure any attempt to establish a base in Taiwan, just as alien diseases and unclean army camps had doomed military campaigns throughout world history.”–Paul R. Katz, “Germs of Disaster. The Impact of Epidemics on Japanese Military Campaigns in Taiwan, 1874 and 1895” in Annales de Démographie Historique (1996)–see the entirety of this wonderful article.
Fine condition.
Price: $2,950.00
Item ID: 11438
