Vaccinating Across Status Boundaries
As elsewhere in Tokugawa Japan, Ōno's domain population was divided into semi-autonomous groups that situated subjects in public life by assigning them a status identity. Although these groups displayed enormous diversity, they can be subsumed into three broad hereditary categories: samurai, commoners (townspeople and peasants), and outcastes. The three categories constituted not just social spaces with distinct norms and customs, but to some extent could be mapped onto physical space because their members often lived together in separate sections of castle towns. While the boundary between commoners and samurai was relatively porous--marriages between the two, for example, were common--, outcastes experienced major discrimination in everyday life. Commoners typically avoided intermarriage with outcastes and did not allow people from outcaste lineages to live in their midst. Many believed that outcastes suffered from hereditary stigma.
Could the smallpox vaccine cross the boundary between commoners and outcastes? After all, the treatment involved the transfer of bodily fluids, and many people in Ōno domain believed that outcaste status was inherited at birth [Ehlers, Give and Take, 109-111]. But the smallpox virus did not discriminate by status. It infected both high and low, and the children of outcastes, too, needed to be vaccinated if the goal was to eradicate the disease.
In the 10th month of 1860, about ten years into Ōno's vaccination program, the domain government issued a number of orders to deal with a flurry of smallpox outbreaks among the townspeople [Ōno shishi, Yōdome-hen, 1860, 10/6, 10/8]. It had come to the administration's attention that townspeople sometimes concealed such outbreaks, and officials thus ordered the town population to strictly report all cases and not let any patients leave the house while they were still covered in scabs to reduce the risk of contagion. The domain then extended this order to the entire domain, and threatened both townspeople and villagers with punishment if they failed to report an occurrence of smallpox to the vaccination clinic. The domain also admonished all subjects not to take any children without immunity to the house of a child suffering from smallpox. A month later it ordered the expulsion of beggars from the town who displayed symptoms of infection [Ōno shishi, Yōdome-hen, 1860, 11/6, p. 867].
These orders suggest that the domain's earlier order to punish the parents of smallpox patients may have had the unintended effect of discouraging people from reporting outbreaks. Despite all efforts, the disease had not yet been eradicated in the domain by 1860, and the government had to acknowledge that fact and issue rules to minimize contagion. In addition, the government now sought to close an important loophole in the program: the children of local outcastes. There were two groups of hereditary outcastes living on the periphery of Ōno town: the Koshirō (beggar bosses) and the Kawaya/Eta (leather workers). Their population was small--between thirty and forty in the case of the Koshirō and even fewer in the Kawaya's case. On 10/6, the domain government ordered the town elders to identify any unvaccinated children among the beggar bosses and leather workers, and to inform them that the domain intended to vaccinate them. The government would get back to them later to announce the location.
Apparently, domain officials knew or suspected that the children of outcastes had so far not (or not sufficiently) been exposed to vaccinations--perhaps because they were being rejected at the clinic, or because their parents lacked interest or anticipated being excluded. This created a risk for all children in the domain who remained unvaccinated for the time being. By 1860, the domain government seems to have been determined to close that loophole. But the order also suggests that officials intended to have outcastes' children vaccinated not at the clinic but at a separate location, possibly to prevent them from becoming "pox bases" for commoner and samurai children and offending the discriminatory sentiments of parents.
To further explore vaccinations in Ōno domain, go to the pathway "Vaccinating the Nishikata Exclave."
To explore how Kasahara Hakuō attempted to spread vaccinations to the countryside of Fukui domain, click here for the pathway "Chains of Bodies: Village Relais in Fukui Domain."
Could the smallpox vaccine cross the boundary between commoners and outcastes? After all, the treatment involved the transfer of bodily fluids, and many people in Ōno domain believed that outcaste status was inherited at birth [Ehlers, Give and Take, 109-111]. But the smallpox virus did not discriminate by status. It infected both high and low, and the children of outcastes, too, needed to be vaccinated if the goal was to eradicate the disease.
In the 10th month of 1860, about ten years into Ōno's vaccination program, the domain government issued a number of orders to deal with a flurry of smallpox outbreaks among the townspeople [Ōno shishi, Yōdome-hen, 1860, 10/6, 10/8]. It had come to the administration's attention that townspeople sometimes concealed such outbreaks, and officials thus ordered the town population to strictly report all cases and not let any patients leave the house while they were still covered in scabs to reduce the risk of contagion. The domain then extended this order to the entire domain, and threatened both townspeople and villagers with punishment if they failed to report an occurrence of smallpox to the vaccination clinic. The domain also admonished all subjects not to take any children without immunity to the house of a child suffering from smallpox. A month later it ordered the expulsion of beggars from the town who displayed symptoms of infection [Ōno shishi, Yōdome-hen, 1860, 11/6, p. 867].
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These orders suggest that the domain's earlier order to punish the parents of smallpox patients may have had the unintended effect of discouraging people from reporting outbreaks. Despite all efforts, the disease had not yet been eradicated in the domain by 1860, and the government had to acknowledge that fact and issue rules to minimize contagion. In addition, the government now sought to close an important loophole in the program: the children of local outcastes. There were two groups of hereditary outcastes living on the periphery of Ōno town: the Koshirō (beggar bosses) and the Kawaya/Eta (leather workers). Their population was small--between thirty and forty in the case of the Koshirō and even fewer in the Kawaya's case. On 10/6, the domain government ordered the town elders to identify any unvaccinated children among the beggar bosses and leather workers, and to inform them that the domain intended to vaccinate them. The government would get back to them later to announce the location.
Apparently, domain officials knew or suspected that the children of outcastes had so far not (or not sufficiently) been exposed to vaccinations--perhaps because they were being rejected at the clinic, or because their parents lacked interest or anticipated being excluded. This created a risk for all children in the domain who remained unvaccinated for the time being. By 1860, the domain government seems to have been determined to close that loophole. But the order also suggests that officials intended to have outcastes' children vaccinated not at the clinic but at a separate location, possibly to prevent them from becoming "pox bases" for commoner and samurai children and offending the discriminatory sentiments of parents.
To further explore vaccinations in Ōno domain, go to the pathway "Vaccinating the Nishikata Exclave."
To explore how Kasahara Hakuō attempted to spread vaccinations to the countryside of Fukui domain, click here for the pathway "Chains of Bodies: Village Relais in Fukui Domain."