Japanese American Midwives

Culture, Community, and Health Politics, 1880-1950

Susan L. Smith

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780252072475, 9780252030055
• eBook ISBN: 9780252092435
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In the late nineteenth century, Japan's modernizing quest for empire transformed midwifery into a new woman's profession. With the rise of Japanese immigration to the United States, Japanese midwives (sanba) served as cultural brokers as well as birth attendants for Issei women. They actively participated in the creation of Japanese American community and culture as preservers of Japanese birthing customs and agents of cultural change. 

Japanese American Midwives reveals the dynamic relationship between this welfare state and the history of women and health. Susan L. Smith blends midwives' individual stories with astute analysis to demonstrate the impossibility of clearly separating domestic policy from foreign policy, public health from racial politics, medical care from women's caregiving, and the history of women and health from national and international politics. By setting the history of Japanese American midwives in this larger context, Smith reveals little-known ethnic, racial, and regional aspects of women's history and the history of medicine.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Japanese American Women, Racial Politics, and the Meanings of Midwifery
• 1. Creation of the Sanba in Meiji Japan
• 2. Race Relations, Midwife Regulations, and the Sanba in the American West
• 3. Seattle Sanba and the Creation of Issei Community
• 4. Midwife Supervision in Hawai’i
• 5. Militarization, Midwifery, and World War II
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index