Visualizing the Fetus in Early Modern Japan

Speaker: Manami Yasui, Professor at International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)

Talk summary: The talk explores historical perspectives on the human body and maternal health in Japan through ukiyo-e prints and paintings. In late 19th-century Japan, ukiyo-e depicted pregnant women integrating Edo period representations of the female body with the new Western medical knowledge of fetal development. These ukiyo-e reflect people’s curiosity and imagination about the inside of the female body and their changing attitudes toward childbirth as the emphasis shifted from Eastern to Western medicine.

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