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Precis: " Male Anxieties: Nerve Force, Nation, and the Power of Sexual Knowledge" (2005) by Sabine Frühstück

In the chapter “Male Anxieties: Nerve Force, Nation, and the Power of Sexual Knowledge” (2005), Sabine Frühstück argues that the emerging science of sex (seikagaku or seigaku) simultaneously contributed to and shaped a new understanding of manhood and of the formation of the modern Japanese nation. She does so by first defining the illness of neurasthenia as something that was occurring among the modern countries of the time, which compelled Japan to think of its scholarship and ailments on neurasthenia as a sign of the country’s mark to modernity, and to the world of men. Secondly, she discusses neurasthenia as an illness to the Imperialist Japan, and how it is necessary to understand and combat the disease which was a threat to the physical body of men, which was representative of the empire. She also traces the relationship of new scientific findings on neurasthenia over the years and capitalism, both as a symptom of the growing economy and also to be treated by more consumption through new pharmaceutical products, but more evidently is the focus on how these consumption would enhance the physical structure and nature of the Japanese male body that was deemed not well-developed compared to their Western counterparts. Lastly, she also notes how the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries Japanese scholars, medical practitioners, politicians, the military, psychologists and hygienists would increasingly attempt to make use of scientific knowledge in order to form well-functioning and well-regulated bodies that would constitute a better and more modern nation. In conclusion she states that in modern Japan, the creation of sexual knowledge and the stigmatization of certain kinds of sexual behavior, as well as the promotion of others, were intrinsically intertwined with politics.

(October 18, 2018)

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