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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
This article examines how Imperial Japanese military doctors—both Army and Navy medical specialists—employed blood-type analysis in military medicine, from the first military medical publication of blood-type research in 1926 to the end of the Asia-Pacific War in 1945. It explores the military physicians’ quest to investigate the relevance of blood-group knowledge and their attempt to integrate ideas derived from Furukawa Takeji’s Blood Type–Temperament Correlation Theory—the idea that blood type is linked to personality traits—into the operations of the armed forces, a process I term ‘sero-rationalization’. By the mid-1930s, however, escalating conflicts prompted a shift in research priorities. Military physicians increasingly focused on serology and the technological advancements required for blood transfusions, moving away from earlier biopsychological discussions of blood types. This shift reflected an urgent need to address wartime medical challenges, including treating injuries and developing reliable transfusion methods. With the intensification of war by the 1940s, frontline physicians began exploring alternatives to traditional blood typing, such as cross-type transfusions and even animal-to-human transfusions. In their attempts to circumvent the ABO blood-group system in dealing with wartime medical emergencies, military physicians departed significantly from their initial emphasis on serological differentiation. Ironically, the pursuit of sero-rationalization—intended to optimize military efficiency—ultimately proved counterproductive.
1 See Jenny Bangham, Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2020), pp. 26–59.
2 Matsuda Kaoru, Ketsuekigata to seikaku no shakaishi: Ketsuekigata jinruigaku no kigen to tenkai (Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha, 1994); Mizoguchi Hajime, ‘Guntai to ketsuekigata kishitsu sōkansetsu’, Seibutsugakushi kenkyū, no. 49, 1987, pp. 19–28; Ōmura Masao, Ketsuekigata to seikaku (Tokyo: Fukumura shuppan, 2012), pp. 26–34; Ōmura Masao, ‘Kyūgunbu ni okeru ketsuekigata to seikaku no kenkyū’, Gendai no Esupuri, no. 324, 1994, pp. 77–85; Ōmura Masao, Ukiya Shūichi and Fujita Shuichi, ‘“Ketsuekigata kishitsu sōkansetsu” no shiteki hyōron’, Part 1, Ōyō shinrigaku kenkyū, vol. 33, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1–12.
3 Jennifer Robertson, ‘Blood Talks: Eugenic Modernity and the Creation of New Japanese’, History and Anthropology, vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 191–216; Jennifer Robertson, ‘Hemato-nationalism: The Past, Present, and Future of “Japanese Blood”’, Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, vol. 31, no. 2, 2012, pp. 93–112.
4 The official periodical of the Japanese Imperial Army Medical Service was published between 1886 and October 1943. Initially known as Rikugun gun’i gakkai zasshi (Journal of the Japanese Army Medical Service), its name was changed to Gun’i gakkai zasshi (Journal of the Japanese Military Medical Service) in April 1894, and again in March 1909 to Gun’idan zasshi (hereafter GZ; Journal of the Japanese Army Medical Corps). The Navy counterpart was the Japanese Imperial Navy Medical Service whose publication Kaigun gun’ikai kaihō (Bulletin of the Japanese Navy Medical Service) began in May 1912. Between February 1917 and October 1921, it was known as Gun’ikai kaihō (Bulletin of the Japanese Military Medical Service). Its name changed again in May 1922 to Kaigun gun’ikai zasshi (hereafter KZ; Journal of the Japanese Navy Medical Service). The final issue was published in January 1945.
5 See especially ‘War and Medicine in Twentieth-Century China and Japan’, special issue of East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, vol. 17, no. 2, 2023.
6 Ludwik Hirszfeld and Hanna Hirszfeld, ‘Serological Differences between the Blood of Different Races’, Lancet, vol. 2, no. 5016, 1919, pp. 675–679.
7 As cited in Katrin Steffen, ‘Ludwik Hirszfeld, the Great War, and Seroanthropology: Expectations and Unfulfilled Promises’, Ab Imperio, no. 2, 2016, p. 120.
8 See Index Medicus: A Quarterly Classified Record of the Current Medical Literature of the World, third series, vol. 2, no. 1, 1922, p. 27; William H. Schneider, ‘Blood Group Research in Great Britain, France, and the US between the World Wars’, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, vol. 38, 1995, p. 89.
9 Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, ‘Blood and Soil: The Serology of the Aryan Racial State’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 64, no. 2, 1990, pp. 187–219; William H. Schneider, ‘Chance and Social Setting in the Application of the Discovery of Blood Groups’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 57, no. 4, 1983, pp. 545–562.
10 See Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Marius Turda, Modernism and Eugenics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
11 See Rachel E. Boaz, In Search of ‘Aryan Blood’: Serology in Interwar and National Socialist Germany (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2012).
12 Max Gundel, ‘Bestehen Zusammenhänge zwischen Blutgruppe und Luesdisposition sowie zwischen Blutgruppe und Erfolg der Luestherapie?’, Klinische Wochenschrift, vol. 6, no. 36, 1927, pp. 1703–1705; Franz Schütz and Edgar Wöhlisch, ‘Bedeutung und Wesen von Hämagglutination und Blutgruppenbildung beim Menschen’, Klinische Wochenschrift, vol. 3, no. 36, 1924, pp. 1614–1616; J. Warnowsky, ‘Über Beziehung der Blutgrupen zu Krankheiten: Heterohaemagglutination’, Münchner medizinischer Wochenschrift, no. 74, 1927, pp. 1758–1760. For an overview of the European discourses regarding blood type B inferiority in the 1920s, see especially Boaz, In Search of ‘Aryan Blood’, pp. 99–115.
13 Sumiko Otsubo and James Bartholomew, ‘Eugenics in Japan: Some Ironies of Modernity, 1883–1945’, Science in Context, vol. 11, nos. 3–4, 1998, pp. 545–565.
14 Robertson, ‘Blood Talks’, p. 192.
15 Hirano Hayashi and Yajima Tomita, ‘Jinkekkyū gyōshū hannō ni tsuite’, GZ, no. 157, 1926, pp. 152–163.
16 ‘Rikugun ikan chōhei kensa kisoku’, Iji shinbun, vol. 30, no. 137, 1884, p. 11.
17 Katō Masao and Nakajima Samanosuke, ‘Sōtei ni okeru ketsuekigata ni tsuite’, GZ, no. 258, 1934, pp. 1955–1962.
18 Abe Shin’ichi, ‘Yuketsu o mokuteki to suru jinrui ketsueki ruikei kensahō hikaku jikken’, GZ, no. 187, 1929, pp. 63–84.
19 See Harano Hirō, Okada Tsuneyoshi and Kawana Tatsuo, ‘Manshūkoku oyobi Manshūkokugun no eisei kikō ni tsuite’, GZ, no. 258, 1934, pp. 1981–1982; Kawana Tatsuo, ‘Kekkei kensahō tōitsu no hitsuyō ni tsuite narabi “zurabyō byōgentai, sokōshō, kaikinetsu, subirōhēta” no kyōran’, GZ, no. 250, 1934, p. 579.
20 Covering a range of medical conditions, including inherited illnesses (such as colour blindness), neurological disorders, and infectious diseases (for example, syphilis, trachoma, and influenza), researchers failed to show any coherence in their results. For example, on which blood type had the fastest recovery rate, one showed that blood type AB took the longest time to recover while another proved otherwise. See Takahara Takeichi, ‘Taihei no ketsueki shuzoku to jinshu keisū oyobi korera to kosei, shippei nado to no kankei’, GZ, no. 201, 1930, pp. 294–295; Takematsu Susumu, ‘Ketsuekigata ni kansuru ni, san no kenkyū’, GZ, no. 226, 1932, pp. 479–506; Yamada Hiroshi and Okabe Noboru, ‘Ketsuekigata yori mitaru taihei no kansatsu’, GZ, no. 229, 1932, pp. 932–942.
21 ‘Ketsueki kettei no shūdan kensahō ni tsuite’, GZ, no. 282, 1936, pp. 1640–1641.
22 Mark Harrison, ‘Medicine and the Management of Modern Warfare: An Introduction’, in Medicine and Modern Warfare, (eds) Roger Cooter, Mark Harrison and Steve Sturdy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), p. 3.
23 Furukawa Takeji, ‘Ketsuekigata ni yoru kishitsu no kenkyū’, Shinrigaku kenkyū, vol. 2, no. 4, 1927, pp. 22–44.
24 For a concise bibliographical account of Furukawa Takeji, see especially Satō Tatsuya and Watanabe Yoshiyuki, ‘Furukawa Takeji no ketsuekigata kishitsu sōkansetsu no seiritsu o megutte: Taishō makki–Shōwa shoki ni okeru aru kishitsuron no seiritsu haikei’, Seikaku shinrigaku kenkyū, vol. 3, no. 1, 1995, pp. 51–65.
25 Furukawa Takeji, ‘Ketsuekigata ni yoru kishitsu oyobi minzokusei no kenkyū’, Kyōiku chō kenkyū, vol. 1, no. 1, 1927, pp. 208–234.
26 Although Furukawa first gave his formula the name ‘index of ethnic characteristics’ (minzokusei keisū), obviously mimicking the Hirszfelds’ BRI, he interchangeably used other terms, such as Collective Index (dantai keisū), Dynamism Index (katsudō shisū), and Temperament Index (kishitsu keisū). For the purposes of the present discussion, I refer to it as the Active-Passive Index, because Furukawa was primarily concerned with categorizing blood types according to one’s enthusiasm levels. See Furukawa, ‘Ketsuekigata ni yoru kishitsu oyobi minzokusei no kenkyū’, pp. 228–231.
27 Ibid., p. 229.
28 ‘Jidō no kishitsu shirabe ni kikai na ketsueki kensa’, Tōkyō asahi shinbun, 21 June 1928, p. 7; ‘Ketsueki ni yoru ‘Kishitsu kensa’ kazen chūshi o meizeraru’, Yomiuri shinbun, 21 June 1928, p. 7.
29 Matsuda, Ketsuekigata to seikaku no shakaishi, pp. 142–143; Mizoguchi, ‘Guntai to ketsuekigata kishitsu sōkansetsu’, pp. 21–22.
30 As quoted in Matsuda, Ketsuekigata to seikaku no shakaishi, p. 143.
31 As quoted in ibid.
32 Two reports on blood-type distribution were presented by the Army physicians during the conference. See Nakahara Hidesuke, ‘Ketsuekigata to sono tōkeiteki kansatsu’, KZ, vol. 19, no. 4, 1930, pp. 406–408; Takahara Takeichi, ‘San’in chihō shusshin taihei no ketsuekigata’, KZ, vol. 19, no. 4, 1930, pp. 403–406.
33 Ōiwa Hiromasa, ‘Ketsuekigata to seishingata to no kankei ni tsuite no kenkyū’, KZ, vol. 19, no. 5, 1930, pp. 35–40; Ōiwa Hiromasa, ‘Ketsuekigata to seishingata no kankei ni tsuite no kenkyū’, Nō, vol. 4, no. 12, 1930, pp. 9–14.
34 Takahara, ‘Taihei no ketsueki shuzoku’, pp. 292–293; Takematsu, ‘Ketsuekigata ni kansuru ni, san no kenkyū’, pp. 487–488; Takeuchi Bunji, ‘Rikugun hōhei no ketsuekigata ni tsuite’, Part 2, Ketsuekigata kenkyū, vol. 2, no. 2, 1932, p. 8; Tanioka Toshitake and Takakura Nagatsugu, ‘Hohei daisanjū rentai heiin no ketsuekgiata to tōkeiteki kansatsu (Jōechigo chihōjin ni okeru ketsuekigata bunpu jōkyō)’, Hanzaigaku zasshi, vol. 6, no. 3, 1933, pp. 41–42.
35 Yamada, ‘Ishikawa Fukui ryōkenka taihei’, p. 39.
36 Ōmura, Ketsuekigata to seikaku, pp. 55–76.
37 Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 39–40; William M. Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
38 See Sookyeong Hong, ‘“Science for Working Bodies”: Teruoka Gitō and the Science of Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire’, Historia Scientiarum, vol. 30, no. 3, 2021, pp. 138–158.
39 The best performing blood type is defined as the blood type with the highest proportion among those that achieved above-average scores in their respective components, for example, ‘AB (50.0%)’ indicates that 50 per cent of those who achieved above-average scores were of blood type AB.
40 Not every report follows the same template of specifying the military ranks. Hence, I include the specifics, if known, of whether they were commissioned officers or non-commissioned officers (NCO); if not, I indicate the blood type of the highest proportion within the high-ranking soldiers.
41 See Udagawa Yūzō, ‘Kaigunhei to ketsuekigata’, Ketsuekigata kenkyū, vol. 1, no. 5, 1932, pp. 4–5.
42 Harada Fukuzō, ‘Ketsuekigata yori mitaru kaigunhei no kishitsu taikaku ribyō gakugyō seiseki narabi kikanka kakushu renshūsei no tekisei ni tsuite’, Part 1, Yūseigaku, vol. 10, no. 9, 1933, p. 8.
43 Ibid., p. 9.
44 Hayakawa Kiyoshi and Yamada Masaji, ‘Tsūshinhei no tekiseiteki kenkyū’, GZ, no. 248, 1934, pp. 153–192.
45 Gordon W. Allport, Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1937), p. viii.
46 Suzuki, ‘Seijō oyobi byōteki jōken’, pp. 312–314.
47 Ibid., p. 313.
48 Ibid., p. 322.
49 Inoue, ‘Ketsuekigata ni kansatsu shitaru’, p. 1581.
50 Ōmura, Ketsuekigata to seikaku, p. 75.
51 Inoue, ‘Ketsuekigata ni kansatsu shitaru’, p. 1585.
52 Ibid., p. 1591.
53 Scholar Mizoguchi Hajime notes that between 1929 and 1934 more than half of the articles (35 in total) published in military medical periodicals on blood-type analysis focused on Furukawa’s Blood Type–Temperament Correlation Theory: 1929 (1 article), 1930 (8 articles), 1931 (5 articles), 1932 (13 articles), 1933 (5 articles), 1934 (3 articles). See Mizoguchi, ‘Guntai to ketsuekigata kishitsu sōkansetsu’, p. 25.
54 See Ikeda Naeo, ‘Kōjō rōdōsha no ketsuekigata ni kansuru kenkyū’, Part 1, GZ, no. 272, 1936, pp. 19–30; Ikeda Naeo, ‘Kōjō rōdōsha no ketsuekigata ni kansuru kenkyū’, Part 2, GZ, no. 273, 1936, pp. 203–210.
55 Ikeda Naeo, ‘Kōjō saigai to ketsuekigata ni kansuru kenkyū’, GZ, no. 284, 1937, p. 40.
56 Ibid., pp. 35–38; Inoue, ‘Ketsuekigata ni kansatsu shitaru’, pp. 1579–1581.
57 Arai Katsumi, ‘Ketsuekigata dantaisei shisū to sono sekkyokusei to no kankei ni tsuite’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 948, 1940, p. 25.
58 Ibid., p. 23.
59 Ibid.
60 N. S. R. Maluf, ‘History of Blood Transfusion’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol. 9, no. 1, 1954, p. 89.
61 Paul L. F. Giangrande, ‘The History of Blood Transfusion’, British Journal of Haematology, vol. 110, no. 4, 2000, pp. 758–767; William H. Schneider, ‘Blood Transfusion in Peace and War, 1900–1918’, Society for the Social History of Medicine, vol. 10, no. 1, 1997, pp. 105–126.
62 Miura Hiroshi, ‘Rikugun gun’i gakkō shūryōshiki ni okeru yūtōsei no gozen kōgi yōshi’, Ikai jihō, no. 1981, 1932, p. 22; Tanaka Higotarō, ‘Kūshūtoki ni okeru yuketsu taisaku no kenkyū’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 1089, 1943, p. 5; Tsuzuki Masao, ‘Senjika Doitsu ni okeru gekagaku’, Ikai shūhō, no. 303, 1940, p. 8.
63 Wayne Soon, Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020), pp. 95–124.
64 Hosomi Ken, ‘Senshō geka no hattatsu’, Kagaku chishiki, vol. 19, no. 7, 1939, p. 82.
65 Nakayama Kōmei, ‘Yuketsu no fukusayō narabi ni sono kiken ni taisuru kyūkyū shochi’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 909, 1940, pp. 45–46.
66 Hosomi, ‘Senshō geka no hattatsu’, p. 82; Ibuka Kenji, ‘Kan’i yuketsuhō’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 909, 1940, p. 19; Idezuki Saburō, ‘Kansōketsu yuketsu’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 909, 1940, pp. 22–23; Ikeda Naeo, ‘Igata jinketsueki oyobi jūketsueki o motte seru yuketsu rei ni tsuite’, Hokuetsu igakkai zasshi, vol. 55, no. 8, 1940, pp. 626–630.
67 Azuma Yōichi, ‘Yuketsu’, Geka, vol. 6, no. 7, 1942, p. 17.
68 One might refer to a post-war example when in the 1960s the US Department of Defense was involved in clinical tests in which patients with advanced cancer were used as proxies for soldiers to study the effects of radiation. See Gerald Kutcher, Contested Medicine: Cancer Research and the Military (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
69 See Sakurada Gishichi, ‘Jinketsuekigata kessei ni yoru yagi kekkyū gyōshū hannō ni tsuite’, Part 1, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 447, 1931, pp. 7–13.
70 Since 1928, the Army Medical College had been using rabbit blood to mass produce artificial serum for the vaccination of soldiers which were distributed to various medical units sent to the conflict in northern China. See Haneyama Yoshio, ‘Shindan’yō men’eki yagi kessei ni tsuite’, KZ, vol. 23, no. 4, 1934, p. 129; Terashi Yoshinobu, ‘Sensō to igaku’, Kagaku chishiki, vol. 19, no. 7, 1939, p. 70.
71 See Izaki Rokurō and Wu Zhaotang, ‘Kesshō yuketsu ni kansuru gaikoku bunken shōroku narabi ni sono rinshō ōyō seiseki’, KZ, vol. 33, no. 8, 1944, p. 13; ‘New and Nonofficial Remedies’, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 116, no. 19, 1941, p. 2167.
72 See Hashizume Megumi, Senjin igaku (Tokyo: Bunshodō, 1943), pp. 282–290; Hosomi, ‘Senshō geka no hattatsu’, p. 82; Ikeda, ‘Igata jinketsueki’, pp. 626–630; Ikeda Naeo, ‘Jūketsu (uma) yuketsu no rinshōteki kansatsu’, Igaku to seibutsugaku: Sokuhō gakujutsu zasshi, vol. 5, no. 2, 1944, p. 47; Ikeda Naeo, ‘Umakessei narabi ni hito hyōjun kessei o mottesuru uma kekkyū fuyūeki narabi ni umaketsukei no gyōshū hannō ni tsuite’, Igaku to seibutsugaku: Sokuhō gakujutsu zasshi, vol. 5, no. 2, 1944, pp. 43–46; Saitō Tsutomu, ‘Ishuketsu yuketsu ni tsuite’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 909, 1940, pp. 37–39; Shinoi Kingo, ‘Senjin igaku to hozonketsu yuketsu’, Kagaku pen, vol. 4, no. 12, 1939, p. 12.
73 Azuma Yōichi, ‘Waga kuni yuketsu kenkyū no sūsei’, Iji kōron, no. 1314, 1937, p. 41.
74 Blood transfusions using goat, dog, and rabbit blood were also conducted and reportedly had no severe side effects among the human recipients. See Kiguchi Naoji, Tominaga Yoshinobu and Funakoshi Kinjiro, ‘Klinische Beobachtungen der Transfusion heterogenen Blutes’, Kyōto furitsu ika daigaku zasshi, vol. 21, no. 2, 1937, pp. 843–848.
75 On Yudin’s first published work on cadaver blood transfusion, see Serge Judine, La transfusion du sang de cadavre a l’homme (Paris: Masson et Cie, 1933). See also S. S. Yudin, ‘Transfusion of Cadaver Blood’, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 106, no. 12, 1936, pp. 997–999; S. S. Yudin, ‘Transfusion of Stored Cadaver Blood—Practical Considerations: The First Thousand Cases’, Lancet, vol. 230, no. 5946, 1937, pp. 361–366.
76 See Dodo Yoshio, ‘Soren ni oite shitai o riyōshite okonau yuketsu ryōhō no jikkyō ni tsuite’, Part 1, Geibi iji, vol. 41, no. 2, 1936, pp. 3–6; and Dodo Yoshio, ‘Soren ni oite shitai o riyōshite okonau yuketsu ryōhō no jikkyō ni tsuite’, Part 2, Geibi iji, vol. 41, no. 3, 1936, pp. 29–31.
77 See the three-part article in Nihon iji shinpō by Hattori Yajirō, ‘Hozonseru shisha ketsueki no yuketsu’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 785, 1937, pp. 3–6; no. 786, 1937, pp. 9–11; and no. 787, 1937, pp. 12–17.
78 The following details are taken from Nishimura Toshio and Sakakibara Shigeru, ‘Hinshi no senshōsha no shitai yori etaru ketsueki o yuketsu shitaru ichirei’, GZ, no. 307, 1939, pp. 1443–1446.
79 Ibid., p. 1445.
80 Azuma, ‘Yuketsu’, p. 4; Hattori Yajirō, ‘Shisha hozon ketsueki no yuketsu’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 909, 1940, p. 24.
81 See also Takeda Yoshiaki, Nisshin chiryō sōsho. Vol. 11: Senshō igaku (Osaka: Nisshin chiryōsha, 1941).
82 Hattori, ‘Shisha hozon ketsueki no yuketsu’, p. 35.
83 Dodo, ‘Soren ni oite shitai o riyōshite okonau yuketsu ryōhō no jikkyō ni tsuite’, Part 2, p. 31.
84 See Furuhata Tanemoto, ‘Kūshū to yuketsu’, Iji kōron, no. 1615, 1943, pp. 8–19; ‘Chi iroiro hanashi’, Kingu, vol. 16, no. 12, 1940, pp. 29–32; Kiguchi Naoji, ‘Ōyō yuketsuhō to wa ikanaru mono ka’, Kagakujin, vol. 1, no. 9, 1941, pp. 90–94; Nakata Mizuho, ‘Daiyō ketsueki ni tsuite’, Ikai shūhō, no. 351, 1941, pp. 15–16; Okunaga Tarō, ‘Yuketsu to sono jisshi mokuteki’, Iji kōron, no. 1314, 1937, pp. 4–5.
85 Glenn Ramsey and Paul J. Schmidt, ‘Transfusion Medicine in Chicago, Before and After the “Blood Bank”’, Transfusion Medicine Reviews, vol. 23, no. 4, 2009, pp. 314–315.
86 Azuma, ‘Waga kuni yuketsu kenkyū no sūsei’, p. 41.
87 Takemura Bunshō, Kindaisen to igaku (Tokyo: Sengabō, 1942), pp. 96–97.
88 Shiga Tatsuo, Ketsuekigata to yuketsu (Tokyo: Kokumin fukyūkai, 1943), pp. 108–109.
89 Azuma, ‘Yuketsu’, p. 4.
90 Kishioka Kazuyoshi, ‘Bōchishi oyobi yukessei ni tsuite’, GZ, no. 301, 1938, p. 590.
91 From 1932 to 1934, Kiguchi conducted tests on 217 rabbits before progressing to human subjects. In his dissertation, Kiguchi reported that among the 49 human patients, only eight experienced minor side effects, such as headaches and skin rashes. Following the transfusions, all patients exhibited stable metrics across blood pressure, blood cell count, and haemoglobin levels, with no observable decline in their overall condition. Additionally, their red blood cell counts returned to normal within 24 hours. The following details were taken from Kiguchi Naoji, ‘Hozonketsu yuketsu no kenkyū’, Kyōto furitsu ika daigaku zasshi, vol. 13, no. 4, 1935, pp. 1097–1185.
92 Idezuki, ‘Kansōketsu yuketsu’, p. 22; Kiguchi, ‘Ōyō yuketsuhō’, p. 92; Kiguchi Naoji, ‘Kessenka no yuketsu mondai’, Kagaku chishiki, vol. 24, no. 7, 1944, p. 25; Kiguchi Naoji, ‘Kansō ketsueki o megurite’, Kyōto furitsu ika daigaku zasshi, vol. 39, no. 1, 1943, pp. 522–524.
93 Azuma Yōichi and Lee Sukyo, ‘Hozonketsu yuketsu no keiken’, Iji kōron, no. 1369, 1938, p. 6.
94 Ikeda Naeo, ‘Hozon ketsueki ni kansuru kenkyū’, Igaku to seibutsugaku: Sokuhō gakujutsu zasshi, vol. 5, no. 2, 1944, pp. 48–50.
95 Naitō Ryōichi and Watanabe Masao, ‘Tōketsu kansōhō ni yoru jinkekkei shindan’yō kansō hyōjun kessei no seizō’, Rikugun gun’i gakkō bōeki kenkyū hōkoku, vol. 2, no. 5, 1939, pp. 1–3.
96 ‘Hozon ni kōka ni teki Bei o shinogu’, Ōsaka mainichi shinbun, 11 June 1944, p. 3.
97 Azuma Yōichi, ‘Sensō to hozon yuketsu’, Shūkan ikai tenbō, no. 221, 1939, pp. 6–7.
98 Angela N. H. Creager, ‘Producing Molecular Therapeutics from Human Blood: Edwin Cohn’s Wartime Enterprise’, in Molecularizing Biology and Medicine: New Practices and Alliances, 1920s to 1970s, (eds) Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga (London: Taylor and Francis, 1998), pp. 99–128.
99 Furuhata, ‘Kūshū to yuketsu’, p. 10.
100 Hosomi Ken, ‘Senjō ni okeru yuketsu’, Nihon iji shinpō, no. 909, 1940, p. 21; Shinoi, ‘Senjin igaku’, p. 12.
101 Azuma, ‘Yuketsu’, p. 12; Azuma Yōichi, ‘Kansōketsu no shiyō kachi Kiguchi hakase no hanbakubun ni taishite’, Geka, vol. 6, no. 11, 1942, p. 9.
102 Kiguchi Naoji, ‘Futatabi kansō ketsueki no shiyōteki kachi—Azuma kyōju no “Yuketsu” o yomite’, Geka, vol. 6, no. 12, 1942, p. 5; Kiguchi Naoji, ‘Kansō ketsueki no shiyōteki kachi—Azuma kyōju no ‘Yuketsu’ o yomite’, Geka, vol. 6, no. 9, 1942, p. 9.
103 Kiguchi, ‘Kessenka no yuketsu mondai’, p. 26.
104 Idezuki, ‘Kansōketsu yuketsu’, p. 22.
105 For a balanced viewpoint on the resource deficiency discourse, see Eric Gordon Dinmore, ‘A Small Island Nation Poor in Resources: Natural and Human Resource Anxieties in Trans-World War II Japan’, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2006; Yasuba Yasukichi, ‘Did Japan Ever Suffer from a Shortage of Natural Resources Before World War II?’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 56, no. 3, 1996, pp. 543–560.
106 Soon, Global Medicine in China, pp. 112–114.
107 ‘“Tekikoku no yuketsu” ni tsuite’, Iji kōron, no. 1646, 1944, p. 35.
108 The discoveries were mentioned in Furuhata, ‘Kūshū to yuketsu’, p. 10; Kiguchi, ‘Kessenka no yuketsu mondai’, p. 27. During the exchange that took place at Mormugao, British India, on 16 October 1942, Japanese on board the enemy cruise ship M. S. Gripsholm revealed that the ship was carrying relief supplies of blood plasma for the civilian detainees. See Bruce Elleman, Japanese-American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941–45 (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 92.
109 Iijima Hiroshi, Akai kōzu: Chi no sekai (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1960), pp. 161–162; Katō Katsuji, Yuketsugaku (Tokyo: Nanzandō, 1951), p. 12; Murakami Shozō and Tokunaga Eiichi, Yuketsu no jissai (Tokyo: Chūgai igakusha, 1962), p. 7.
110 Harrison, ‘Medicine and the Management of Modern Warfare’, pp. 1–27.
111 Lee Jong-Chan, ‘Hygienic Governance and Military Hygiene in the Making of Imperial Japan, 1868–1912’, Historia Scientiarum, vol. 18, no. 1, 2008, p. 6.
112 Douglas P. Starr, Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 115.