If you are not a lover of literature, many people probably won't have much of an impression of the name Mori Ouwai. He is a representative figure of Japanese 19th-century Romantic literature, and is known as one of the three great literary heroes of modern Japanese literature along with Natsume Soseki and Ryunosuke Wasagawa.
In addition to his status as a writer, Mori ou is actually a medical scientist. From the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War to the Russo-Japanese War, he served as the director of military medical personnel of the Japanese Army and was awarded the rank of lieutenant general, which was equivalent to the "supreme commander" of the Japanese army medical team at that time.
Japanese literary master Mori Yugai
However, under his stubborn orders, more than one-fifth of the Japanese Army suffered from the "beriberi disease" that could have been avoided, which eventually led to the death of nearly 30,000 Japanese troops on the Japanese-Russian battlefield.
This has also become the biggest stain on Mori Ouwai's life, as a literary titan, it has not been vigorously promoted to the world, and there may be a reason for this black history.
Outside of Mori, who is dressed in military uniform
The story begins in 1884.
At the age of 22, Mori Ouwai graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Tokyo Imperial University and was an outstanding graduate. Upon graduation, he was appointed deputy lieutenant of the Army Medical Corps and joined the Tokyo Army Hospital. Two years later, due to his excellent performance, the Army Province gave him the opportunity to study in Germany.
At that time, Germany had already caught up with the rising stars of the old imperialist countries of Britain and France, leading the second scientific and technological revolution in human history. Coupled with its conservative ideology, conservative aristocratic system, and fanatical nationalism, the Japanese ruling class was very envious, so it set off a wave of study in Germany in Japan.
1888: Akage for Japanese students
Just like Mr. Lu Xun, who studied in Japan, abandoned medicine and followed Wen, and Mr. Hu Shi, who studied in the United States, switched from agronomy to philosophy, Mori Ouwai was not a dead medical student in Germany.
During his time in Germany, he was exposed to a large number of Schopenhauer's philosophies, and was also influenced by Hartmann's aesthetic ideas, laying a solid foundation for future literary creation. However, in terms of medicine, Mori Ouwai seems to have abandoned his studies a bit, and it is said that his achievements in medical theory have left only a "diuretic study on beer".
We can also get a glimpse of the "wonderful" of his study abroad career, published by MoriOka after returning to China. The content of the work is the true tragic story of his love affair with a German woman during his study abroad, and this woman is indeed as written in the novel, and after Mori Ou returned to China, she also traveled thousands of miles to Japan, but Mori Ou refused to see him, and finally returned to China sadly.
He wrote a powerful novel, but Mori Ouwai did not abandon the ideological consciousness of the doctor and followed the text.
In 1889, he was promoted to senior military doctor in the army after "returning home from his studies" and was awarded the rank of colonel of the second class. In the following years, he worked as a paddler in Japan, but his actual energy was focused on revitalizing modern Japanese literature.
He founded his own literary magazine and experimented with poetry and fiction. It was not until the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War in 1894, when Mori Ouwai was sent to Manchuria at that time, that he interrupted literary creation and returned to the role of military doctor.
The first issue of the magazine founded by Mori Ouwai
In the thirteen years from 1894 to 1907, Mori Ouwai served as a military doctor in the "Southern Expedition and Northern War", and finally became the director of the Medical Bureau of the Army Province as a student, and was awarded the rank of Military Medical Director (Lieutenant General) of the Army.
At that time, the Japanese army had the advantage in both the Sino-Japanese Naval Battle and the Japanese-Russian battlefield in Manchuria, but there was still a major problem in medical treatment, that is, the "beriberi disease" that had plagued them since the time of the Edo shogunate.
The so-called "beriberi" is not a problem such as foot odor as literally understood, this strange disease will first make the patient feel tired, the footsteps are frivolous, the whole body can not lift the strength, and then their feet will gradually swell, ulcerate, the body unconsciously convulses and vomit, and finally the patient is paralyzed, due to the inability to eat and die.
At first, the disease spread only among the aristocracy, but gradually spread to the army and labor over time.
A patient with beriberi
Moriguchi faces such a thorny problem and advocates the theory that beriberi stems from bacterial infections.
So he strongly recommended the antibacterial "wood distillate pill" developed by the instructor of the Japanese Army Medical School in 1903 as a countermeasure, and during the Russo-Japanese War, he ordered that all army soldiers be assigned 600 pills to carry with them, and about 600 million pills were pinched in one breath.
Because Russia was known in Japan at the time as "Russia," the wood distillate pill was also given the spiritual symbolic name of "Sign Dew Pill." Its mysterious military color also laid the foundation for the later popularization of the Seiromaru.
"Chung Yong Zheng Lu Maru" advertisement in the 1930s
However, after the war, the Japanese Army died about 47,000 people in the Russo-Japanese War, of which 27,800 died of beriberi. It can be said that the dew pill has no effect on the treatment of beriberi.
At the same time, the number of people dying from beriberi on the Navy side is rapidly declining.
At that time, a naval medic named Takagi Kanehiro found through his own observation that the protein intake of Japanese soldiers was extremely low. Therefore, he analyzed that "the lack of protein in the diet is the root cause of beriberi", and then added meat, milk and barley to the Navy diet to improve the diet.
As a result, many naval soldiers escaped the disaster.
Takagi kaneku, known as the "Baron of Wheat Rice"
In fact, later medical scientists discovered that beriberi was caused by a lack of vitamin B1 in the human body.
The Japanese aristocracy appeared in the polished rice milling technology and was one of the first to eat pure white rice with the skin of the rice film crushed off. And because they will fast a lot of meat every autumn and summer, they have a serious lack of vitamin B1 in the body, resulting in beriberi.
The barley that Takagi added to the Navy's diet was mistakenly supplemented with vitamin content, thus solving the problem of beriberi.
The Japanese Navy's attempt to improve the diet to alleviate beriberi was around 1894, and many army doctors wanted to follow up the attempt. However, Mori Ouwai was very stubborn, insisting on advocating the concept that Japan's "Yamato rice food" was not inferior to "foreign food", and strictly prohibited the army troops from providing rice and wheat mixed food without authorization.
Outrageously, in the second year of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, he was transferred to Taiwan. As a result, only polished rice was produced in Taiwan within three months, resulting in the death of more than 2,000 Japanese troops stationed in Taiwan due to beriberi. The helpless Mori Ouwai quickly fled Taiwan, but still insisted on banning rice and wheat mixing, and developed the aforementioned ineffective "dew pill" scheme.
Mori-o-wai Memorial Hall
Due to the literary giants of Mori Ouwai and his many identities as the principal of the Japanese Army Military Medical School, this past was kept secret by those who knew about it for a long time. It was not until the 1980s, more than half a century after his death, that it was gradually unearthed by historians.
Seireuma Maru has also been a very positive character in Japanese history. After the war, it was transformed into a must-have anti-diarrhea intestinal pill at home. In order to respect the hard-won peace, it was announced that it would be renamed "Shoromaru". The most famous "horn brand Ishomaru", the trademark on it is the image of the Japanese army's military trumpet.
Contrary to Mr. Lu Xun's abandonment of medical practice, Sen Ouwai embarked on a path of "medical and cultural cultivation". Ironically, however, Sen Ouwai seems to have verified the correct choice of Mr. Lu Xun from the other side.
The so-called "art has a specialty", perhaps recognizing the field that we are really good at is the most important thing in our limited lives.
Wikipedia:Mori Ōgai, Shoro-Maru, Russo-Japanese War, Thi-2amine
Jian Bai, The Murder of Zhenglu Maru – The Greatest Tragedy of Mori Ouwai's Life, Yoon Chen Culture, March 22, 2017
Kaihang Li, The Yellow Peril theory of the Late Meiji Period in Japan: A Case Study of Tsuyoshi Taguchi and Mori Ouwai, Master's Thesis, Zhejiang Gongshang University, December 2014