Abstract: This paper analyzes the public health activities conducted by the Healthcare Association for Women in Shin-Yoshiwara, a group of brothel prostitutes, in 1950s Tokyo as recorded in their newspaper Fujin shimpū . It examines how and why these women collectively advertised their public health activities, such as venereal disease testing, both inside and outside their community. They presented themselves as women who pursued modern medical knowledge, employed measures against infections, and contributed to the Japanese population's health. This paper challenges two scholarly tendencies: first, to focus on prostitutes as reluctant followers of state-sponsored public health campaigns and, second, to see the prostitutes as more concerned with social stigma than with public health. It argues that not only were the women involved actively interested in improving their own and public health, but also that in the immediate postwar era, public health was as much a bottom-up process as it was top-down. In addition, this paper highlights the women's strategic adoption of state policies and organizing principles other than sex work.
Aoi Saito (Thu,) studied this question.