The Centenary of the Japanese Dermatological Association

Accessible online at: www.karger.com/journals/drm Japan was the first country outside the Euro-American sphere which implanted the teachings and techniques of the famous schools of dermatology of 19th century Europe onto her own soil. Kentaro Murata (1862–1892) had been in Europe before his short-lived professorship (1890–1892). After his untimely demise, Keizo Dohi (Ishiwata) (1866–1931) trained first under Kaposi in Vienna and thereafter completed his education in other prestigious continental centers. He became the father of modern dermatology in Japan, figurehead of the discipline in East Asia and founder of the Dermatology Society of Japan as it was called at the beginning. The Dohi Atlas (1903–1910) [1] and his textbook [2], which saw three editions already before World War I (1910, 1911, 1914, and the moulages produced in Tokyo by Dohi and his pupils in the best tradition of Jules Baretta in Paris and Carl Henning in Vienna (where Dohi learned the technique) are proof of this European heritage and roots. The Dohi Memorial Lectureship established in 1957, in Tokyo, is intended to perpetuate the memory of the master, Stephan Rothman was the first Dohi Lecturer in 1958. The foundation of the Dermatology Society of Japan (today the Japanese Dermatological Association, JDA) was prepared by some 50 dermatologists assembled by Keizo Dohi on December 15, 1900, at the Ueno Seiyoken restaurant in Tokyo. On February 3, 1901, the first regular meeting of the society was held at the lecture room of Legal Medicine at the University of Tokyo, and on April 8–9, 1901, the first congress took place in Tokyo [3]. The latter date may be seen as the beginning of the scientific activity of the society and will be marked these days with a centennial ceremony and meeting in Tokyo. Fig. 1. By an irony of history, the original lecture hall of the HebraKaposi department of dermatology at the Old Vienna General Hospital (background) is occupied today by the Department of Japanology of Vienna University, and a traditional Japanese stone garden is right before the entrance (foreground). ‘Und in Wien lebt Dohis Andenken weiter, an der Stelle seines ersten Wirkens.’