Ryusai Kuwata

1811 (age 57)

Shibata, Niigata, Japan

Ryusai Kuwata started practicing medicine as a pediatrist. He sent occasional notes to the Shogunate on the benefits of vaccination and opening of homes for abandoned children. Later Ryusai Kuwata vaccinated 20 persons as an experiment and noted the reaction. To help popularize vaccination he wrote picture books and waka poetry on the subject. He got his opportunity to demonstrate the good of vaccination when the Shogun sent him to Hokkaido to cope with the small pox epidemic that broke out there in 1857. He set forth with his attendants and a vaccinated child with his mother, whom he used as a conveyor. Within three months he had vaccinated 7,000 people in Hokkaido. It was his ambition to build homes and nurseries for foundlings and abandoned children and vaccinate hundreds of thousands of people, but he died before he could accomplish his ambition. Among his works on vaccination are Gyuto-Hatsumo and Shuto Shinhen.

Ryusai Kuwata