The period before World War II is the first important period for psychoanalysis in Japan.
Kiyoyasu Marui went to the United States in 1919 to study with Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins University. Witnessing the influence of psychoanalysis on American psychiatry, he hoped to introduce psychoanalysis to the Japanese. After returning to Japan, he began teaching at the University of Tohoku in Sendai (in northeastern Japan). Psychoanalysis became the focus of his medical school lectures on psychiatry. In 1933, Marui visited Freud in Vienna and received approval for establishing a Sendai Branch of the IPA.
Heisaku Kosawa, a student of the Tohoku School, left Japan to study at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute from 1932 to 1933. He received training analysis from Richard Sterba, and individual supervision on psychotherapy from Paul Federn. While in Vienna, furthermore, Kosawa visited Freud at this home at Bergasse 19 and interviewed him directly. He presented Freud with a paper explaining his theory of the Ajase complex, which he contrasted with Freud's Oedipus complex. Unfortunately, Freud does not appear to have evinced great interest in Kosawa's thesis. After returning to Japan in 1933, Heisaku Kosawa opened a private clinic in Tokyo. Here he began practicing psychoanalytic therapy as it was known in Europe and the United States.
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Japan became an ally of Nazi Germany, which regarded psychoanalysis as a dangerous, Jewish system of thought. Kosawa came under constant surveillance from the special police. Nevertheless, he continued to conduct a private practice throughout the war.
The end of World War II brought an influx of learning and culture from the United States, which greatly influenced all aspects of Japanese society including the field of psychiatry. It created a generation of young psychiatrists who sought to study the model of American dynamic psychiatry. They chose to receive training analysis and individual supervision from Kosawa. This group of psychiatrists who studied under him became the second generation of Japanese psychoanalysts, known as the Kosawa School. Some leading members included Takeo Doi, Masahisa Nishizono, and Keigo Okonogi.
After the death of Kiyoyasu Marui in 1953, Kosawa changed the name of the Sendai Branch to the Japan Branch which is known internationally as the Japan Psychoanalytic Society. Psychiatrists who received training analysis from Kosawa between 1950 and 1960 represent its core members.
In 1969, following the death of Heisaku Kosawa, Michio Yamamura succeeded to the presidency of the Japan Psychoanalytic Society. The period 1960-1970 also witnessed the return of several Japanese psychiatrists from clinical work abroad. Boosted by the participation of these third-generation psychiatrists, psychoanalysis gradually gained importance in Japan, and became a major influence in the field of clinical psychiatry. From the 1950s to the 1960s, Japanese psychoanalysis was greatly influenced by psychoanalysis in the United States, especially ego psychology (Heinz Hartmann, Anna Freud, Paul Federn, Erik Erikson). In terms of clinical practice, it was during the period from 1960 to 1970 that the diagnosis and psychotherapy of borderline cases, as well as classic psychoanalytic therapy, began to attract keen attention.
During the 1980s, Japanese translations appeared for most of the essential works of object relations and Kleinian theorists. From 1980 onwards, a growing number of psychoanalysts from overseas, particularly from the United States, began to visit Japan. Leading American psychoanalysts such as Otto Kernberg and Arnold Cooper conducted the first international seminar in Tokyo, on borderline cases and narcissism. Numerous psychoanalysts from other countries followed, resulting in a dramatic increase in the number of seminars and lectures held in Japan. Leading IPA analysts, including former IPA presidents Robert Wallerstein, Serge Lebovici, and Joseph Sandler, came to Japan on various occasions to give lectures and organize seminars. As representative of IPA's Asian Committee, Ramon Ganzarain and Elizabeth Bianchedi, meanwhile, visited Japan numerous times to conduct lectures and supervisions, and Serge Lebovici, Robert Emde, Joy Osofsky, and Peter Fonagy came for the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH) Regional Meeting Tokyo.
In 1995, the Japan Psychoanalytic Society established new regulations in line with the education and training criteria set forth by the IPA. It also plans to increase the number of training analysts, and to implement training analyses in accordance with international standards, Along with the implementation of these new regulations, the Society has begun making efforts to establish a psychoanalytic institute covering all of Japan.
Japanese psychiatrists' and psychologists' study of psychoanalytic thought generated an encounter between Western and Japanese culture. Indigenous Japanese patterns of thought merged with the imported theory of psychoanalysis, paving the way for such theories as those of amae (Tako Doi), the Ajase complex (Heisaku Kosawa, Keigo Okonogi), and the prohibition of "Don't look" (O. Kitayama). These theories aid in understanding the mentality not only of the Japanese, but also of people from other cultures; they furthermore promise to contribute greatly to psychoanalytical understanding itself. Japanese psychoanalysts strive to continue making significant theoretical contributions to the international community.
You might want to try to track down this article too: Geoffrey H. Blowers, "Freud's 'Deshi': The Coming of Pyschoanalysis to Japan," _Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences_ 33.2 (December 1998): 115-126.
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