Rare Antique Print-JAPANESE PAMPHLET-CHOLERA OUTBREAK-TREATMENT-Anonymous-c.1850

Japanese language characters dealing with ‘Cholera disease prevention information: Sanitary hall version’. – This Japanese woodcut print is a leaflet about the cholera outbreaks that struck Japan in the nineteenth century, as the nation was struggling to modernize, and the measures taken against them, we see a man pointing with a stick to people who died while holding a large botlle in the other arm, explanation in Japanese what to do to prevent the desease. The severe diarrhea and vomiting it caused resulted in death by dehydration. Cholera arrived in Japan in 1822, and is thought to have traveled from China via the Ryukyu islands to Kyushu. It then crossed to Honsh?, killing large numbers of people in western Japan, but failed to reach as far as Edo (now Tokyo). It was not until 1858 that Edo?at that time one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of over 1 million?faced a cholera outbreak. The ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige is thought to have been among the people who died.