Nurses in Japan,日本における看護婦

Nurses in Japan

The history of the nurse in Japan began in the nineteenth century with the emergence of the Englishwoman Florence Nightingale, whose nursing of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War made her a pioneer of women’s participation in modern medical care. Unlike physicians and midwives, whose professions had existed since the seventeenth century, nursing was a new occupation of the modern era.
Accordingly, while a system of licensing physicians and midwives were established during the nineteenth century, regulation of nurses lagged behind. A formal qualification system was finally introduced through the Nursing Regulations of 1915. Likewise, the first organized program for training nurses in Japan, established in 1889, was founded not by a government institution but by the Japanese Red Cross Society, a private organization.
During the nineteenth century, nursing was regarded primarily as a profession for women, with few male nurses. Consequently, the term for nurse, kangofu remained in use for many years rather than the genderneutral term kangoshi. Following the 2001 revision of the law, the title of the Public Health Nurses,Midwives, and Nurses Act was changed in Japanese from hokenfu josanpu kangofu ho to hokenshi josanshi kangoshi ho, replacing the feminine term “kangofu” with the gender-neutral term “kangoshi”.

Translator’s note: 婦 (fu) means “wife” or “woman” and 師 (shi) means “instructor” or “specialist”.