Smallpox Epidemic in Japan, 735–737 33

RESPONSES
The Japanese government reacted to the epidemic on three levels. First, it at-
tempted to provide care for the sick, sending medicines (probably herbal remedies
based on Chinese beliefs) to communities stricken by the disease. Second, it of-
fered assistance to entire communities, allowing exemptions from some forms of
taxation, and eventually ordering a grain dole sent to afflicted provinces. (The
grain dole was an especially serious step, one taken only in grave emergencies.) At
the end of 735 the government also extended a general amnesty to the entire pop-
ulation, a traditional Confucian response to trouble. Third, the state addressed
the underlying religious causes of the epidemic. Prayers were ordered, provincial
governors were commanded to perform propitiatory rites, Buddhist monks read
sacred texts, and the ruler, Shomu, showed signs of greater Buddhist devotion. By
748 a colossal statue of the Buddha had been erected in the capital, Nara.
More immediate medical responses to the sickness included wrapping pa-
tients in hemp or silk, keeping them warm, restraining their movements, and
compelling them to eat.

UNRESOLVED HISTORICAL ISSUES

This epidemic is unusually well documented, so that most of the unresolved is-
sues concern its role in larger trends in Japanese history. W. W. Farris, a careful
modern student of the epidemic, used it to support an interpretation of the
growth (or lack thereof) of the medieval Japanese economy. He argued that the
735–737 catastrophe critically lowered the Japanese population and that subse-
quent epidemics repeatedly throttled any long-term demographic recovery. The
sparse Japanese population was caught in a cycle in which abandoned land, dis-
persed settlements, and poor technology all meant continuing underdevelop-
ment, which in turn discouraged population growth. According to Farris this
cycle of poverty was only broken when smallpox finally became endemic in the
thirteenth century, which broke the epidemic cycle of attacks on an unexposed
population. If this interpretation is correct, the smallpox epidemic of 735–737
assumes an important role in the history of medieval Japan.

REFERENCE
Farris, William Wayne. 1985. Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.