32 Epidemics and Pandemics

prolonged cycle of underpopulation and lagging economic growth, a cycle that

persisted until the thirteenth century. More immediately, it may have played a
role in the new emphasis placed on Buddhism by the emperor who ruled Japan
at the time, Shōmu.

BACKGROUND
Its island position isolated Japan from the constant pressure of disease contacts
with neighbors. So while Japan had suffered earlier epidemics, including likely
smallpox visitations, a generation or two might separate one epidemic from the
next. Each new epidemic therefore attacked a population that mostly lacked
immunity from any previous exposure, so its mortality might be unusually
high. Two further circumstances contributed to the severity of the epidemic of
735–737. Japan’s population had apparently grown rapidly earlier in the eighth
century; as the density of rural settlement increased, so too did the opportuni-
ties for the spread of an airborne disease such as smallpox. And the years imme-
diately preceding the epidemic had been ones of widespread harvest failure; the
Japanese population may have been poorly nourished in 735.
The Japanese political situation in the early eighth century helps explain
the relative wealth of information we have about this epidemic. In response to
the advance of the Chinese T’ang Empire, and the victory of anti-Japanese
forces in Korean states, the Japanese government attempted to strengthen its
central control of the country. That involved adopting government practices
used by the Chinese, including the careful collection of population, tax, and
land-holding records. The results were unusually (for the time) complete sets of
demographic data.

HOW IT WAS UNDERSTOOD AT THE TIME

The epidemic was generally understood as punishment sent by gods, either the
traditional Shinto gods angered by the spread of Buddhist beliefs and images, or
Buddhist gods reacting to Shinto-inspired attacks on such images.
An order by the government’s Council of State in 737 thoroughly describes
the appearance and course of the disease. In doing so, it is very much in the tra-
dition of contemporary Chinese medical systems and beliefs. Sufferers of the
epidemic displayed red swellings and blotches on the skin, fever, thirst, and di-
arrhea with black or bloody stools.