Yeah Japan had civil wars that killed a lot of people,
but do you know what killed even more people?
Disease.
And the number one disease, the one that all other diseases looked up to, was smallpox.
Let’s walk through Japan’s history and see how smallpox grew into a disease that
infected everyone in Japan.
Oh hey if you want one of these stickers, STICK around until the end.
Smallpox was the human race’s deadliest killer before we eradicated it with vaccination.
Even Egyptian mummies have scars that look like smallpox.
Japan was no different.
They called it the smallpox demon.
When the disease entered Japan, it devastated the country.
Don’t look at pictures of smallpox victims, by the way.
You’ll regret it.
There may be evidence of smallpox as early as the year 538 or 552, in the Asuka Period,
when people from the Korea Peninsula came over and said,
“Hey, have you guys heard of this thing called Buddhism?
Here are some free samples.”
And the Emperor was like,
“Ooh, that’s neat, let me think about it.”
Soon after, a nasty epidemic rocked Japan.
Hmm...coincidence?
Some people didn’t think so, and yelled,
“Omg! Our native gods are punishing us!
They don’t want us to follow those Buddhist gods!”
I have a video about this Buddhism Battle, if you wanna see what happened next.
So this could’ve been a case where the Koreans sold Buddhism and smallpox to Japan,
it’s the upsell that gets ya.
But that’s all just speculation, we don’t know for sure if it was smallpox.
The first recorded case of a smallpox epidemic happened in 735, in the Nara Period,
and lasted until 737.
It started in Dazaifu, a foreign sea port.
Supposedly a Japanese fisherman returned from the Korean Peninsula carrying a smallpox souvenir
in his body.
Death swept through Japan, killing 25 to 35 percent of the population.
For comparison, the Great Bubonic Plague in Europe killed 30 to 60 percent.
The disease had found a land that had never suffered smallpox before and it went crazy.
It didn’t care if you were rich or poor, peasant or noble, it killed you just the same.
So many people dying in such a short amount of time ruined, um, everything.
There was political turmoil.
The Fujiwara clan was rising in power.
Four Fujiwara brothers had started the four great Fujiwara houses.
Things were looking good, then all four brothers were smallpoxed and died.
It put a brake on their plans for world domination.
Don’t worry though, in the Heian Period, they would get that power back by famously
marrying their daughters into the Imperial Family,
allowing them control over the Heian court for 200 years.
People abandoned their farms and villages trying to get away.
The Nara court tried to convince people to stay in their rice farms.
They stopped collecting taxes for a while, and tried to punish people who left their
fields, but it was a lost cause.
The lack of farmers helped cause a disastrous famine.
And remember, the Japanese used rice as currency, whoops, the economy tanked.
The court had to stop building the capital, and it was even one of the reasons they got
rid of the national army.
Getting rid of the army was a key ingredient in the stew
that would give rise to the warrior class.
So as bad as smallpox was, it does get a little bit of credit for making the samurai happen.
Thank you, smallpox.
After that, like the number of times you visit your parents,
smallpox epidemics kept visiting every few decades.
But unlike you, the outbreaks became more frequent over time.
And a lot of times, it started in Kyushu, home of the Dazaifu port.
So it seems that early in Japanese history, smallpox kept coming in from outside the country.
Smallpox and other diseases may have been the reason why the population stayed the same
before the year 1000.
But over the Heian Period and later, evolution worked its magic
and the disease’s impact changed.
Smallpox epidemics became less severe as people became more resistant.
It slowly turned into a disease of children.
By the Edo Period, smallpox was endemic for most of Japan, meaning it was always circulating
around the population, never dying.
Like chickenpox, and that damn Pepe meme.
People had learned to live with smallpox.
Though it was still a significant cause of death,
it was no longer the mass killer it used to be.
Smallpox became a children’s disease, and even if you didn’t die,
you were probably scarred or disfigured for life.
95% of people who died from smallpox were children under 10,
and 10% of children’s deaths were due to this disease.
It was so common that smallpox became a normal part of childhood.
They even had a ritual for kids who recovered where they invited friends and family over
for a Smallpox Mitzva.
Quincea-smallpox?
In many places, outbreaks were pretty regular.
In cities like Edo, it was always lurking.
But some smart people looked at data from this one region and found that smallpox epidemics
hit that region about every 3 to 4 years.
That means people were able to predict when an outbreak would happen
and use it for family planning.
“Honey, let’s wait until smallpox year.
If Junior dies, then we’ll try for another kid.”
People came up with ways to fight the disease, mostly superstitious remedies because they
didn’t know about the germ theory of disease.
They subscribed to the yokai theory of disease.
They thought it was caused by a yokai:
the smallpox demon.
Yep, there was a smallpox yokai, and if it possessed your body, you got sick.
Now there wasn’t a national program to fight the smallpox demon because by the Edo Period,
the epidemics no longer became a national issue.
Smallpox didn’t sweep through the nation like it did before.
And since it only affected children, it didn’t disrupt farming or the economy
or other adult hobbies.
The central government basically told local communities,
“You’re on your own.”
So local communities tried to control the disease themselves, and different places dealt
with it in a million different ways.
One fun way was to have a little party for the smallpox demon.
Offer it some food, play some music, do some dancing.
They would dance their way out of the village, sending the demon away.
Did it work?
Nope, they probably just infected more victims.
People also exposed their kids to smallpox like some people do today for chickenpox,
thinking that getting it as children was better than getting it as adults,
which I don’t think is true…
One very effective remedy was to write “Smallpox bad” in the comment section.
It really works.
Other very effective anti-smallpox cures included pilgrimages to temples and shrines,
religious rituals, potions, spells, and the color red.
Maybe I’ll do a video about those things later.
Now there were places in Japan where the disease was not endemic, remote places and small islands
away from the more populated regions.
Smallpox didn’t hit these places as often, or at all.
You would think that was a good thing.
It wasn’t.
Things were different when the smallpox demon visited these places.
You see, it wasn’t a disease of children because it liked to infect children.
It would happily infect adults, but most adults already had it as children and became immune.
You couldn’t get it a second time.
The fact that everyone got it as children
meant that smallpox was super common and infectious,
and it would get into your body within a few years.
Most of the living adults were the ones who survived childhood.
Except for the adults in these remote communities.
The disease ravaged these places whenever it came, killing old and young alike,
similar to what happened long ago when Japan was still a smallpox virgin.
They didn’t know how to handle it.
They would do things that the rest of Japan called barbaric.
They quarantined the sick.
They broke up families and sent the sick away from the village or to villages that already
had outbreaks.
People ran into the mountains to live.
They said, “Let’s save the community by abandoning the sick”
instead of “Let’s work with the community to manage this disease.”
Luckily, when Japan entered the modern era,
the smallpox demon finally faced a fight it couldn’t win.
In 1796, Edward Jenner, one of the biggest heroes of the human race,
decided it would be fun to make a little cut on the arm of an 8-year-old boy,
take the pus from a woman with cowpox,
and jam it into the cut.
Two months later, he tried giving the boy smallpox by using the same method,
but the boy had become immune.
Jenner called it vaccination, after the Latin word for cow, vacca.
Dubious morality aside, Jenner’s research paved the way for the eradication of humankind’s
number one killer.
In 1849, a Dutch ship brought the smallpox vaccine to Japan
and they did the first successful vaccinations.
At first, people were against it.
They called it weird magic.
Some people thought it would turn you into a cow, which is crazy.
The only thing that turns you into a cow is eating a bag of chips everyday like I’ve
been doing while in quarantine.
If you believed in the yokai theory of disease,
it was hard to understand how vaccinations would help.
So there were pro-vaccination publicity campaigns to ease people’s fears.
Some campaigns said that the idea of a smallpox demon was crazy, so don’t believe it and
get that shot.
Others tried to convince people that the vaccination needle chased away the smallpox demon.
Hey, whatever works.
It was only when the Meiji government took over that they made it a national program.
They forced people and newborn babies to vaccinate.
If a person refused, they charged that person with a fine.
If a newborn baby refused, they took away its lollipop.
So thanks to vaccination, the mass-murdering smallpox demon was brought to justice.
And do you know what would constitute another grave injustice?
If you didn’t get these freaking stickers.
That’s right, I have a special offer where you can get one of these sticker sets,
there are three stickers each.
Just sign up for at least $5 a month on my Patreon.
Offer ends on April 30th, that’s 2 weeks from now.
I don’t sell these anywhere okay, this is the only way you can get them.
I probably won’t run out of stickers, but I could run out of the design that you want,
so act quick.
You’ll get a sticker and you’ll get to help the channel survive a pandemic.
It’s a great thing to put on your resume, employers will love it.
Hey, want more smallpox videos, you smallpox lover?
They may or may not be here, give it a few weeks.
We have a new emperor this week, Christine Wilson.
You are amazing Christine.
We also have two new patrons, mellowfishie the cutest fishie, and Christina Begley.
Thank you so much you guys.
Alright, much love, and spread the knowledge!