Papers presented by Han Zhang since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

"Pharmaceutical Nationalism: The Pharmaceutical Industry in Wartime Japan, 1937-1945"

Abstract:

In November 2022, Japanese headlines were taken up by the promise of a ‘miracle cure’ – ensitrelvir (known in Japan as Xocova®) – the nation's first domestically developed COVID-19 drug. Produced by one of the homegrown pharmaceutical giants in Japan, Shionogi, Xocova promptly received emergency approval and has since been hailed by mass media as a game-changer, despite ambiguity in clinical evidence. This wave of patriotic enthusiasm was reminiscent of past off-label use of COVID-19 drugs, such as FUJIFILM’s favipiravir and Kowa’s ivermectin, which enjoyed media and governmental endorsement before the publication of clinical trial data. The Xocova fervor echoes a pattern in the modern history of Japan: the interplay between nationalism and pharmaceutical development, production, and marketing. Through the lens of ‘pharmaceutical nationalism’, this paper examines how the nationalistic rhetoric of expansionism, militarism, and ethnocentrism shaped the Japanese pharmaceutical industry from the Second Sino-Japanese War through the Pacific War. It argues that during these tumultuous years, the pharmaceutical industry in Japan underwent a nationalistic transformation through operational expansion to the colonies, prioritization of military medical supplies, and the creation of a patriotic consumer culture. By drawing on corporate history books of preeminent players in the industry (e.g., Shionogi, Takeda, Taishō, Hoshi), drug advertisements, and military reports, this paper presents a historiographical dialogue between business history and military history in modern Japan, with pharmaceutical products serving as a tangible medium.

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