The Hōsei and Tenpō-period Japanese somnambulism cases in medical writing

Record summary

Japanese medical and miscellany literature of the nineteenth century contains reports of sleepwalking, dream behavior, trance-like illness and unexplained episodes later discussed through imported Dutch medicine or older Buddhist and popular categories. These materials can help compare changing interpretations of altered consciousness across the transition from late Tokugawa to Meiji medicine. The lead requires identifying particular cases in named medical texts or gazetteers rather than treating “Japanese somnambulism” as one event. Terminology, retrospective translation and genre classification remain uncertain.