ABSTRACT
The founding philosophy of the ICN was based on women’s raised consciousness in general and feminism in particular. As a matter of course the female international professional body was enormously concerned with issues of the wider public and social responsibilities of nurses. However, the Japanese delegates hardly appeared to share the same degree of concern as their western sisters. Our question hitherto has been whether it was simply due to the difference of languages or the fact that the JRCS almost monopolized nursing leadership and, as an organization, had a particular nationalistic approach to Japanese participation in the ICN. But a larger question would be, what conditions allowed JRC nurses’ dominance? This question will be examined in this chapter by focusing on public health nursing in Japan and on the extent to which it offered the possibility of extending the profession’s national scope and autonomy The role of nursing across a spectrum of public health concerns will be surveyed, but the main focus will be the extension of the nurse’s role beyond hospital care.
