ABSTRACT
If modern nursing developed from women’s raised consciousness in which activity for social and health improvement were significant concerns, the development of public health nursing in Japan provided Japanese women with the opportunity to be involved in such work. If nursing professionalism in the West emerged as the result of the knowledge and skills which women accumulated through their work for society, Japanese nurses could have expected their involvement in public health nursing to develop the capacity for leadership and a stronger, more autonomous professionalism. However, public health nursing in Japan’s inter-war national public health projects tended to deprive nurses of such golden opportunities. The Rockefeller Foundation’s co-operation was in the 1920s developing into a large-scale project to promote Japan’s nationwide public health provision by establishing in association with the Japanese government a National Institute of Public Health. Inevitably, the government’s views of ‘public health’ increasingly determined the structure of public health provision and the location of nurses within it. The government’s approval, co-operation, and leadership were necessary to develop any social movement; government-led public health projects encouraged nurses to be involved in the national business, but determined the extent and form of their involvement.
