ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From the Hypnotic Ball to Breathing Exercises: The Transformation of Hypnotic Techniques in Early-Twentieth-Century Japan

• In Event: Psychological Sciences in East and Southeast Asia, 19th to Mid-20th Centuries

English Abstract

This paper reinterprets the trajectory of hypnosis in early twentieth-century Japan by tracing its transformation from suggestion-based practices to a distinctive repertoire of body-centered techniques. When hypnosis was first introduced in the 1880s, Japanese practitioners largely relied on Western methods, such as the use of the hypnotic ball. With the rise of the Nancy school in Europe, verbal suggestion and the notion of hypnosis as a purely psychological state soon became dominant at the turn of the century. From around 1905, however, scholars such as Fukurai Tomokichi advanced a different model: hypnosis was understood as a psycho-physiological state of ‘cerebral anemia’ as well as concentrated attention, and techniques such as abdominal breathing rapidly displaced suggestion as the primary means of induction. This re-embodiment of hypnosis stemmed both from the challenges faced by contemporary hypnotic practice and from broader concerns with bodily health regimens, including tradition and imported systems of cultivation. By emphasizing breathing and bodily discipline, Japanese hypnosis preserved its therapeutic credibility and provided a foundation for later traditions of psychotherapy and spiritual healing. The Japanese case shows that hypnosis did not merely foreshadow talk-based analysis; rather, it generated an alternative genealogy in which bodily techniques became central to therapeutic modernity. This perspective underscores the importance of a more symmetrical, transnational history of psychotherapy in which the body occupies a vital place alongside the mind.

Author

• Yu-Chuan Wu, Academia Sinica