is a Japanologist and historian of medicine. He is the Reischauer Institute Professor of

Cultural History Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Early life and education

Kuriyama was born in

Marugame is a city located in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 108,541 in 46101 households and a population density of 970 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Marugame is located in north-ce ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. After his family moved for a time to the US, he studied at

Phillips Exeter Academy (not for oneself) la, Finis Origine Pendet (The End Depends Upon the Beginning) gr, Χάριτι Θεοῦ (By the Grace of God) , location = 20 Main Street , city = Exeter, New Hampshire , zipcode ...

. Subsequently, he attended Harvard for all three of his degrees. He earned an A.B. degree from its Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1977 and an A.M. degree in 1978. Afterwards, he received three years of training in acupuncture in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

.. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard's Department of the History of Science in 1986.

Career

Kuriyama has taught at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

(where he was the Chair for its Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA)) in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, Georgia, and the

International Research Center for Japanese Studies The , or Nichibunken (日文研), is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the Natio ...

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

. He authored ''The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine'' (1999), a study of the different views of health and medicine held by the ancient Western civilization and Eastern civilizations. This book won the 2001 William H. Welch Medal of the

American Association for the History of Medicine The American Association for the History of Medicine is an American professional association dedicated to the study of medical history. Background It is the largest society dedicated to medical history in the United States, and the oldest such org ...

. Kuriyama joined the Harvard faculty as Reischauer Professor in 2005. In 2013 he delivered the

Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures is a series of lectures at Harvard University sponsored by the John King Fairbank Center established in 1986 to be given annually in memory of Edwin O. Reischauer. The lectures are then published by Harvard Unive ...

, "What Truly Matters."

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Harvard University alumni University of New Hampshire faculty Emory University faculty Harvard University faculty American Japanologists American medical historians People from Kagawa Prefecture Japanese emigrants to the United States American academics of Japanese descent Phillips Exeter Academy alumni {{US-med-historian-stub