Shiroi ketsueki: eizu kansen to Nihon no ketsueki sangyo 白い血液 : エイズ上陸と日本の血液産業 [White blood: AIDS transmission and the blood industry in Japan]

Ikeda, Fusao 池田房雄

Tokyo: Ushio Shuppansha 潮出版社, 1985. Hardcover. 263p., text in Japanese, very good hardcover in dj.

Author is a journalist with experience working as a day-laborer in San'ya (a down-and-out area of Tokyo where day laborers congregate) in the 1970s, during which time he sold his blood. Lining papers are images of newspaper articles about 1930 shooting of prime minister Hamaguchi Osachi and donation of blood by his son. Sale of blood and plasma has a complex and controversial history in Japan, and most of the book is concerned with this history, including Ambassador Reischauer getting hepatitis from a blood transfusion from someone who had sold blood. Such sale systems were phased out in Japan in the 1960s-70s, and all blood was then supposed to be donated but sale remained an option in San'ya and other sites where the down-and-out sold their blood. Discusses the establishment of blood banks in Japan during the US occupation and the market in blood products. Author suspects that the knowhow of the biological warfare 731 Unit was drawn on by postwar government and GHQ during US occupation to use Japan as source of blood products for the Korean War effort. Discusses how most of the vast quantity of blood Japan imported from the US was from sold-blood gathered at plasma centers. Last 70 pages or so are about AIDS and the challenges it poses to the blood supply in Japan. Argues that AIDS was no more than a local disease but "the blood industries of capitalism, the plundering of blood from the third world, is what made it such a serious problem."

Cat.No: 150850
ISBN: 4267010560

Price: $35.00