Diagnosis
I had a bit of an interesting thought about health care and its image in Japan recently. Japan’s health care system is nationalized, and lacks “doctor’s offices” like I’m used to in the United States [Edit: Thomas corrected me in the comments]. When you get sick here, you go straight to the hospital. It’s sort of a hassle, and as a friend recently told me – you feel sort of asinine for going to a hospital when all you want to do is make sure you’re not coming down with something worse than the common cold. In the states, you can hit a clinic or doctor’s office and take care of it. Another thing that’s interesting to me is that the public image of diagnoses is changing. People’s health is becoming an interesting fascination in popular culture here. I first noticed this a few years ago when Takeshi Kitano (or Beat Takeshi, as he’s known on television as a comedian) started to host a show called 「最終警告!たけしの本当は怖い家庭の医学」 (さいしゅうけいこく！たけしのほんとうはこわいかていのいがく / Saishyuu keikoku! Takeshi no hontou wa kowai katei no igaku). Yes, it’s a freakishly long title. In English it means “Final Warning! Takeshi’s Seriously Frightening Family Medical Science.” It’s classified as a medical horror simulation show, on the border of a reality show and a bizarre documentary about strange diseases. I seem to recall that at the end of each show, the guest panel would be tested for their chances of contracting the odd illness of the day. The results were given live on the show. That started this weird trend of public pop-culture diagnoses.
I recently saw a show where 8 or 9 people, including “talent” and comedians (and their spouses, if applicable) got checked out. The show was almost half public service announcement, half scare the daylights out of the participants with their own mortality. Each time the show switched focus to another part of the body (nervous system, circulatory, respiratory, you name it – it was covered), they’d name how many people had problems presenting in their results, and then list them in order from best outlook to worst. Then they explained what each person’s individual problem was. I learned that one comedian (Monkiki) will likely die suddenly of an aneurysm in his brain later on in life. I learned that Dave Specter and his wife eat too much junk food and it’s putting pressure on their bodies to cope with the wacky diet. I learned that Tamura Kenji (Tamuken) is the most likely to commit suicide from a psychological questionnaire – the results of which they openly discussed on the show. To put more pressure on him, they announced that he would die first out of everyone who participated – within roughly 6 years. Geeze. I get the morbid curiosity that brings the audience to that kind of show, but what a difference a few decades make.
If you’ve ever seen the film 生きる (いきる / Ikiru / to live) by Akira Kurosawa, you might know what I’m talking about. This film, which Time Magazine listed in the 100 Best Movies of All Time 2005 list (if you give a flying leap about anything Time ranks…tend to be bogus in my opinion), is one of my favorites. I think it’s even on my Facebook profile. I obviously highly recommend it. At the beginning of the film, the main character is being tested at a hospital. You hear him thinking about the diagnosis to come, and learn about a series of events that strongly insinuate cancer. When the man goes to the doctor, the doctor lists all of the politenesses in the aforementioned series. He skillfully skirts the issue and avoids revealing the true nature of the man’s medical state. The result: the character understands that he has malignant progressive stomach cancer, despite the fact that the doctor lied to his face multiple times when asked directly. It’s actually a tense scene. But that is just the point – it was considered wrong or rude or a bad idea to tell the patient himself if he had some kind of tragic terminal disease a few decades ago. Look how far this country has come – from shielding the patient from the knowledge of their own health to broadcasting the results of morbid medical testing over the airwaves as a spectator sport. Makes your head spin a little.
