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 The History of Disease and Epidemics:
William Johnston’s CSS Junior History Tutorial

Recently, I was a guest in William Johnston’s CSS Junior History Tutorial. Bill is a professor in the departments of History, Science in Society, College of Environment, and College of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan and my collaborating photographer of A Body in Fukushima. He was supposed to teach two half-semester classes on the atomic bomb, a subject he and I have often co-taught. Over spring break, he asked his students if they wanted him to switch the course subject to the history of disease and epidemics, another of his academic research specialties, and they decided to take the opportunity to learn about the pandemic while it was/is happening in front of their eyes. This gives me courage to observe and learn from past history, so I have decided to follow his syllabus and absorb his class online when I can.

Photo by Jennifer Calienes

While in quarantine soon after traveling from New York to Japan, I joined a Zoom class on April 2 and greeted students in different continents and time zones. I spoke about my experience of the coronavirus pandemic:

• I was in China (Beijing, Nanjing, and Kunming) for nearly a month when the coronavirus outbreak started being recognized.

• I left China for Japan, persuaded by friends and family to cut my work there short; soon after, a cluster of infections was reported in Yokohama on a cruise ship, an hour from where I was.

• Within a month of returning home to New York City, the city became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, and I decided to once again flee back to Japan.

Everywhere I have been I have seen with horror how the deceptively slow growth of the infection quickly changed to an exponential spike. I have also observed different public health policies; how each government and local official responds to the rapidly growing infections and how each person engages in a manner of self-preservation.

I reflected on the way one’s personal attended death is lost when they are killed by massive violence, whether it be war, environmental disaster, or a pandemic. Unless we have a conversation with oneself about dying and the fear of ending of one’s consciousness, we cannot really understand what this pandemic is. A pandemic swallows each death as a part of a large number of deaths, and in that, dying seems hastened without enough time to reflect, make decisions, and to be witnessed fully by others.

To show what I mean by “personal death”, I showed two videos I took of my mother dying at the age of 93. With no medical intervention, in her own room in the nursing home where she had lived for 7 years, she stopped eating, slept more, then died. I was with her every day for a month, feeding her what she likes while she could take in no more than what she wanted. The image of a very thin, old woman was a bit shocking to students, some of whom might not have seen anyone die before. But I wanted to share what I consider a personal death. Dying comes to everyone, it is the only equality humans and other lives are blessed with. We can only learn about dying either by oneself having nearly died or by attending to others' deaths. I shared my thought: how in a pandemic, war, and other times when there is massive death, each death becomes a part of a large number and each dying is not witnessed or attended thoroughly, thereby depriving that individual of a personal death. 

• Eiko showed us a picture of her mother, who died peacefully, surrounded by care, love, and affection. This is very different from dying in a massive shared historical event. The care, love, and affection have suddenly disappeared into a void of fear and panic. People are no longer celebrated as stories, but are reduced to a statistic. In Death Poem, the audience plays a powerful part in the story — a part they play in the present pandemic as well. The audience helplessly watches as the performer is on the floor, slowly walking to her death. In some sense, we are all part of this audience — truly helpless, as we watch thousands die. All we can do is watch. —Aditi

• The expression of agony on Eiko’s face during this performance and her explanation of the emotions she felt during her mother’s death reverted the coronavirus death statistics into human beings. These numbers were no longer nearly a means to depict the spread of the coronavirus but rather human beings who once held ambitions and interacted with family members who loved them. “Flattening the curve” does not merely represent a means to return to my previous lifestyle. It represents an effort to allow individuals to continue living and loving. —Edward

• Instead of viewing the pandemic as more of a personal issue, I had viewed it as a national crisis. Though the ideas are certainly related, viewing the pandemic as a personal issue emphasizes the needs for some sort of community, whereas viewing the epidemic as a national crisis emphasizes the need for strong governmental action. Though perhaps one is not more correct than the other, and indeed, perhaps both should be accepted, the fact that looking at how the epidemic in different ways emphasizes different responses shows how important the act of taking various approaches to the crisis is. —Jacob

• With self-isolation, many people are in situations where they have been alone for weeks without their family members and friends and also the little day-to-day interactions with strangers. This lack of physical human connection, I think, makes it harder for people to process death not only for not being there for the death of their loved ones or to memorialize them, but also to process the death and to talk about it openly in order to move forward and better deal with emotions of sadness, guilt, grief, and so on. —Catherine

• The collective, “massive upset” described by Eiko illuminated the difficulties of epidemics as massive, impersonal death coupled with lack of physical togetherness creates unresolved tension, grief, and trauma amongst everyone in the global population. I’m hoping with the digital age, some level of individual mourning and observation of death can take place more so than in the past. However, after understanding the impacts of physical closeness upon grief, death, and coping with death, this still seems to be an aspect of trauma following massive death and upset that cannot be addressed easily with modern, technological methods. —Brittany