Event Description
This panel discussion focuses on the case of “forklift disease” (fōkurifuto-byō) in postwar Japan, which explores how occupational illness came to be conceived and contested in an era of logistical capitalism. Speakers will reconstruct how labor activists, physicians, and engineers framed these complaints as a distinctive work-related disorder that stemmed from the bodily burdens of mechanized cargo handling. Forklift disease would soon travel beyond Kobe, spurring further medical investigations at other Japanese ports, experiments with seat and suspension design, and epidemiological studies on whole-body vibration. By the 1980s, the diagnostic label was increasingly eclipsed by international categories of vibration-related musculoskeletal disorder, even as the underlying injuries persisted and expanded to new groups of logistic workers. By situating this trajectory within concurrent developments in port labor relations, containerization, and state regulation of industrial health, this event shows how postwar Japan’s pursuit of industrial rationalization reshaped both dockside workscapes and the diagnosis terrain of occupational disease.
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. Please email Julie Kwan at [email protected] with any questions.
Hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.
