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Mark Cousins, film critic, on a 19th-century Japanese illustration, in Medicine Man
At first I misrecognise this image as an assault. In so many Japanese films in recent years a dark haired young woman spills blood, that I see this painting by Kamata Keishu from 1851, through 21st century cinephile eyes. Then I read its caption. It’s a doctor excising a cancer growth. Immediately it is something else. A benign invasion. The first such operation using general anaesthetic was carried out, I read, by Hanaoka Seishu in 1804. So the image is a celebration of the possibility of treatment. 47 years after it began, it is a snapshot of hope. It is not medically accurate—no scalpel is visible and two lines on the woman’s forehead express unaccountable discomfort if a general anaesthetic was used. A moment’s reflection and it’s something else again—an image of false hope. All those breast cancer moon walks, and the deaths of two of my friends recently, remind me that the hope is, in part, unfulfilled. They could cut out lumps twenty decades ago, but still haven’t licked the obscene disease.
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