In Japan, schistosomiasis was endemic in Yamanashi Prefecture and a few other hotspot areas where the Miya’iri snail lived. The parasite’s lifecycle relied on the intermediary Miya’iri snail as well as the human host. Parasite eggs passed into the agrarian environment through untreated night soil used as fertiliser or through the culture of open defecation in rural Japan. Manmade rice fields and irrigation ditches, night soil covered paddies and highly refined growing seasons put people in flooded rice paddies to intensively work the land in the spring and summer. The disease was equally dependent on human intervention in the natural world as it was on the natural world intervening in the human body. It is important to stress the role of both the environment and culture in disease causation. This study posits that we view the pre- and post-war national mobilisation to remake the environmental and reform the culture of the rural sector to align with public health mandates and notions of hygienic modernity as a case of total prevention.

在日本，血吸虫病在山梨县和其他一些 Miya'iri 蜗牛生活的热点地区流行。寄生虫的生命周期依赖于中间的 Miya'iri 蜗牛以及人类宿主。寄生虫卵通过用作肥料的未经处理的粪便或通过日本农村露天排便的培养进入农业环境。人工稻田和灌溉沟渠、夜土覆盖的稻田和高度精细的生长季节使人们在被淹的稻田中在春夏季集中耕作。这种疾病同样依赖于人类对自然世界的干预，就像它依赖于自然世界对人体的干预一样。重要的是要强调环境和文化在疾病病因中的作用。