Nineteenth-century Greater Poland through the eyes of a Japanese researcher. A conversation with UG visiting professor Satoshi Warita

Satoshi

How were people with mental illness treated in the 19th century? Have our ways of dealing with the epidemic changed over the last 100 years? What was the political situation like in the Prussian partition? This is what we discussed with prof. Satoshi Warita, who came from Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo as part of the ‘Visiting Professors UG’ programme. The visit was supervised by dr Jacek Splisgart from the Department of East Asian Culture and Languages at UG.

Marcel Jakubowski: - When did you start taking an interest in the history of Eastern Europe, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Duchy of Poznań?

Prof. Satoshi Warita: - When I was in high school, the Berlin Wall fell. At the time of my studies, plenty of information from Eastern and Central Europe began to reach Japan; countries that had freed themselves from the influence of the Soviet Union began to open up to the world. It was then that I became interested in Eastern Europe and nationalism. I decided to study the history of Greater Poland; I wrote my bachelor's thesis on the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848, the Polish issue discussed there, and the division of the Province of Poznań. I was interested in how Poles fared in the nineteenth century when they didn't have their own country, especially in Greater Poland and West Prussia. What did they want and how did they react to this situation - this is one of the main questions posed in my research.

- You have participated in several major projects related to the Greater Poland region, and are currently coordinating one on political culture in the Prussian partition. It was a very dynamic period for this region: Napoleon, the Greater Poland Uprising, and the creation of the Grand Duchy of Poznań. What was politics like in those times?

- This is a multi-stage project in which we want to describe the political and legal situation up to the First World War. We have just completed the first part of the project, concerning the first half of the nineteenth century, and we are now dealing with the issue of the Colonisation Commission, which operated in the Western Territories from 1886. We are particularly interested in what Poles thought about the situation in which Poland found itself. Their opinions strongly depended on the region and the period in question. However, the rural population was not very interested in political changes. Over time, this consciousness of national belonging began to emerge and play a significant role in the process of coming to a Polish identity.

Prof. Satoshi Warita i Dziekan Wydziału Historycznego dr hab. Arkadiusz Janicki, prof. UG

Prof. Satoshi Warita and Dean of the Faculty of History dr hab. Arkadiusz Janicki, prof. UG

- In another project, you researched ethnic groups, a sense of belonging, and culture in the constantly changing territory of the Prussian partition. Who lived in these territories? What were you trying to investigate?

- This is also a large project concerning the Prussian territory. What caught my attention was what this clash between Germans and Poles - who were Germanised during this period - looked like. In the context of Gdańsk and Pomerania, it is also interesting to see how the Prussians differentiated between Kashubians and Poles, as the two groups were treated differently.

- You also published a paper on the treatment of mentally ill people in the Prussian partition and the Poznań Province. How were these issues approached then?

- Studying the resolutions of the Provincial Assembly, I discovered that the issues of people with mental illnesses are described there, among other things. These are not acts, but transcripts of sittings where the problems of such people were analysed. These were more statistics than a reflection on what to do with such people. The meetings analysed these issues from a statistical point of view, i.e. how many such people there are and what their illnesses are, while there is no trace of reflection or information on what was done with such data.

- These meetings took place before the emergence of the theory of psychoanalysis, so presumably, the participants in such meetings did not use the terms we know to describe mental illnesses. What words were used to describe the afflictions of these people?

- The most commonly used terms were ‘hysteria’ and ‘insanity’. Depending on the region, such people were dealt with differently, but most often they were put in straitjackets and taken to hospitals. In the 19th century, this treatment was quite brutal, while documents show that at the turn of the century, better conditions began to be provided in psychiatric hospitals, which made it possible not only to keep these people there but also to treat them. Gardens or parks were built next to the hospitals where patients walked around as part of their therapy. The change from rigorous confinement to attempts to cure hysteria began to be implemented.

- And what was the behaviour of the authorities when the region was hit by a cholera epidemic in the 19th century?

- The cholera epidemic affected the whole of the Polish lands, while I only studied the issues of the Prussian partition. One of the reasons cholera appeared in Pomerania was the activities of rafters floating timber down the Vistula. It was suspected that germs were also arriving with these raftings, so at some point, everything and everyone who came down the river was investigated. In this context, I analysed all sorts of leaflets about what to do if you contracted a disease and where the germs came from. The approach was somewhat similar to the COVID-19 pandemic, where the sick were also caught, isolated from society, and the disease spread anyway. I have the impression that the system of dealing with pandemics has not really changed over these more than 100 years.

- One of the aims of your visit to the University of Gdańsk is to prepare a scientific article. What will this publication be about?

- In 2020, I took a sabbatical to come to Gdańsk for research purposes, but three days after my arrival I had to return to the country because of the pandemic. It is only now that I have resumed these activities, and I am currently at the stage of collecting materials. I have visited the European Solidarity Centre, I am talking to historians at the University of Gdańsk and I am browsing through the collections of the UG libraries. I am planning a series of publications on the Solidarity movement.

- Finally, I would like to ask you about something unrelated to your academic activities. On November 5, Americans elected a new president - Donald Trump. In Poland, we looked at this election from the perspective of the war in Ukraine. What geopolitical issues related to the new US president are most important to the Japanese?

- In the context of the US election, the key aspects for the Japanese are the war in Ukraine and the issue of Gaza and Palestinian-Israeli relations. Japan also had elections in October this year and for the first time since 2009, the Jimin-tō party did not win. This means, therefore, that Japan's political situation is not very secure, and with Trump's win, this uncertainty is further exacerbated.

MJ/CPC; photo by Monika Nagórska