[How did Japanese psychiatrists receive conceptions of dementia praecox and schizophrenia?].

Before the introduction of Emil Kraepelin's system of classification of mental illness, several systems coexisted in Japanese psychiatry and the terminology of mental illness was unclear. Shŭzŏ Kuré, after his study under Kraepelin in Heidelberg, came back to Japan in 1901. The next year Kuré and Kinnosuke Miura (neurologist) founded the Japanese Society of Neurology (now, the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology). Kuré introduced Kraepelin's system of classification. It took about a decade for most Japanese psychiatrists to accept Kraepelin's system. Only a few psychiatrists criticized Kraepelin's conception of dementia praecox. Eugen Bleuler's conception of schizophrenia was accepted with little discussion. As for translation, three different words were used for "schizophrenia". It was in 1937 that the Japanese Society of Pspychiatry and Neurology determined the Japanese equivalent of "seishin(mind)-bunretsu (splitting)-byŏ(disease)" for schizophrenia.