EDITORIAL
The legend of 1952
Naoki Aikawa
Editor-in-Chief
The Keio Journal of Medicine
cine, Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio, had
abruptly abandoned Dutch for English in his teaching,
and this critical change contributed to Keio University
becoming the leading educational institution in themodern history of Japan.
Since the ®rst issue of our Journal, the editors havebeen eager to publish the best material available andhave worked as dedicated medical missionaries to ful®lltheir desire to inform readers around the world of what
was being found in our medical school. Their dedication
soon made a landmark in 1961 when the Journal wascited in the Index Medicus. This was truly a great
achievement of our journal as there are currently only
67 English journals published in Japan cited in theIndex.
Among the past ®ve editors (Table 1), Toyomi
Fujino, MD, FACS, the immediate past Editor-in-Chiefof the Journal, deserves special recognition for renewing the Journal in the mid-1980s when publications
were almost 2 years behind. It was during this time thatbasic medical sciences differentiated into specialized®elds and clinical specialties became subdivided. With
this wave of differentiation and specialization, mostresearchers became reluctant to submit their papers to
our journal, which was considered a general medicaljournal. Dr. Fujino, who was the professor of Plastic
and Reconstructive Surgery at the time, showed hispassion and ability to reconstruct the Journal by creating several new features.2
One successful new feature was to publish papers
from invited guest speakers attending traditional Keio
Medical Society Meetings. The topics in these papers
were very speci®c to a narrow ®eld, but as most distinguished researchers authored them, these papers ofhigh quality have attracted the attention of readersfrom various ®elds of medical science.
In addition, Professor Fujino invited Tai Akera, MD
to be the Advisory Editor of the Journal. Dr. Akera, aformer professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology atMichigan State University, gave us invaluable advice
about our editorial judging whenever needed. As Dr.

With this issue, the Keio Journal of Medicine celebrates its 50th volume. The journal was established in1952 when Japan was struggling to reconstruct thecountry from the ruins of World War II. Multiple airraids during the War almost completely destroyed thecampus of our medical school and the university hospital, located in the center of Tokyo, leaving only theKitasato Memorial Medical Library, the Institute ofPreventive Medicine, and an annex building of the Keio
University Hospital. Not only the buildings, medical
records, books, and laboratory facilities, but tragicallymany researchers, teachers, and physicians were also
lost during the War.
The Journal was conceived during these dif®culttimes and born several years later, the accoucheurs being the faculty members of the School of Medicine,
Keio University, who thought that the medical school
needed its own medical journal as a medium for disseminating their original ®ndings and opinions to theworld. Under the strong leadership of the late Yoshio
Kusama as the ®rst Editor-in-Chief of the journal, theeditors and contributors from our medical school andthe alumni strove toward its publication.
From its inception, they had the foresight to choose
English as the journal's language, despite the fact that
German was the primary foreign language used for
medical education and research in Japan, even after theWar. For them, it must have been a painstaking task topublish an English journal at that time, as most authors
were not very ¯uent in English and many important
medical articles were still published in German. In fact,
in the very ®rst paper of the ®rst volume of the Journal,
entitled ``Pathological studies on malnutrition'', 45 of
the 57 references were German papers.1 However, if
they had insisted on using German as the language of
their new journal, the accomplishments we are now
witnessing 50 years on, could not have been made.
Their foresight to change from German to English
must be highly acknowledged, but such wise decisionmaking is not unprecedented in Keio society. Almost acentury before the launch of the Keio Journal of Medi-Reprint request to: Dr. Naoki Aikawa, The Keio Journal of Medicine, School of Medicine, Keio University, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku,Tokyo, 160-8582, Japan, e-mail: aikawan@med.keio.ac.jp
5

6Table 1

Aikawa N: The Legend of 1952
Historical Roster of the Editors-in-Chief

Yoshio Kusama, MD
Hisakichi Matsubayashi, MD
No appointment*Toshio Toyama, MD
Yonosuke Watanabe, MD
Toyomi Fujino, MD
Naoki Aikawa, MD

1952±1968
1969±1969
1970±1972
1973±1984
1984±1984
1984±1996
1996±Present* Four members of the Board of Editors; Hitoshi Hatano, MD, Hideo
Hosaki, MD, Tadao Mitsui, MD, and Toshio Toyama, MD, wereediting the Journal during these years.

Akera retired from the position of Advisory Editor on
the completion of the 49th volume, it is appropriate totake advantage of this occasion to acknowledge hisdedicated service over the last 12 years.
During the past decade the Journal has expanded
rapidly in its contents as well as in its pagination. Since
1999, the Journal has been publishing papers from theCommemorative Lecture of the Keio Medical Science
Prize awardees, one of whom later became a Nobel
Prize laureate. In addition, abstract books for the Keio
University International Symposia for Life Sciencesand Medicine have been published as supplement issuesof the Journal. Currently, the journal is received by 84
medical libraries in Japan and 351 libraries throughout
the world.
To commemorate the 50th volume, the editorialcommittee has been planning renewals and new features. First, to change the journal's cover, we invited

subscribers to submit ideas for new designs. As you
may notice, the new design provides less space for theKeio colors of blue, red, and blue, than the old cover,implying the future of the Journal to be more open to
the outside, rather than being con®ned to our medical
school and the alumni. Secondly, we have started publicizing our web page so that articles in the Journal
can be read worldwide as soon as it is published. The
third and most important new feature is the publicationof Festschrift issues, including mini-review articles, tocommemorative the 50th volume. The topics in thesemini-reviews have been chosen to characterize theachievement of our medical school. The articles will
describe either prominent alumni or distinguished achievements constituting a historical review of the major
accomplishments achieved in our medical school during
the late 20th century.
The ®ve-decade tradition is an obligation for us, but
it is also a challenge for authors and editors. Having
considered the latest developments of the Journal, I amcon®dent that the outlook for the 21st century is very
bright, and I hope the readers and contributors will join
me in taking a new step forward toward the GoldenAnniversary, to be celebrated next year.
References
1. Aoki T, Nakamura I: Pathological studies on malnutrition, particularly the pathology of the liver and kidney. Keio J Med 1952;
1: 1±19
2. Fujino T: Congratulations for the 50th volume. Keio J Med 2001;
50: 3