UCSF digitizing ancient Japanese medical prints, the largest collection outside of Japan

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- When you think of the Edo period of Japan, you might think of samurai and powerful emperors, but UCSF researchers are helping to bring another aspect of ancient Japanese culture to life.

ABC7 Eyewitness News got an exclusive look at the technologies they're using to unravel the history of medicine.

For Polina Ilieva and Lisa Nguyen unraveling an ancient scroll is a unique journey through the centuries. Not only in the history of Japan, but the history of medicine.

"So, we are learning how different cultures, in this case Japanese culture, how their, traditional beliefs than were, adopted, when the modern medicine was introduced," said Ilieva, associate university librarian for Archives and Special Collections.

In a temperature-controlled room at the medical school library at UCSF, the team walked us through a collection of ancient scrolls, manuscripts and woodblock prints assembled by late curator, Atsumi Minami, over several decades.

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"She was able to actually travel to Japan, China, Korea and purchased all these materials. And, it's a unique collection," Ilieva said.

The images range from what could be described as early public health posters of spiritual defenses against disease to detailed depictions of human anatomy.

"This one is dated 1759, and it's, again, sort of through the progression of the understanding of the body. And anatomy of it," said Nguyen, the library's digital archivist.

For Nguyen, some of the ancient materials are like living patients themselves. In need of delicate care and documentation.

"One of the most exciting things about this is, about the collection at UCSF, is the rarity of the materials. It is the largest collection of Japanese woodblock prints that represent medicine and health in the United States. It's also the largest Japanese rare books collection, outside of Japan," Nguyen said.

So rare, that the UCSF Library has been hosting researchers from Japan. It's part of a large-scale project to share the materials with historians and researchers around the world. Technicians carefully scan and digitize each page by hand. The images will be assembled into a collection at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

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"When you start digging into the documents, and UCSF's collections has some excellent examples of this, you can find examples of things that were developed first in Japan," said Travis Seifma, Ph.D., a historian at the university..

The UCSF team also hopes to team up with partners to introduce AI-powered search capabilities, allowing researchers to quickly locate key texts and images.

"So we can actually connect textual, visual and 3D materials in one portal to enable translation, transcription and deep research with this material," Ilieva said.

For both Nguyen and Ilieva, it's also a chance to capture a vivid era, in the evolution of medicine.

"So I think one of the most exciting things for me is sort of seeing, sort of the preservation of thoughts and ideas and innovation captured 700 years ago, but then also thinking about how the same type of knowledge is produced today and how we are going to preserve that information so that 700 years from now, people can understand what's happening today," Nguyen said.