Japanese psychiatry has been strongly influenced by social and political situations both at home and abroad. In order to find which direction present-day and future psychiatry will take, it is crucial that we learn from history and make use of the historical perspective.
 The first point that is explored in this article is the continuity and discontinuity of the psychiatric legal system in Japan. The modernization of psychiatry had already begun in the late Edo period, and each prefecture made rules to control the mentally ill by the early Meiji period. The central government enacted the Mental Patients' Custody Act in 1900 by unifying the regulations established by each prefecture, and further established the Mental Hospital Act in 1919. The legal basis for the hospitalization of mental patients was formed, but the full-scale construction of psychiatric institutions was only promoted after the Second World War, when the former two laws were abolished and the new Mental Hygiene Act was enacted in 1950.
 The changes in the above-mentioned legal system were closely related to the formation of psychiatry as an academic discipline in modern Japan, modeled after German medicine and developed under the research and education of the Imperial Universities (Teikoku Daigaku), whose main interests were in brain pathology and anatomy. However, as was seen in the establishment of the Japan Psychiatry Association (Nihon seishin igakukai) in 1917, which criticized such somatic research, and in the invention of psychotherapy by Morita Masatake, who emphasized the Japanese spirit and culture, the modernization of psychiatry in Japan could not be simply explained by the acceptance of psychiatry in Western Europe.
 On the other hand, traditional therapy was generally criticized by psychiatrists, who evaluated only the part that matched the theory and practice of Western medicine. But in the practice of traditional therapy, in which the collaboration of family members and community was necessary for taking care of mental patients under the influence of natural resources and geographical conditions, we will find something very close to today's popular concept of community support.
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