Bunpei Nakamura

Bunpei Nakamura graduated from Osaka University in 1911, and studied Ophthalmology under Professor Gentaro Mizuo (1876-1913). He was conferred Doctor of Medical Sciences in 1921 and in 1923 he was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology of Osaka University. He held this tenure until 1944.

In 1934 Nakamura organized the 34th Congress of the Japanese Ophthalmological Society. To this congress he invited Karl Theodor Paul Polykarpus Axenfeld (1867-1930), and thus ended the animosity between the Japanese and German Ophthalmological Societies that had continued since World War 1. He served as the Director of the University Hospital 1940-1943 and was a member of the International Council of Ophthalmology 1937-1941.

In 1912, while he was a second year resident, Professor Mizuo instructed him to examine the dark adaptation of a patient with Oguchi's disease. They found that the light sense of the night-blind patient improved when the patient's eye was covered for a long time.

After Mizuo's sudden death in 1913, Nakamura reported the phenomenon at the Congress of the Japanese Ophthalmological Society that year under the names Mizuo and Nakamura.

We thank Patrick Jucker-Kupper, Switzerland, for information submitted.

• Comparative studies of light sense in various diseases with hemeralopia.
  Doctoral thesis, Tokyo University, 1921.
• Saiichi Mishima:
  Nakamura, Bunpei. In: Jean-Paul Wayenborgh, editor: IBBO. International Biography and Bibliography of Ophthalmologists and Vision Scientists Volume 2, Oostende 2002.
  (Hirschberg History of ophtalmology. The monographs, volume 7: 147 [with photo].