Kiyoshi Ohahim and Seiji Niimi
Japan Society of Logopedics and Phoniatrics

1 Introduction
Although the history of phoniatrics of our country is not so long, it has been making a great progress in this rather short period and now become ahead of the world. There were reasons why the progress was so rapid. One of them was that phoniatrics was considered to belong to the clinical medicine. So many practitioners have been willing to participate in this field and the practice fee was assured by the health insurance plan.

It gives Japanese phoniatrics a unique character. Phoniatrics in Europe corresponds to ‘Phoniatrics’ in Japan. In Phoniatrics in Europe, instructors of vocal music and voice trainers work in a central role. It’s just recently that medical researchers participate in this field.

Meanwhile in the United States, the field, which corresponds to ‘Phoniatrics’ in Japan, doesn’t exist independently and considered as part of speech pathology. Naturally, speech pathologists and speech scientists play a central role, not medical doctors. It is true that ‘Phoniatrics’ is an interdisciplinary field and requires a good knowledge and technique of various specialized fields. Actually in Japan, researchers of not only engineering but also non-medical field made a great contribution. But it is also a case that researchers in the medical field have cut conspicuous figures in our country.

Among those medical researchers, two leaders, that is, Kotoji Satta (Univ. of Tokyo) and Yoshio Hayashi (Keio Univ.) had especially big influence on establishing Phoniatrics. Satta had enlightened many researchers with many papers and lectures, including ‘Experimental study on vocal system and speech control’ (J Otolaryngol Jpn, Status report, 1939). Hayashi had induced interests on this field to otolaryngologists with a lot of papers, including the lecture series ‘Logopedics and Phoniatrics’ appeared in from vol.33 to vol.35 in the journal, Jibirin.

Japan Society of Logopedics and Phoniatrics was established in 1956 supported by the interest on this field, and has been making a great progress until today. As there is a description in detail on the history of its progress elsewhere, in this paper, overlooking from a different point of view, through discussing major research methods, we will look back the leaders work.

Addendum
sent in by N. Isshiki

Isshiki, N.: Laryngeal framework surgery. Advances in Otolar. HNS 5 (1991), 37-56

Mechanical and dynamic aspects of voice production as related to voice therapy and phonosurgery. Journal of Voice 12 (1998), 125-137

Vocal mechanics as the basis for phonosurgery. Laryngoscope 108 (1998), 1761-1766