The story outline of the White Tower

The National Naniwa University Hospital where Goro Zaizen works "seems to be full of academic sanctity and the progressive spirit of the times on the outside. However, within this thick and solid wall, it is full of feudal interpersonal relationships." and a special organizational structure.

" Its first surgical bureau has more than 60 members, including one professor, one associate professor, two lecturers, and 18 paid assistants. , the rest are all unpaid assistants and graduate students.

It was under this medical personnel system that Goro Zaizen worked his way up from an unpaid assistant to an associate professor step by step. In this environment, he wanted to become a professor after Professor Azuma retired. If Goro Zaizen misses this opportunity for Professor Azuma to retire, he will never be able to become a professor at Naniwa National University.

Because Naniwa University School of Medicine stipulates that the retirement age for professors is 63 years old, and Goro Zaizen is already 43 years old. Therefore, if he cannot be successfully promoted to professor, he will forever lose the opportunity to compete for the professorship.

And in the professor election, relying solely on one's own superb medical skills is far from enough, but must be voted on by the medical school professors' meeting composed of 31 professors from 16 clinical subjects and 15 basic subjects. . This looks democratic on the surface, but in fact these 31 professors belong to various factions, so Goro Zaizen has to rely on his father-in-law Zaizen Yatichi's strong financial strength and win over the Minister of Medicine Ukai and the President of the Medical Association Shigeyoshi Iwata, Vol. into the whirlpool of a brutal power struggle.

Before Goro Zaizen won the professorship, he annoyed his former professor Azumasazo because of his arrogance. When the family members of the special diagnosis patients requested that Goro Zaizen perform the surgery, he did not refuse with all his strength, but readily agreed. He was interviewed by a magazine privately without the permission of the professor, and was dubbed "the new authority in esophageal surgery"...

This kind of behavior aroused strong dissatisfaction with Professor Azuma. Therefore, Professor Azuma, who should have been the most supportive of Zaizen in the professor election, secretly formed an alliance with Professor Imazu of the Second Department of Surgery to nominate Professor Kikukawa of Kanazawa University. This attack against Zaizen Goro set up huge obstacles for Zaizen Goro's election.

His arrogance reached its peak when Zaimae became a professor and performed surgery on Sasaki Yonghei. Before the operation, the X-ray of Sasaki Yohei's lungs showed a shadow as big as a little finger on the lungs. Zaizen Goro did not do a lung tomography and rashly diagnosed it as an old lesion of tuberculosis. Even though the associate professor of internal medicine repeatedly emphasized that the patient must undergo tomography, Zaizen Goro still rudely refused and persisted in his own opinion.

This resulted in a tragic disaster, resulting in the patient's death two weeks after the operation. For this reason, Zaizen Goro was sued by the patient's family in court, which became a watershed in his life. Under the dual pressure of being involved in lawsuits and running for membership in academic conferences, Goro Zaizen neglected his health, and eventually became terminally ill and died with regret.

Creative background

After the 1960s, Yamazaki Toyoko's creative style gradually highlighted the strong color of realism, and she was inspired by the various shortcomings and problems of the Japanese social medical system at that time. Shady, wrote the novel "The White Tower" which reflected the social issues at that time.

According to relevant Japanese media, Yamazaki Toyoko was hospitalized due to illness before writing this novel. During that time, Yamazaki was deeply concerned about the feudal, decadent, and bureaucratic problems in Japanese university hospitals. Inspired by the inner pain of the medical system, this realistic novel directly faces the real problems of Japanese society.

The author Toyoko Yamazaki wrote in the postscript after the publication of this novel: "The medical scene must face life and death all the time. The overt and covert struggles and human entanglements must be more obvious than in ordinary society. Such The environment attracted me deeply, and the original motivation for writing was so simple.