Noriko Kamakura (鎌倉 矩子; September 29, 1939 – June 16, 2023):22 was a practitioner, researcher, and academic leader in occupational therapy. She was in the initial generation of people who became occupational therapists in Japan. She greatly influenced how occupational therapy developed in that country, contributing especially in clinical approaches to persons with central nervous disorders of executive functions. In addition, she explored function of the hand in enough detail to develop a system of taxonomies that can account for the vast majority of postures and movements of the hand.
Education
1958: Graduated from Nagano Prefectural Suwa Futaba High School. 1962: Graduated from the University of Tokyo with a major in health and nursing. In her third year, an impassioned lecture by an orthopedic surgeon on the need for physical therapy and occupational therapy in Japan left a strong impression.:30 Otherwise, the bulk of the coursework during her undergraduate years was excessively pedantic, making Kamakura determined to work in any area of health care other than nursing after graduating.:29
1976: Awarded Doctor of Medical Science (医学博士) degree from the University of Tokyo.
Career
(1962–1974) Occupational Therapist in the Clinic
In 1962, Noriko Kamakura found her first job at Seishiryōgoen (日本肢体不自由児協会整肢療護園) in Tokyo. At that time it was a residential facility for children with disabilities and her job as an "overcome trainer" (克服機能訓練士) was to "functionally train" children with cerebral palsy.:44 With no real expert to guide her or her six fellow "overcome trainers" in how to constructively help those children, she wallowed in despair. Half of the trainers would apply repetitive training to the arms of children, and the other half to the legs. Every six months the trainers would switch roles.:47–48 In 1963, when the government passed a law to establish physical therapists and occupational therapists in Japan, the administrator at Seishiryōgoen declared that the six-month rotation would cease and that the "overcome trainers" treating the arms at that time would henceforth be occupational therapists and those treating the legs would be physical therapists. And that stroke of fate is how Kamakura was to become an occupational therapist.:47–48
One day, a physician at Seishiryōgoen asked Kamakura to give a child training in "fine skills" of the hand.:74 She was at a loss as to what to do and the problem festered in her mind for many years, eventually leading to over a decade of research on the human hand, detailed below.
In 1966 she became the first and only occupational therapist in the hospital at the University of Tokyo.:52 Then, in 1968, Kamakura had worked enough years to become eligible via a grandfather procedure to take the licensure examination for occupational therapists, which she passed. Right after that, she went to Highland View Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, where she spent over a year to learn what occupational therapy was really about. The staff there welcomed her as a colleague and expected her to learn by participating. Kamakura did a credible job from their perspective, but secretly was disappointed not to have received genuine mentoring. As far as she was concerned, she did not learn as much as she had hoped to.:53–55