According to Dr. Tsuyoshi Akiyama, until rather recently psychiatry as a branch of medicine did not receive in Japan the recognition it merits. He, however, made psychiatry his specialty. His reasons at the time were very specific.
"Originally I wanted to be a mathematician," he said. "When I was 17 at university, my professor of advanced math asked me if I had discovered a new theorem. I said no. Then he asked if I had discovered a new way to prove a theorem. I said no. He said that had to be done by the age of 19 or 20, and advised me to give up mathematics.
"There were many doctors in my mother's family, and my mother wanted me to succeed her father as a doctor. When I gave up my dream of mathematics, I considered how logic was very clear, and how different human psychiatry was. I gave up my very clear world for the ambiguous world of human psychiatry."