Dr. Tomisaku Kawasaki bears the distinction of having his name attached to a little-known children's disease. This naming was not something that he, a modest man, sought.
The first time he saw the illness was in a 4-year-old boy in 1961. "I could make no diagnosis of this unusual sickness for which I could find no reference in any medical literature," he said.
He saw his second case a year later, and again "realized that I had seen two instances which did not exist in any medical textbook."