The description in Japanese by Tomisaku Kawasaki of 50 infants and children suffering from a curious new ailment in Japan in the 1960s has now been translated into English and is available for readers at http://www. pidj. com. It is truly a masterpiece of descriptive clinical writing from the past century. 1 In his exhaustive detailing of every observable aspect of the disease, Kawasaki was part Sherlock Holmes and part Charles Dickens with his sense of mystery and his vivid descriptions of the clinical features of these patients. So careful are the daily observations of his patients that when one reads in the detailed description of the first case that the patient “smiled for the first time” on the 26th day of his illness, one is convinced that this is an accurate statement.

As is now revealed by this translation, many of the intellectual exercises of researchers studying Kawasaki disease (KD) in the decades that followed Kawasaki’s report were simply recapitulations of observations already reported in Japanese, but never appreciated by the English-speaking world. In his epidemiologic description Kawasaki was the first of many authors to note both clustering of cases and seasonality (Ref. 1, Geographic Distribution figure and Table 3). With respect to potential genetic links, the association of KD with a family history of atopy reported in 19882 was also described in Kawasaki’s report (Ref. 1, Table 2). The discrepancy between C-reactive protein levels and the erythrocyte sedimentation rate was reported by Kawasaki in 1967 (Ref. 1, Table 34) and again by American investigators in 2001. 3 Other features of KD that are included in Kawasaki’s original report that have been subsequently “rediscovered” by others include the older age distribution of children who present with cervical lymphadenopathy. 4