Sùwèn shí 素問識
Identifications in the Basic Questions (Japanese: Somon-shiki) by 丹波元簡 (Tamba no Mototane / Dānbō Yuánjiǎn, 1755–1810, 江戶) — author
About the work
The Sùwèn shí in eight juan is the magnum opus of the Japanese kanpō 漢方 scholar Tamba no Mototane 丹波元簡 (also Tanba Genkan, zì Liánfū 廉夫, hào Guìshān 桂山), the most influential Edo-period commentator on the Chinese medical canon. Working from the 王冰 Wáng Bīng base text with the 林億 Lín Yì校正 apparatus, Tamba compares the Yuán Xióng Zōnglì 熊宗立 print, the Dàozàng recension, and the major Míng and early-Qīng commentators (馬蒔 Mǎ Shī KR3ea035, 吳崐 Wú Kūn KR3ea014, 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn KR3ea036, 張志聰 Zhāng Zhìcōng KR3ea008). His method is to lay out competing interpretations of each disputed passage without forcing a verdict (如其疑義，則舉眾說，不敢決擇是非), in keeping with the Edo koi-gaku (古醫學) commitment to philological restraint. The complement Língshū shí 靈樞識 (KR3ea026) follows the same plan.
Prefaces
The preface (KR3ea010_000.txt) is a personal narrative of the book’s composition. Tamba received the medical “bow and arrow” tradition (箕裘之業) from his father, the Lánxī Gōng 藍溪公 (= 丹波元徳, Tamba Motonori), and spent over a decade studying Wáng Bīng’s commentary. In gēngxū 庚戌 (Kansei 2 = 1790) he was promoted to shìyī 侍醫 (oku-ishi, imperial physician of the Edo bakufu) and set the manuscript aside; in xīnyǒu 辛酉 (Kyōwa 1 = 1801), demoted to “outer rank” (外班) for opposing the shōgun’s wishes, he returned to the draft. Eyesight failing in his mid-fifties, he had the marginal notes accumulated over thirty years copied into a clean text in eight juan, which he named Sùwèn shí. He acknowledges 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī as inspiration for the philological approach (素問詞簡而義深，非吾儒不能讀). The preface laments that his father — who had died six years earlier — could no longer comment on the work.
Abstract
Tamba was the head of the Igaku-kan 醫學館 (the Edo bakufu’s official medical college) and a central figure in the Edo-period reception and critical editing of Chinese medical literature, in which the Tamba family (across three generations: father 丹波元徳 → son 丹波元簡 → grandsons 丹波元胤 and 丹波元堅) effectively codified what is now received as the standard collated medical canon. The Sùwèn shí is paired with the Língshū shí (KR3ea026) and with his son Tamba no Motokata’s 丹波元堅 supplementary Sùwèn shàoshí 素問紹識 (KR3ea012). All three works circulated in China from the 1830s onward — chiefly through the importation of the Igaku-kan prints by 楊守敬 Yáng Shǒujìng — and remain primary references for Chinese collation of the Nèijīng.
The Sùwèn shí was completed in Wénhuà 3 = 1806 (preface date matches the prefatory narrative; the first Edo print is also 1806). The catalog assigns the dynasty 清 by convention (China-side dating); strictly the work belongs to the late Edo (江戶) period in Japanese terms.
Translations and research
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠, “丹波元簡 Sùwèn shí の文献学的研究” (multiple articles in Nihon ishi-gaku zasshi 日本醫史學雜誌 and elsewhere).
- Kosoto Hiroshi 小曾戸洋, Nihon kanpō tenseki jiten 日本漢方典籍辞典 (Taishukan, 1999) — entry on the Tamba family.
- Marta Hanson, “The Significance of Manchu Medical Sources in the Qing”, in Proceedings of the First Northern American Conference on Manchu Studies (2006) — context on the East-Asian medical philology circle.
Other points of interest
The cleavage between the Edo koi-gaku (古醫學) school of philological restraint and the contemporaneous zōki-ron (蔵気論) school of doctrinal innovation runs through this work; Tamba is the codifying figure of the former, and his Sùwèn shí and Língshū shí are the principal works through which it transmitted back to Qīng China.