Zhōngguó Yīyào Lùnwénjí 中國醫藥論文集
Collected Essays on Chinese Medicine and Pharmacology by 富士川遊 (Fujikawa Yū 富士川遊, 1865–1940, 明治-昭和)
About the work
The Chūgoku iyaku ronbunshū is a collection of historical-medical essays by Fujikawa Yū, the founding figure of modern Japanese medical-history scholarship. The volume’s opening essay — Kōkan Igaku Hensenshi 皇漢醫學變遷史 (“A History of the Vicissitudes of Sino-Japanese Medicine”) — sets out Fujikawa’s larger historical project: the comprehensive reconstruction of Sino-Japanese medical history from the earliest Japanese sources (Kojiki, Nihon shoki) through the medieval and Edo periods to the modernisation of the Meiji era. The opening sentences capture the method: “In no country is there a beginning to medicine separate from the beginning of humanity itself. In Japan, too, medicine has existed since the most distant antiquity. But the historical materials for medicine — apart from the Kojiki and Nihon shoki — must be reconstructed from the archaeological remains, since other documentary sources are wanting. From these materials one finds that the medicine of ancient Japan was, in artistic terms, of the folk-medical category…”
The collection covers essays on: the periodisation of Japanese medical history, the reception of Chinese Buddhism and the Ishinpō tradition, the Sengoku-Edo Manase / Goseihō and Yoshimasu / Kohōha schools, the Meiji medical reforms and the abolition of traditional medicine, and the post-Meiji Kanpō revival. Several essays specifically treat pharmacology — the history of the Honzō wamyō 本草和名 KR3ec072 tradition, the medieval Japanese reception of the Gāngmù, the Edo honzōgaku movement, and the early-Shōwa laboratory-pharmacological investigations of Chinese drugs. The collection is one of the principal documentary sources for early-20th-century Japanese reflection on the Sino-Japanese medical tradition.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves the body of the essays. The frontmatter file is present.
Abstract
Fujikawa Yū (富士川遊, 1865–1940). See his person note. Fujikawa is conventionally regarded as the founder of modern Japanese medical-history scholarship; his Nihon igakushi 日本醫學史 (1904, expanded 1922 and 1941) remains a standard reference.
The work’s significance is twofold. As a collection of essays, it is one of the principal Japanese-language treatments of Chinese-medicine history in the early 20th century — predating the more famous Chinese histories of 陳邦賢 Chén Bāngxián (Zhōngguó yīxué shǐ 中國醫學史, 1919) and Liào Yùqún 廖育群 (later generation). As a statement of historiographical method, it represents the application of Meiji-Western historicist scholarship to the East Asian medical tradition, a method that subsequently dominated 20th-century Chinese and Japanese medical historiography.
Translations and research
- Lock, Margaret. 1980. East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan. UCP. — situates Fujikawa in the history of Japanese medical scholarship.
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2018. Models of the Body in Early Modern Japan. (forthcoming / dissertation).
- Nihon igaku shi taikei 日本醫學史大系 series — collected editions of Fujikawa’s medical-history writings.
- No Western-language translation.
Links
- Wikipedia (ja): 富士川游.
- Wikidata: Q11484894 (Fujikawa Yū).
- 中國醫藥論文集 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB