Míngjiā Fāngxuǎn 名家方選
A Selection of Formulas from the Famous Houses (Japanese Mei-ka hō-sen) by 山田元倫 (Yamada Genrin, fl. late 18th c., late Edo Japan)
About the work
A late-Edo Japanese formulary collecting tested secret prescriptions from the great Japanese hereditary medical houses — most prominently the Wā (和) and Tan-ba (=Tamba 丹波) families — alongside select Chinese-tradition formulas from the Shānghán, Jīnguì, and SòngMíng compendia. The compiler’s framing premise is that the great Japanese house-physicians of the Heian and medieval periods had cultivated a transmitted medical tradition that should have flourished alongside the Chinese imports, but that this Japanese tradition had been all but destroyed in the Ōnin War fires of 1467–1477 (應仁之兵燹). Yamada presents the work as a small attempt to recover what survives.
Prefaces
The KR source carries two front pieces:
- Preface by Tachibana Atsushi-shi-yuki 橘薰院有篤子行, Anei 9 gēngzǐ mid-autumn first day = 1780 mid-9th-lunar-month.
- Cites the medieval regent Konoe Yoshimoto’s 良基公 kanpaku dictum that the three essential vessels of the State are literature, military arts, and medicine. The preface notes that the Wā and Tan-ba hereditary medical families originally preserved all the recipes — “alas, their writings were caught up in the Ōnin War fires.” During the war Yamada’s Xiānjūn (predecessor) “gathered the burnt remnants and fled with them to Tanba (dānzhōu) province,” but the recipes thereafter did not spread through the realm. “From then on, those who discussed medicine did not distinguish what was right for the place but borrowed everything wholesale from foreign countries — truly lamentable!” The preface goes on to describe Yamada’s visit to the preface-writer’s “Auspicious-Mushroom Garden” (ruìzhī yuán 瑞芝園), where he showed him this collected manuscript of “famous houses’ secret recipes,” and the preface-writer endorses its publication.
- Self-preface (zìxù) by Yamada Genrin himself.
- Develops the argument that jīngfāng (canonical formulas) must be selected with care, that “those of the medical arts who do not distinguish gǔjīn zhī màilǐ jīngfāng (the pulse-doctrines and canonical formulas of ancient and modern times) and instead mix in fúzhù (talismans and incantations) — for such, the scalpel is on the brink of killing people.” The compiler’s method is therefore to select from “the míngjiā zhī mìfāng (famous houses’ secret formulas) those that respond to disease as drumstick to drumhead.” Dated Anei 9 gēngzǐ = 1780.
Abstract
A precisely-dated late-Anei era (1780) emergency-and-clinical formulary by Yamada Genrin, a physician of the Tachibana 橘 hereditary medical family of Tanba 丹波 province. The Tachibana family was one of the two principal Japanese hereditary medical houses dating back to the Heian period (the other being the Wake 和氣 family); during the Edo period it claimed the highest medieval prestige and held some bakufu service but had been overshadowed by newer houses. Yamada’s preface emphasises this national-pride dimension: the work is positioned as a small contribution to recovering a Japanese medical heritage notionally lost in the fifteenth-century civil wars.
The body of the work is short — the format is the standard Edo “tested formula” booklet, with each entry giving a formula name, ingredients with Japanese-measure doses, and one or two clinical indications. The selection-criterion is yàn (proven by clinical test): Yamada cites the medieval physician Wā Masada (雅忠) for the proverb “Other men know many formulas to treat one disease; I know one formula to treat many diseases.”
The work does not appear in the principal Edo medical bibliographic catalogues and is not widely known.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Brief catalogue notice in Mayanagi Makoto’s online checklist of Edo medical literature.
Links
- See 山田元倫 for biographical information.
- Cognate Edo Japanese formulary traditions: KR3ed094 Fāngjì cídiǎn, KR3ed096 Lèijù fāng, KR3ed097 Fāngjī.
- 名家方選 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB