Zhēnjiǔ xué gāngyào 針灸學綱要
Essentials of Acupuncture and Moxibustion by 管周桂 Sugahara Shūkei (Guǎn Zhōuguì, 撰)
About the work
A two-juan Japanese Edo-period (under the Chinese-medical kanpō tradition, hence catalogued as 清) acupuncture-classics-revival treatise by 管周桂 Sugahara Shūkei (Chinese reading Guǎn Zhōuguì), prefaced by 林義卿 Hayashi Yoshiqing (hào Tōmei 東溟) in Meiwa 明和 bǐngxū 丙戌 (1766, winter 11th month). Hayashi’s preface is a developed polemic on the relation of acupuncture to medical “revivalism” (復古): “the principal heroes of revivalism are not those who blindly cling to existing methods. They first study under contemporary masters, exhaust the present transmission, then doubts arise — but they cannot raise the ancients from the dead and ask them; nor can they verify their teachers’ claims against the source. Yet in medicine the disease-enemy is always before us, the prescription can be subjected to experiment — and yet because the patient and the disease cannot speak, the chance-success of a prescription brings fame… Thus the revivalist medical claim cannot be verified by accident; only the broadly-learned scholar, who tests the words against the actual technique, can support its truth. Guǎn Zhōuguì of Settsu (摂都) is a revivalist of acupuncture, and an excellent one — based on his clinical experience, he wrote this book.”
Abstract
The Zhēnjiǔ xué gāngyào is one of the principal Edo-period Japanese kanpō acupuncture-revivalist works, advocating a return to the Língshū-Sùwèn-Nànjīng canonical doctrine against the elaborated post-Míng didactic-verse tradition. Sugahara’s distinctive technical claim is that only 70 acupoints, out of the standard 361, are clinically essential — and that competent acupuncture practice consists of mastering these 70 thoroughly rather than memorizing the full traditional catalog. The Edo Japanese reception of Chinese acupuncture had moved in the kogaku 古学 (“ancient-learning”) direction of the 服部東庵 Hattori Tōan / 杉山和一 Sugiyama Wa’ichi (KR3ee052) school, of which Sugahara is a late representative. The work was printed at the Setsu-tō (modern Ōsaka) workshop in 1766 and circulated back into China in the late Qīng.
Translations and research
- Mathias Vigouroux, “Acupuncture in Edo-period Japan”, EASTM (2010s).
- Andrew Edmund Goble, Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War, University of Hawaii Press, 2011.
Links
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù, zhēnjiǔ section.
- 針灸學綱要 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB