Zhēn xué tōnglùn 針學通論
General Discourse on the Study of Needling by 佐藤利信 Satō Toshinobu (撰)
About the work
A Bakumatsu / Meiji-period Japanese acupuncture treatise by 佐藤利信 Satō Toshinobu, expressly written as a primer for blind acupuncturists. The opening Fánlì 凡例 is a remarkable document of late-Edo / early-Meiji Japanese acupuncture pedagogy: “This book originally was intended to make blind people study the acupuncture art; therefore the diction must be simple and brief. Heaven gave birth to humanity, each with different essence and spirit; faces too vary in beauty and ugliness; the foolish can be educated and brought to knowledge — but the Heaven-given deformities are beyond even the divine physician’s remedy. Among them, the blind are the most unfortunately afflicted… [Satō’s pedagogical mission, in the 杉山和一 Sugiyama Wa’ichi tradition, is to make acupuncture accessible to the blind through simplified language and standardized techniques.] As for the ancient acupoint-names (shùxué 俞穴) — this book uses the names of anatomical structures from current dissection-based anatomy to define needling sites; therefore all shùxué names are replaced with anatomical-location names. The work contains occasional inserted Western (洋) terms, which are the original European terms used in Western medical texts and are adopted directly.”
Abstract
The Zhēn xué tōnglùn is a major Japanese Meiji-period attempt to reform acupuncture pedagogy through (i) accessibility to the blind community (in the Sugiyama tradition, KR3ee052), and (ii) replacement of the traditional shùxué acupoint-name vocabulary with anatomical-structure terminology in the manner of Western medical translation. Satō explicitly notes the influence of “jiānmiè dǔ ér” 仙蔑篤兒 (Latin figmentum?) and Western anatomical loan-words. The work belongs to the broader Meiji-period Japanese acupuncture-revisionism that produced the modern “Sawada-ryū” and “Yanagiya-ryū” lineages. The composition window 1850–1900 followed here is conservative; precise dating is not available without further internal evidence.
Translations and research
- Mathias Vigouroux, “Acupuncture in Edo-period Japan” (2010s), for the Sugiyama-tradition pedagogy for the blind.
- Margaret Lock, East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan (1980).
Links
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù, zhēnjiǔ section.
- 針學通論 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB