聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

中國接骨圖說

8 min read

Text ID
KR3el019
Date
1808–1808
Dynasty
江戶

Zhōngguó jiēgǔ túshuō 中國接骨圖說

Chūgoku Illustrated Treatise on Bone-Setting (Japanese title: Seikotsuhan 正骨範) by 二宮獻 Ninomiya Ken (zì Hikoka / Genka 彥可, fl. late Edo, 1754–1827, Hamada-han 濱田藩, Iwami Province). Prefaced by 丹波元簡 Tamba no Genkan (1755–1810), shogunal medical officer, in Bunka 5 (1808).

About the work

A two-juǎn late-Edo Japanese orthopaedic-manipulation treatise by 二宮獻 Ninomiya Ken (zì Hikoka 彥可), a medical officer of the Hamada han 濱田藩 in Iwami Province 石見國 (modern Shimane Prefecture, on the Sea-of-Japan side of the Chūgoku 中國 region of western Honshū) — hence the work’s title-element 中國, which in the Edo Japanese context refers to the Chūgoku region of Japan, the author’s home territory, rather than to Imperial China. The work was published in 1808 (Bunka 5 / Wùchén 戊辰) and is the first of the “three foundational Japanese orthopaedic treatises” (Seikotsuhan 正骨範, Bāgangokushū 八肝獄主, and Seikotsushinsho) on which modern Japanese orthopaedic surgery (seikotsu 整骨) is grounded. The treatise is bilingually titled: Seikotsuhan 正骨範 (“Models of Orthopaedic Manipulation”) is its Japanese title and Zhōngguó jiēgǔ túshuō 中國接骨圖說 is the Chinese-character title attached for transmission within the Chinese-language medical world; the 漢學文典 recension preserved here uses the latter. Its inclusion in the Kanripo corpus, despite its Japanese origin, reflects the work’s role as a 漢學文典 repatriated text that contributed to the late-Qīng / Republican Chinese-medicine revival of traumatology.

Prefaces

The 漢學文典 recension preserves 丹波元簡 Tamba no Genkan’s preface, dated Bunka 5 / wùchén 戊辰 / fourth-month-summer (1808). This is the only paratext preserved.

Tamba no Genkan opens with an extended analogy between the human body and a state: “Within the human body, just as within a state, when the limbs and breath are at peace, this is the image of universal peace and bright governance; when something is out of order and uneasy, this is the image of disaster and disorder. Internal pathologies are internal disorders; external pathologies are external invasions. Pathologies arising from emotion and food are like the disaster of crooked-mat-and-sunken-shu — the harm of governmental decay. Pathologies arising from wind, cold, heat, and damp are like the disaster of barbarian invasion — the disorder of disloyal vassals. As for fall-blow injuries and damage, however, these are not internal pathology nor external invasion: they are like falling stars and earthquakes, tidal-waves and mountain-collapses, the calamities of flood-fire-famine — they should have their own separate method, not be compared to internal-external treatment-arts. Hence the Sòng dynasty first had a zhènggǔ kē (bone-setting specialty), and the Míng dynasty further had a jiēgǔ kē (joining-bone specialty); their methods are contained in the Shèngjì zǒnglù and other books, and in our own time, in the Yīzōng jīnjiàn’s eight methods (mō 摸, jiē 接, duān 端, tí 提, àn 按, mó 摩, tuī 推, ná 拿) — these are what I call ‘having obtained the separate treatment.’ My only regret is that the method was not refined to detail.”

Tamba next narrates the work’s origin: “The Hamada physician Ninomiya Hikoka 二宮彥可, broad in learning and resolute in will, refined in his profession, once travelled west and reached Nagasaki, where he served as student of 吉原杏隱 Yoshihara Kyōin and obtained the bone-setting art. Kyōin was a former martial artist; he had expanded the sǐhuó quánfǎ 死活拳法 (the dead-or-alive boxing-method — a striking-and-rescue martial art) into a system of bone-setting. Hikoka exhaustively received its hidden essentials. After his eastward return he repeatedly verified the methods on patients, with results as ready as drumstick to drum — eight or nine out of ten cures — and thereupon became renowned as a good physician. Recently he traced his teacher’s sayings, supplemented them with what he had himself obtained, and wrote the Zhōngguó jiēgǔ túshuō in two juǎn. He requested a preface from me. I have examined the book: it contains the methods Tànzhū 探珠 (probing-pearl), Nòngyù 弄玉 (playing-jade), Mífēng 靡風 (lying-wind), Chēzhuǎn 車轉 (chariot-turning), Yuánxuán 圓旋 (round-rotation), Luóxuán 螺旋 (spiral-rotation), Yuèyú 躍魚 (leaping-fish), Yóuyú 游魚 (swimming-fish), Xiónggù 熊顧 (bear-looking-back), Luánxiáng 鸞翔 (phoenix-soaring), Hèkuà 鶴跨 (crane-straddling), Qílóng 騎龍 (riding-dragon), Yànwěi 燕尾 (swallow-tail), Língwěi 鴒尾 (wagtail-tail), Chǐhuò 尺蠖 (geometrid-caterpillar), and others — fifteen ‘parent-methods’ (mǔfǎ 母法), thirty-six ‘child-methods’ (zǐfǎ 子法), fifty-one methods in total. Each is illustrated with a picture and elucidated with text. He has also separately established a hundred-fifty ‘kneading-methods’ (róufǎ 揉法). The art is rich! Compared with what is contained in the Yīzōng jīnjiàn and similar books, it is as gold-pomp-and-jade-goblet to clay-sacrifice-and-wine-cup.”

Abstract

The composition window is Bunka 5 (1808); the work was published the same year in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo. The date adopted here is 1808.

The treatise is significant for three reasons:

  1. The first systematic Japanese orthopaedic-manipulation treatise. Ninomiya synthesised the Chinese imperial Qīng Zhènggǔ xīnfǎ yàozhǐ (the bone-setting chapter of the Yīzōng jīnjiàn, KR3el015, 1742) with the martial-arts manipulation-tradition he had received from 吉原杏隱 Yoshihara Kyōin in Nagasaki — itself a synthesis of jujutsu 柔術 / kuatsu 活法 (martial-arts revival-techniques) with classical Chinese-medical shǒufǎ. The 15 mǔfǎ / 36 zǐfǎ / 150 róufǎ schema vastly expands and refines the imperial Chinese eight zhènggǔ bāfǎ into a much finer-grained taxonomy.

  2. The first Japanese orthopaedic treatise to integrate Western (Dutch rangaku 蘭學) anatomy. Although Tamba’s preface emphasises the Chinese-medical foundation, the work’s anatomical illustrations (the 46 + 59 woodcut folding-leaves of the 1808 editio princeps) draw substantially on Dutch anatomical sources accessible in late-Edo Nagasaki — making this one of the earliest east-Asian medical works to combine Chinese, Japanese-martial-arts, and Western medical knowledge in a single integrated system.

  3. The pictorial-mnemonic naming-system. The fifty-one mǔfǎ / zǐfǎ names — Tànzhū (probing-pearl), Yuèyú (leaping-fish), Xiónggù (bear-looking-back), Luánxiáng (phoenix-soaring), Hèkuà (crane-straddling), Qílóng (riding-dragon), Yànwěi (swallow-tail), Chǐhuò (geometrid-caterpillar) and so on — are direct loans from the jujutsu / kuatsu nomenclature of Japanese martial arts. The cataloguing of orthopaedic manipulations under animal-and-natural-image names is itself a striking pedagogical innovation, vastly more memorable than the abstract Chinese mōjiēduāntíànmótuīná scheme.

The work entered the Chinese-medicine canon late, through the same Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū (漢學文典) movement of repatriating overseas-preserved Chinese-medicine texts that gave us KR3el001, KR3el003, KR3el008, etc. The catalog meta gives the author as 二宮獻 (Ninomiya Ken, his given-name); the preface signs the work under his zì 彥可 (Hikoka).

Translations and research

  • No standalone Western-language translation of the full text located.
  • Bibliographic description in Jonathan A. Hill (bookseller) catalogue for the 1808 editio princeps: Hill catalogue — the standard description of the physical book.
  • 服部敏良 《江戶時代醫學史の研究》 (東京：吉川弘文館, 1978) — situates Ninomiya Ken and the Seikotsuhan in the late-Edo medical-knowledge integration.
  • 蒲原宏 《整骨の歴史》 — the standard Japanese-language history of orthopaedic medicine.
  • 韋以宗 《中國骨傷科學技術史》 (北京：中國醫藥科技出版社) — treats the work’s relationship to the Qīng Yīzōng jīnjiàn.

Other points of interest

The work’s teacher-master 吉原杏隱 Yoshihara Kyōin — to whom Ninomiya travelled across Honshū to Nagasaki to study — was a martial artist (yuánwǔfū 元武夫) rather than a physician. The bone-setting system Yoshihara had developed was thus an outgrowth of the jujutsu / kuatsu tradition of martial-arts revival-techniques rather than of conventional medical training. The transmission line is therefore: jujutsu / kuatsu (Yoshihara) → seikotsu (Ninomiya) → modern Japanese orthopaedic surgery — a pathway distinct from the European-medical lineage that became dominant in Japan after Meiji.

The 1808 editio princeps (Kyoto–Osaka–Edo combined imprint) is bound in 8vo with original yellow wrappers and original woodblock title-slips on the upper covers — a high-quality private-charity production typical of late-Edo medical publishing.

Graph View

Backlinks