Yī biàn 醫辨
Medical Disputations by 王肯堂 Wáng Kěntáng (zì Yǔtài 宇泰, 1549–1613) — selectively excerpted and edited in the Edo period (1692) by 伊東大業 Itō Daigyō 伊東大業綱, a Japanese physician of the Genroku 元祿 era.
About the work
A three-juǎn (上, 中, 下) Edo-era Japanese selective edition of Wáng Kěntáng’s Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng 證治準繩 KR3e0078 (1597–1607) and the auxiliary Yīlùn biàn 醫論辨, prepared by Itō Daigyō 伊東大業 in Genroku rénshēn 元祿壬申 yang-fù 陽復 = the yángfù “yang-returning” day (i.e. winter solstice) of Genroku 5 = December 1692. The work belongs to the Japanese Edo-era reception of late-Míng Chinese medical literature, in which selected portions of the major Míng clinical encyclopaedias were excerpted and arranged for practical Japanese use. Itō’s editorial method is straightforward: he selects the most clinically essential and clearly-organised material from the two Wáng compilations (the Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng and the Yīlùn biàn), arranges it in three juǎn, and supplies brief editorial annotations where the Japanese-Chinese textual transmission requires comment. The work entered modern Chinese circulation through the jicheng.tw digitisation.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with Itō Daigyō’s bá (postface) signed Yuánlù rénshēn yángfù zhī rì chéng yān, Yīdōng Dàyè Gāng 元祿壬申陽復之日成焉伊東大業綱 = winter solstice of Genroku 5 = December 1692. The postface explains the editorial principle: Itō reports having “repeatedly read the two books” and having excerpted “the precisely-and-clearly-treated [material] that is especially close to clinical practice” (chōuzuǎn jīngquè xiángmíng, yóu qiē yú zhìliáo zhě 抄纂精確詳明尤切於治療者) into the three-juǎn selection now titled Yī biàn.
Abstract
The Yī biàn is a Japanese Edo-era selective edition of Wáng Kěntáng’s clinical-theoretical material, dated precisely to the winter solstice of 1692 by Itō Daigyō’s postface. The composition window 1597–1692 reflects (a) the earliest date — 1597 Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng parts — and (b) the 1692 Itō editorial cut. The work belongs to the Genroku-era Japanese Edo medical-textual scholarship that systematically excerpted late-Míng Chinese medical works for Japanese practical use; comparable Genroku-era editions include those of Màijué 脈訣 and Běncǎo gāngmù 本草綱目 in Japanese cuts. The work’s historiographical significance is as a witness to the late-seventeenth-century Japanese reception of Wáng Kěntáng — a reception that paralleled but preceded the Japanese kohōha turn against the JīnYuánMíng tradition that Yoshimasu Tōdō (see KR3eq037) would lead in the next century.
CBDB records Wáng Kěntáng — see person note 王肯堂. Itō Daigyō is a Japanese Edo physician not in CBDB.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yī biàn located. For Wáng Kěntáng’s broader corpus see Joanna Grant 2003. For the Edo-era reception of Wáng Kěntáng see Daniel Trambaiolo, “Translating the Body” (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton, 2014).
Links
- Wáng Kěntáng — see person note 王肯堂.
- Itō Daigyō — Genroku-era Japanese editor of Wáng Kěntáng — see person note 伊東大業.
- Kanseki DB
- 醫辨 (jicheng.tw)