Cóngguì ǒujì 叢桂偶記
Occasional Notes from the Clustered-Cassia [Studio] by 原昌克 Hara Shōkatsu / Hara Masakatsu (Japanese Edo-period physician of the late eighteenth century, Nányáng xiānshēng 南陽先生 by his Chinese-style sobriquet), with the postface signed by his pupil 大谷恭 Otani Kyō in Kansei 12 (1800).
Catalog dynasty correction: the catalog meta records the author’s dynasty as 清 (“Qīng” — a contemporaneous attribution from the Chinese cataloguer’s perspective); the author is in fact a Japanese Edo-period (江戶) physician. We catalogue here under the Edo-period attribution while preserving the catalog form as an alternative tag.
About the work
A two-juǎn compilation of clinical-theoretical jottings by Hara Shōkatsu — the Japanese Edo-period physician whose Chinese-style sobriquet Nányáng xiānshēng 南陽先生 references the Hàn-era medical tradition of 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (a Nányáng man). The work was selected from a larger manuscript collection (“ruògān juǎn 若干卷” — “however many juǎn”), edited by Hara’s pupils into the present two-juǎn form, and printed in 1800. The principal interest of the work is as a late-eighteenth-century Japanese Edo physician’s clinical-theoretical compilation that engages broadly with Chinese medical literature — including post-Yuán authors — but exercises rigorous philological discrimination (bǒbā bǐkāng, táotài liúláng 簸場粃糠淘汰鏐鐐 — “winnowing the chaff, refining the gold”) to identify the genuinely valuable clinical-medical material. Hara’s editorial method is consistent with the Edo kohōha 古方派 (return-to-antiquity) movement’s general orientation, but with significantly more openness to post-Zhāng-Zhòng-jǐng material than the radical Yoshimasu Tōdō 吉益東洞 position would allow (cf. KR3eq037).
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw text opens with two paratexts: a postface by 大谷恭 Otani Kyō, Hara’s pupil, signed Kansei jū-ni-nen kōshin shū 寬政十二年庚申秋 = autumn of Kansei 12 = autumn 1800; and a brief closing signature by Hara’s eleven-year-old son 原昌文 Sakabun (signed Shíyī tóngnán Chāngwén 十一童男昌文) recording the work’s familial publication context. The two paratexts confirm the work’s terminus date of 1800. The Hara self-statement of editorial principle — “Mèngzǐ said, ‘If one trusted books entirely it would be better to have no books at all’ … belief and disbelief depend on the person” — opens the postface and establishes the work’s discrimination-of-sources method as its principal contribution.
Abstract
Hara Shōkatsu / Masakatsu 原昌克 (Nányáng xiānshēng 南陽先生), Japanese Edo-period physician active in the late eighteenth century (fl. 1770s–1800s by internal evidence), is a less-documented figure than his contemporary Yoshimasu Tōdō but represents the moderate post-kohōha Japanese medical scholarship of the period — engaging broadly with Chinese medical literature and exercising philological discrimination rather than radically rejecting post-Zhāng-Zhòng-jǐng materials. The catalog meta dates him as Qīng (a contemporaneous attribution). The composition window 1780–1800 reflects his documented productive period and the 1800 publication date. The work entered Chinese circulation in the late-Qīng / Republican-era Kōkan igaku sōsho 皇漢醫學叢書 (1936) and subsequently the jicheng.tw digital corpus.
Historiographical significance: the Cóngguì ǒujì is one of the more useful late-eighteenth-century Japanese physician compilations for studying the Edo-era Japanese reception of Chinese medical literature — particularly because Hara’s moderate philological position offers a useful contrast to Yoshimasu Tōdō’s radical kohōha position (cf. KR3eq037). The simultaneous moderate (Hara) and radical (Tōdō) positions in late-eighteenth-century Edo Japan parallel the contemporaneous Chinese kǎojù yīxué (mid-Qīng 徐大椿 line) and Wēnbìng (late-Qián-lóng / Jiāqìng line) doctrinal-positional debates. Not in CBDB (Japanese figure).
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Cóngguì ǒujì located. For the broader Edo-period Japanese medical-textual scholarship that Hara represents see Daniel Trambaiolo, “Translating the Body: Medical Education in Japan from the Edo Period to the Meiji Era” (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton, 2014); Yakazu Dōmei 矢數道明, Kinsei Kanpō igaku-shi 近世漢方醫學史 (Tōkyō: Meiji Shoin, 1971).
Links
- Person note 原昌克.
- Kanseki DB
- 叢桂偶記 (jicheng.tw)