Yī shèng 醫賸
Medical Remnants (Iyo) by 多紀元簡 Taki Mototane (hào Lìchuāng 櫟窗 / Lìyīn zhuōzhě 櫟蔭拙者 / Guìshān 桂山, 1755–1810) — late-Edo Confucian-physician of the Taki (Tamba) house, head of the shogunal Igaku-kan 醫學館.
Catalog dynasty correction: the catalog meta records the author as 清; the author is a Japanese Edo-period (江戶) physician of the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century. We catalogue under 江戶 with the meta form preserved as a Chinese-reception artifact. The pen-name 櫟蔭拙者 (“the Clumsy One under the Oak’s Shade”) is one of several hào used by Taki Mototane; the standard Japanese form is Taki Mototane (多紀元簡).
About the work
A three-juǎn miscellany of medical-philological notes (plus an appended fùlù 附錄 on mùyuán 募原) by Taki Mototane — the principal late-Edo kǎojù-medical philologist of the shogunal Taki house. The work is exactly what its title promises: a collection of textual “remnants” left over from Taki’s monumental commentaries on the Sùwèn 素問 (Sùwèn shí 素問識), Língshū 靈樞 (Língshū shí 靈樞識), Shānghán lùn 傷寒論 (Shānghán lùn jíyì 傷寒論輯義), Jīnguì yàolüè 金匱要略, and the Màijīng 脈經. Each note takes a single medical-textual or medical-historical problem — the etymology of mùyuán 募原, the spurious Wǔyùn liùqì 五運六氣 doctrine, the Shénnóng legend, the structure of medical-bureaucratic offices through the dynasties, the question of the Sùwèn’s Hàn-dynasty composition, the Wáng Bīng 王冰 ↔ Wáng Pīng 王砯 ↔ Wáng Pīng 王砅 character confusion, the spurious 玉房 / 玉環 acupoint, the controversy over background of the Jièpōu (解剖, anatomy) tradition, etc. — and assembles the relevant evidence from classical literature (Zhōu lǐ 周禮, Hàn shū 漢書, Hòu Hàn shū 後漢書), the standard histories, the medical canon, and contemporaneous Japanese and Chinese commentators.
Prefaces
The text opens with the appendix on Mùyuán kǎo 募原考 — Taki’s long philological essay on the medical term mùyuán (募原 / 膜原), surveying its appearances in the Nèijīng, citing 李時珍 Lǐ Shízhēn’s Bencao Màixué Shìyīn 脈學釋音, 全元起 Quán Yuánqǐ’s old commentary, 馬玄臺 Mǎ Xuántái, 張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn (cf. KR3eq016), 張志聰 Zhāng Zhìcōng (cf. KR3eq018), 吳又可 Wú Yòukě (Wú Yǒuxìng), etc., and adjudicating the philological case for 膜 ↔ 募 / 幕 graphic interchange. Internal date reference Kyōwa kuihài dōng 享和癸亥冬 = winter of Kyōwa 3 = 1803 fixes a terminus ante quem.
Abstract
Taki Mototane 多紀元簡 (1755–1810) was the senior hereditary shogunal physician of the Taki (Tamba 丹波) house, head of the Igaku-kan 醫學館 (the Edo shogunal medical academy in Ushigome, established 1791), and the principal architect of the late-Edo Japanese kǎojù-medical tradition that produced the standard critical commentaries on the entire Chinese medical canon. The Yī shèng is the late-career “shavings-and-trimmings” volume produced alongside Taki’s massive commentary programme — preserving the philological notes and historical-bibliographic asides that did not fit neatly into the canonical commentaries themselves. The composition window 1795–1810 reflects (a) Taki’s mature period after his 1791 Igaku-kan appointment, (b) the internal 1803 date in the Mùyuán kǎo appendix, and (c) his death in 1810. The work entered Chinese circulation through the late-Qīng / Republican-era Kōkan igaku sōsho 皇漢醫學叢書 (1936) repatriation programme; it is preserved digitally at jicheng.tw.
Historiographical significance: the Yī shèng is one of the most concentrated displays of the late-Edo Japanese kǎojù-medical philological method at its mature peak — combining mastery of the Chinese medical canon, the standard histories, the philosophical Masters, the Daoist cāntóng lore, the Buddhist canon (note the citation of the Dàbōrěbōluómìduō jīng 大般若波羅蜜多經 and Yìchǔ liùtiē 義楚六帖 on the four humour-categories), Korean medicine (the Yīfāng lèijù 醫方類聚 of Chosŏn), Dutch-learning (Hélán xué 荷蘭學) anatomical and physiological reports, and Taki’s own clinical observation. The work’s casual mention of a Hélán anatomical text that locates the seat of memory in the brain (and Taki’s measured corroboration via the Huángtíng 黃庭 and Nèijǐng 內景 Daoist physiology) is one of the earliest indications in Japanese medical literature of rangaku 蘭學 anatomical findings being absorbed into the classical-medical framework. Not in CBDB (Japanese figure).
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Yī shèng located. For Taki Mototane and the late-Edo Igaku-kan see Daniel Trambaiolo, “Translating the Body: Medical Education in Japan from the Edo Period to the Meiji Era” (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton, 2014), chs. 2–3; Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠, “Taki-shi no igakukan to kanjo” 多紀氏の醫學館と漢書, in Kanseki to Nihon (Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin, 1995); Yakazu Dōmei 矢數道明, Kinsei Kanpō igaku-shi 近世漢方醫學史 (Tōkyō: Meiji Shoin, 1971), chs. on Taki Mototane.
Other points of interest
The Mùyuán kǎo 募原考 appendix on the philological problem of 膜 / 幕 / 募 interchange in the Nèijīng anatomical-physiological lexicon is one of the most-cited single pieces of Edo-Japanese kǎojù-medical philology, and is the locus classicus for the recognition that the Wēnyì lùn 溫疫論 of 吳又可 Wú Yòukě (cf. KR3eq064 and the WúWú school of Wēnbìng) builds its pathology on the mùyuán (膜原) anatomical category.
Links
- Person note 多紀元簡.
- Companion works: Sùwèn shí 素問識, Língshū shí 靈樞識, Shānghán lùn jíyì 傷寒論輯義 (all by the same author, not separately catalogued in KR3eq).
- Kanseki DB
- 醫賸 (jicheng.tw)