Yīshì qǐyuán 醫事啟源
Origins of Medical Affairs by 今邨亮 (撰)
(The catalog gives the author as 日本·今樹亮, which is a typographical slip for 今邨亮 / 今村亮 — Imamura Ryōan; this is followed here.)
About the work
The Yīshì qǐyuán 醫事啟源 (Japanese Iji keigen; “Origins of Medical Affairs”) is a late-Edo / early-Meiji historical-bibliographic monograph by 今邨亮 Imamura Ryōan 今村了庵 (1814–1890), the senior shogunal physician (oku-i 奧醫師) and Higo-Edo kanpō 漢方 scholar, the third-generation head of a hereditary medical family. The work — printed in Bunkyū 2 = 1862 — is one of the most comprehensive Edo-Japanese historical surveys of the origins and early development of the Chinese medical tradition, surveying the major figures (Huángdì, Qí Bó, Bǎn Què, Cāng Gōng, Huá Tuó, Zhāng Zhòngjǐng) and the foundational scriptural and prescriptional corpus. Imamura subsequently produced an annotated edition, the Kōchū iji keigen 攷註醫事啟源, with extensive philological notes.
Abstract
The work is one of the most important late-Edo kanpō historical-scholarly contributions to the framing of Chinese medical antiquity. Imamura’s selection of authorities and his framing of the early-Hàn / pre-Hàn medical transmission was influential not only within Edo kanpō but also, in the early-Meiji period, in the political defence of Chinese medicine against the imperial-Meiji programme of replacing kanpō with Dutch / German biomedicine — a campaign Imamura himself was actively involved in.
Imamura’s hereditary lineage (his father and grandfather were also shogunal physicians) and his connection to Asada Sōhaku 淺田惟常 (淺田惟常) place him at the heart of the late-Edo kanpō revival; the Iji keigen belongs to the same scholarly milieu as the Tamba (Taki) philological programme at the Igaku-kan, though Imamura’s emphasis falls more on historical-narrative reconstruction than on text-critical collation.
For Imamura’s other principal work see KR3eh055 Kakke kōyō 腳氣鉤要 (1861), the foundational late-Edo monograph on beriberi.
Translations and research
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2013. “Native and Foreign in Tokugawa Medicine.” Journal of Japanese Studies 39 (2): 299–324. — for the late-Edo kanpō historical-scholarly context.
- Sakai, Shizu 酒井シヅ. 1982. Nihon no iryōshi 日本の医療史. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki — for the Imamura family’s institutional position.
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠. Articles on Edo Chinese medical philology.