Chǎnlùn 產論
Treatise on Childbirth by 賀川玄悅 (撰)
About the work
The Chǎnlùn 產論 (Japanese Sanron), 4 juàn, is the foundational text of Edo-period Japanese obstetrics and the principal monograph of the Kagawa school (Kagawa-ryū sanka 賀川流產科), composed by the Kyoto obstetrician 賀川玄悅 Kagawa Gen’etsu 賀川玄悅 (zì Shigen / Zǐxuán 子玄, 1700–1777). The text closes with the author’s own postscript noting “ī shù chǎnlùn shí nián yǒu liùshíyòuqī” 茲述產論時年六十有七 — “this Treatise on Childbirth is recorded at age sixty-seven,” fixing composition at 1765 (1700 + 65 = age 67 by East-Asian inclusive reckoning, the date conventionally taken as the publication year). The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3ei062 in the present knowledgebase; its disciple-continuation is the Chǎnlùn yì 產論翼 by 賀川玄迪 (KR3ei066, 1775).
Abstract
The Chǎnlùn is structured as a doctrinal exposition with an attached 48 case-records (子玄子治驗四十八則) compiled by the disciple Yamawaki Kaku 山脅格 (identif. the case-collector who signs the appended block) — a clinical compendium that exhibits Kagawa’s obstetric practice in concrete detail and is the principal historical source for the doctrines of the Kagawa school. The doctrinal contents may be summarised under the following heads:
- Rejection of the zhèndài 鎮帶 (abdominal binder): the Chinese-derived practice of binding the pregnant abdomen with a haramaki-style band — and the related practices of cord-binding (繩約頸膝) to prevent miscarriage — is rejected as productively causing the bleeding it was supposed to prevent. Multiple case-records open with the patient cured by the simple act of cutting away the binder.
- Rejection of the chǎnyǐ 產椅 (labour-chair): the practice of using a tall stool / labour-chair during delivery is replaced with supine delivery on a mat (蓐), again documented in the case-records as causing direct postpartum complications.
- Active manual manipulation in obstructed labour: where the Chinese tradition counselled patience and herbal therapy, Kagawa systematically intervenes manually — extracting transverse-presentation infants (with explicit acknowledgement that the foetus must sometimes be deemed already dead and extracted to save the mother), addressing retained placenta within 24 hours, manually managing prolapsed cord and prolapsed uterus.
- A distinctive instrument and manoeuvre set: the huíshēng 回生 (“returning-to-life”) and gōubāo 鉤胞 (“hook-on-the-foetal-membrane”) manoeuvres for retained membranes and obstructed labour, and the qūtóuguǎn 曲頭管 (curved tube) for administering medicine through clenched teeth.
- Distinctive formula-toolkit: zhéchōng yǐn 折衝飲 (the school’s principal blood-stasis formula), zhènkàng wán 鎮亢丸, hǔyì yǐn 虎翼飲, zhūmíng wán 朱明丸, lóngténg yǐn 龍騰飲, and a numbered series of zhèngfāng 正方 prescriptions.
- A polemical attitude toward conventional practitioners — zuòpó 坐婆 (midwives), fùrénkē 婦人科 specialists, and yī 醫 generalists — many of the case-records close with the conventional physician fleeing in disgrace.
Kagawa’s biographical note appended to the case-records (and adapted in his disciple’s preface to the Chǎnlùn yì) gives his origin in the Miura 三浦 lineage of Hikone 彥根 (Ōmi 近江), birth as an illegitimate son who was expelled from his father’s house at age seven, raised in adopted families, original training in shinkyū anma (acupuncture-moxibustion-massage), and eventual relocation to Kyoto where the celebrated case of a neighbour-woman with arm-presenting transverse labour — which he resolved by an improvised manipulation — launched his obstetric career.
Composition is securely 1765 by the author’s own dated colophon. The work was reprinted multiple times in Kyoto and Edo. It was transmitted to China and entered 湯本求真 Tāngběn Qiúzhēn’s Huáng Hàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), the immediate vector for the hxwd-series text.
Translations and research
- Furukawa Masakazu 古川眞和. Multiple monographs on Kagawa Gen’etsu and the Kagawa-school obstetrics — the principal Japanese scholarship.
- Burns, Susan L. 2002. “The Body as Text: Confucianism, Reproduction, and Gender in Tokugawa Japan.” In Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, edited by Benjamin Elman, John B. Duncan, and Herman Ooms, 178–219. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series — contains substantial treatment of the Sanron.
- Burns, Susan L. 2002. “When Abortion Became a Crime: Abortion, Infanticide, and the Law in Early Modern Japan.” In Gender and Law in the Japanese Imperium, edited by Susan L. Burns and Barbara J. Brooks. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
- Marland, Hilary, and Anne Marie Rafferty, eds. 2014. Midwives, Society, and Childbirth: Debates and Controversies in the Modern Period. London: Routledge — for comparative context.
Other points of interest
The Kagawa school’s rejection of the zhèndài abdominal-binder and the labour-chair is one of the strongest examples of Edo-period Japanese medical empiricism breaking with received Chinese authority on a question of practice; the doctrinal break was carried into the Republican-period kanpō revival in China via Tāngběn Qiúzhēn’s series, where it influenced the modernisation of Chinese obstetric practice. The work is also one of the principal sources for the social history of Edo midwifery, with the case-records giving vivid scenes of multi-physician consultation, in-law and family pressure, and the social rituals of confinement.