Xuǎnzhēn sānyào jí 選針三要集
Selected Essentials of the Three Aspects of Acupuncture by 杉山和一 (撰)
About the work
The Xuǎnzhēn sānyào jí 選針三要集 (Japanese Senshin san’yōshū), 2 juàn, is the principal extant Chinese-language work of 杉山和一 Sugiyama Wa’ichi 杉山和一 (1610–1694) — known in Japanese medicine history as Sugiyama Kengyō 杉山検校 — the most famous blind acupuncturist of Edo Japan, inventor of the kanshin-hō 管鍼法 (the guide-tube needling method that remains the signature distinguishing feature of Japanese acupuncture today), and patron-founder of the Edo blind-acupuncturist guild. The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3ee052 in the present knowledgebase.
Abstract
The author’s own colophon (postscript / 跋) preserved in the source-file frontmatter gives the autobiographical situation. Sugiyama writes that he himself suffered illness in youth and was treated by acupuncture, and that subsequently in his middle years, falling ill again, he studied acupuncture for three years under Master Irie 入江先生 — Irie Toemon 入江豐明 of the Irie-ryū 入江流, the SòngYuánMíng continental-acupuncture lineage transmitted into Edo Japan. After successfully treating himself he proceeded to treat large numbers of others. The colophon laments that the contemporary Japanese acupuncturists have abandoned the meridian / channel-pathway theory of the Língshū 靈樞 in favour of treating the symptom directly (舍經絡而尋病) — “the scholar does not needle, the needler does not study” — and that the present compilation is intended to remedy this through a back-to-the-classics restatement of three central doctrines, for the blind to memorise by hearing (“為使盲人諳”).
The three “essentials” of the title are the three central technical / doctrinal heads of the treatise:
- The taxonomy of the qīqíng 七情 (seven emotions) as internal causes of illness: 喜 joy injures the heart (qì scatters), 怒 anger injures the liver (qì reverses), 憂 worry injures the lung (qì gathers), 思 thought injures the spleen (qì knots), 悲 grief injures the heart-envelope (qì congeals), 驚 startle injures the gallbladder (qì confuses), 恐 fear injures the kidney (qì cowers).
- The five overuse-injuries (wǔshāng 五傷): 久行 prolonged walking injures the sinews, 久立 standing injures the bones, 久坐 sitting injures the flesh, 久臥 lying injures the qì, 久視 looking injures the blood.
- The classical six external causes of illness (風寒暑濕燥熱) and the three-substance core pathology (氣、血、痰 qì, blood, phlegm) underlying all hundred diseases. To these three doctrinal heads the work appends the canonical yāoxué 要穴 (acupoint) catalogue with point-by-point indications and supporting moral and astrological observations.
The doctrinal character of the work is continental and classical rather than innovative-empirical: Sugiyama is transmitting the SòngYuánMíng acupuncture canon as he received it from the Irie school, for the use of blind practitioners who could not read the canonical sources themselves. The work’s pairing with Sugiyama’s instrumental innovation (the kuda-bari 管鍼 guide-tube) is essential: the doctrine is conservative, but the delivery method is the great Japanese innovation that allowed the doctrine to be practised reliably without sight.
Composition is undatable with precision but is bracketed by Sugiyama’s kengyō appointment of Tenna 2 = 1682 (after which he had the resources and the official mandate to compose institutional teaching materials) and his death in Genroku 7 = 1694. The Sugiyama-ryū hari-jutsu kōshūjo 杉山流鍼術講習所 was chartered in 1693, which is the most plausible immediate context for the publication. The work was transmitted to China in the Republican period and entered the Shanghai HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. Chén Cúnrén 陳存仁, the immediate vector for the hxwd-series text.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language scholarship of the work specifically located.
- Birch, Stephen, and Junko Ida. 1998. Japanese Acupuncture: A Clinical Guide. Brookline, MA: Paradigm Publications — the standard modern English-language reference on the Sugiyama tradition.
- Hinrichs, T.J., and Linda L. Barnes, eds. 2013. Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 304–305 — covers Sugiyama, the kanshin-hō, and the modern Japanese blind-acupuncturist tradition.
- Macé, Mieko. 1992. “La médecine traditionnelle japonaise.” La Revue du Praticien 42.
Other points of interest
The pairing of Sugiyama’s Xuǎnzhēn sānyào jí (this work) with the Meiji-era continuation KR3eu059 Zhēnxué tōnglùn by 佐藤利信 in the hxwd series is significant: between them they document the entire arc of the Japanese state-protected blind-acupuncturist guild from its late-17th-century foundation under Sugiyama to its biomedical-modernisation rescue at the end of the 19th century. The Sugiyama school’s kanshin-hō guide-tube method continues to define Japanese acupuncture practice in distinction from the Mainland Chinese free-hand tradition.