Jiāshú fāng yǔ Fāng jí 家塾方與方極
The Family-Academy Formulary and The Formula Standard by 吉益爲則 (撰)
About the work
The Jiāshú fāng yǔ Fāng jí 家塾方與方極 (Japanese Kajuku-hō to Hōkyoku) is a composite volume preserving two related programmatic works of 吉益爲則 Yoshimasu Tōdō 吉益爲則 (1702–1773), founder of the Edo Kohōha 古方派 (Ancient-Formula School):
- The Fāng jí 方極 (Hōkyoku, “The Formula Standard”), Tōdō’s terse symptom-pattern-indication index to every formula of Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán and Jīnguì corpus, composed in 1755 and one of the foundational documents of the Kohōha programme;
- The Jiāshú fāng 家塾方 (Kajuku-hō, “The Family-Academy Formulary”), the formulary of Tōdō’s Kyōto Tōdō-juku 東洞塾 academy, transmitted from Tōdō to his Higo-province disciple 村井杶 Murai Kin 村井杶 and published in 1780 with Murai’s editorial annotation.
Together they constitute, with the Lèijù fāng KR3eu063 (1762), the Yī duàn KR3eu069 (1759), and the Yào zhēng KR3eu072 (1771), the core textual canon of the Kohōha. The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3ed097 in the present knowledgebase.
Abstract
The Fāng jí. The first preface (xù), in Tōdō’s voice, is dated Hōreki 5 / 8 = autumn 1755 (寶曆五年乙亥仲秋日, signed 藝陽吉益為則公言甫). It opens with the Shàngshū Hóngfàn 尚書洪範 citation huáng jiàn qí yǒu jí 皇建其有極 — “the king establishes the standard” — and applies it to medicine: Zhāng Zhòngjǐng established the medical jí (極 “standard, ultimate”), but two thousand years of corruption and confusion have obscured it. The recovery of the standard requires fāngzhèngxiāngduì 方證相對 — the principle of one-to-one matching between formula and symptom-pattern, with no further appeal to disease-aetiology speculation. The second preface, by Tōdō’s friend Sō Genshisen 曾原子泉 / Yúnmén 雲門, is dated Hōreki 5 / 7 = summer 1755 (寶曆五年秋七月) and emphasises that the work is intended not only for Tōdō’s own disciples but for the medical public at large. The postface by Tōdō’s scribe Shina Kyūmei 品丘明 = 品玄左 of Nagato 長門 is dated Hōreki 5 / 10 = winter 1755 (寶曆五年乙亥冬十月). A later postface by Bessū-no-yuki 別猷之 is dated Hōreki 12 / 12 = early 1763 (寶曆十二年冬十二月) — i.e. a re-publication notice prefixed to a Hōreki-12 reprint.
The text of the Fāng jí itself proceeds formula by formula, in Tōdō’s signature terse one-line-per-formula form. The pattern is fāngmíng 方名 + zhì 治 + zhèng 證: e.g. “桂枝湯. 治上衝、頭痛、發熱、汗出、惡風者” (“Guìzhī tāng. Treats up-surging qì, headache, fever, sweating, aversion to wind”). Approximately 200 formulae are listed, the largest contiguous block being the guìzhī family, the máhuáng family, the cháihú family, the báihǔ family, the chéngqì family, the xièxīn family, and so on. The aim is to allow the practitioner to identify the correct formula by symptom-pattern alone, without engaging any of the zàngfǔ 臟腑 / qì-physiological doctrinal apparatus that Tōdō rejected.
The Jiāshú fāng. The second component of the volume is the formulary of Tōdō’s Kyōto Tōdō-juku academy, prefaced by 村井杶 Murai Kin’s editorial note dated An’ei 9 / 5 = summer 1780 (安永九年庚子仲夏, signed 肥後村井杶). Murai records that he received these thirteen formulae from Tōdō directly, has used them for over a decade with universal success, and is now reproducing them in print because the formulae are circulating in unreliable copies with corrupt doses (海內傳方之人, 唯受其方, 而分兩服度, 無所考定).
The first twelve formulae are named after the twelve lǜ 律 musical pitch-tubes — Tàicù wán 太簇丸 (i.e. rénshēn dàhuáng wán), Jiāzhōng wán 夾鍾丸, Gūxǐ yuán 姑洗圓, Zhònglǚ wán 仲呂丸, Ruíbīn wán 蕤賓丸, Línzhōng wán 林鐘丸, Yízé wán 夷則丸, Nánlǚ wán 南呂丸, Wúyì wán 無射丸, Yìngzhōng sǎn 應鐘散, Huángzhōng wán 黃鐘丸, Dàlǚ wán 大呂丸. Murai’s commentary notes that the lǜ names are not Tōdō’s own but were given by the academy students to distinguish the academy formulae from those in the canonical Shānghán sources, and that the names have since become standard in the Japanese kanpō community. A thirteenth formula (the Zǐ wán 紫丸) is appended, with Murai’s substantive critique of the contemporary mis-use of Tōdō’s Qībǎo wán 七寶丸 (the academy’s mercury-and-clove formula for tertiary syphilis) by later “ancient-formula school” practitioners who use it as a simple purgative without the indicated 6+7-day mercury sequence.
Composition is therefore bracketed 1755 (Fāng jí) to 1780 (Jiāshú fāng): the Fāng jí is securely 1755 by all four preserved dates, and the Jiāshú fāng is securely 1780 by Murai Kin’s postscript. The combined recension preserved here postdates the 1780 publication of the Jiāshú fāng. The work was transmitted to China 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
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2014. “Ancient Texts and New Medical Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Japan.” Asian Medicine 9 (1–2): 78–104 — directly engages the Fāng jí methodology.
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2013. “Native and Foreign in Tokugawa Medicine.” Journal of Japanese Studies 39 (2): 299–324 — for the polemical context.
- Marushima Eisuke 丸島英祐. Multiple Japanese studies of Yoshimasu Tōdō.
- Otsuka Yasuo 大塚敬節. Kanpō ishi no negaikoto 漢方医師の願いごと. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1989.
- Liu Ping 劉平. 2009. Riběn hàn-fāng yī-xué 日本漢方醫學. Beijing: Zhōngguó Zhōngyīyào Chūbǎnshè.
Other points of interest
The Fāng jí is the most concentrated single statement of Tōdō’s rejection of zàngfǔ / channel-meridian / yīn-yáng-five-phase theory as the substantive content of medicine: the entire treatise contains no reference to organ-systems or to elemental cycles. The Kohōha’s reduction of medicine to fāngzhèngxiāngduì — “match the formula to the pattern” — was a methodological revolution which late-Qīng Chinese revivalists (the jīngfāngpài 經方派 of Cáo Yīngfǔ 曹穎甫 and the Republican-period kanpō-influenced movement) reimported as the practical basis for a modernised Shānghán tradition. The Jiāshú fāng section is also a unique documentary record of how a successful 18th-century Kyōto medical academy actually prescribed: the family formulae include several signature Edo Kohōha combinations (the Zǐ wán with red-ochre and croton-oil; the Bóshū sǎn 伯州散 with viper, freshwater crab, and deer-antler) that are not classical and that documented Tōdō’s clinical-empirical extensions of the Shānghán canon.
Links
- Author: 吉益爲則 / 吉益東洞.
- Disciple and Jiāshú fāng editor: 村井杶 Murai Kin.
- Preface authors: Sō Genshisen 曾原子泉 (Yúnmén), Shina Kyūmei 品丘明 (品玄左, of Nagato).
- Companion works in the Kohōha canon: KR3eu063 Lèijù fāng (1762), KR3eu069 Yī duàn (1759), KR3eu072 Yào zhēng (1771).
- Parallel listing: KR3ed097.
- Series: HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. 陳存仁.