Tamba no Mototane 丹波元簡 (also 多紀元簡 Taki no Mototane, sinicized as Dānbō Yuánjiǎn, 1755–1810), zì Liánfū 廉夫, hào Guìshān 桂山, was the most influential Edo-period (late Hōreki to Bunka era) Japanese scholar of the Chinese medical canon, and head of the bakufu’s official medical college, the Igaku-kan 醫學館. He served as oku-ishi 奥醫師 (court physician to the Tokugawa shōgun) from 1790. The Tamba family (more properly Taki in Japanese reading) — across the generations of his father 丹波元徳, himself, his sons 丹波元胤 (Tamba no Motoin) and 丹波元堅 (Tamba no Motokata), and his grandson 丹波元琰 — produced the philological collations that effectively define the modern textus receptus of the Chinese medical canon in East Asia. Mototane’s main works:
- Sùwèn shí 素問識, 8 juan, 1806 (KR3ea010).
- Língshū shí 靈樞識, 6 juan (KR3ea026).
- Shānghán lùn jí yì 傷寒論輯義, Jīnguì yùhán jīng 金匱玉函經 collations, Yī jí kǎo 醫籍考 (begun, completed by his son 丹波元胤).
All of his works circulated back to Qīng China — chiefly via Yáng Shǒujìng’s 楊守敬 importation from Tokyo in the 1880s — and have become primary references for modern collation of the Sùwèn, Língshū, and Shānghán corpus. He died in Bunka 7 (1810), aged 56.