Article
ID: CBB091969158

Translating the Inner Landscape: Anatomical Bricolage in Early Modern Japan (2022)

unapi
Medicine, Chinese traditional Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence Anatomy Translations Early modern Netherlands Japan

The translation of European anatomical treatises is widely considered one of the pivotal processes of early modern Japanese history, introducing new ways of understanding the body and new styles of visual representation, as well as serving to launch the broader intellectual movement of “Dutch Studies” (rangaku 蘭学). In this article, I consider how anatomical knowledge and anatomical translations were integrated into the medical thinking of Japanese doctors whose understandings of the body continued to be informed by older East Asian traditions of medical knowledge. In contrast to the rangaku translators, who developed a novel anatomical lexicon in order to faithfully reproduce the meanings of European source texts, early nineteenth-century practitioners of Sino-Japanese medicine, including Kako Ranshū, Mitani Boku, and Ishizaka Sōtetsu, described the anatomical body using the language of the Chinese medical classics. At the same time, they used new understandings of the body from European anatomy to solve long-standing problems in the interpretation of those classics, identifying specific anatomical structures in the digestive system corresponding to the “triple burner” (C. sanjiao, J. sanshō 三焦) and reimagining the body’s conduits for the circulation of blood and qi and the targets of acupuncture in terms of the veins, arteries, and nerves.

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Authors & Contributors
Bretelle-Establet, Florence
Elman, Benjamin A.
Goble, Andrew Edmund
Horiuchi, Annick
Huisman, Tim
Jorink, Eric
Journals
Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity
Korean Journal of Medical History
Chinese Journal for the History of Science and Technology
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Publishers
Primavera Pers
Springer
University of Hawai'i Press
WBOOKS
University of Hawaiʻi Press
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Anatomy
Translations
Medicine, Chinese traditional
Medicine
Transmission of texts
People
Ruysch, Frederick
Shozen, Kajiwara
Siebold, Philipp Franz von
Steno, Nicolaus
Vesalius, Andreas
Zhang, Jiebin
Time Periods
19th century
17th century
18th century
Early modern
Edo period (Japan, 1603-1868)
Medieval
Places
Japan
Netherlands
China
Europe
Italy
East Asia
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