Translating the Inner Landscape

AnatomicalBricolagein Early Modern Japan

Bibliographic Data

ID3924996
AuthorsDaniel Trambaiolo (Girls Incorporated, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume37
Pages163-191
Publication date2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueOsiris (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/719225
OpenAlexW4283376824
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited18

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

Human body · Lexicon · Linguistics · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Anatomy

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