History of Kampo medicine “1st International Symposium on Kampo Medicine”

To The Editor In the history of Kampo medicine, the characteristics of medicine during the Edo period that had a strong influence on modern Kampo medicine are analyzed, and the purpose is to capture international exchanges of Kampo medicine. The first presentation describes the medicine of Dosan Manase in the Azuchi-Momoyama period, who established a foundation for the Gosei school in the Edo period. Presentations 2 and 3 we show how the back-to-the ancient thought and the evidential scholarship influenced by China developed into the Japanese style among the Koho and Koshogaku schools. Presentation 4 analyses how acupuncture and moxibustion were introduced to early modern Europe focusing on the transmission of medical images related to the acupuncture channels theory. The first presentation is “Medicine of Dosan Manase: The Founder of Gosei School”. Dosan Manase was a representative physician of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. He was born in Kyoto and grew up as a monk. Early in his career, he went to study at the Ashikaga school. When he was enrolled at this school, he became a disciple of Sanki Tashiro, a court physician of Koga-Kubo. Under Sanki, Dosan became acquainted with the latest medical literature and acquired his clinical skills, especially Satsusho-benchi as the system to examine the patient’s condition and determine the treatment accordingly without using fixed prescriptions. Because it does not refer to existing prescriptions, the medical practice system of Satsusho-benchi needs an organized theory of medicinal efficacy. Dosan had taken over Satsusho-benchi and medical theory from Sanki. The characteristics of Sanki’s practice differed from Chinese medicine by being accompanied by Buddhist thought. After Sanki’s death, Dosan returned to Kyoto and studied more medical literature. Dosan referred to his own medicine as Li Dongyuan and Zhu Danxi medical school. He wrote many medical books such as Keiteki-shu and instructed many pupils in his private school, which was called Keiteki-an, but neither included Buddhism as an element of medicine. In the Edo period, Manase’s school became the mainstream of the Gosei school. The second presentation is “Knowledge Transfer and Innovations in Primordialist Thought: New Reflections on the Koho School in the Edo Period”. In the middle of the Edo period, the Koho school rose to prominence under the influence of transferred medical knowledge from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and criticized the medicine of the Gosei school which flourished in the Early Edo period. The Koho school advocated the revival of the primordial medical sources, including the Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Exogenous Febrile Disease), and criticized the “warming and tonifying method” as well as the theory of “yin/ yang and five elements” of the Gosei school. However, close investigation of the Koho works by the four eminent physicians Konzan Goto, Shuan Kagawa, Toyo Yamawaki, and Todo Yoshimasu reveals that the socalled “retrogression” or “going-back-to-the-Origins” actually included both practical inheritance and innovations of the Japanese medicine based on Chinese tradition. Furthermore, the thoughts of physicians of the later Koho school and their debate with the Gosei school gradually turned into a criticism of the Chinese medicine of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. We may argue that these developments resulted in making Japan familiar with Chinese medicine during the later Edo period, despite the commonly held idea that the Koho school promoted returning to ancient medical thought. The third presentation is “The Emergence and Development of the School of Evidential Studies of Medicine in the 18th-19th Century Japan, with Special Reference to the Taki Family”. Evidential scholarship is a philological approach to the study of classic references based on evidential analysis and critiques. It culminated in mid-Qing China and was imported into Japan via books. This scholarship emerged in the field of medicine during the late Edo period marked by the formation of the school of Evidential Studies of Medicine, the scholars of which applied the methods from Qing’s evidential scholarship to the study of medical classics and made accomplishments that were later introduced back to and highly regarded in China. In this presentation, the presenter will focus on the Taki family whose members were considered representatives of the school. Consisting of leading figures of Received: 23 May 2022 Revised: 5 July 2022 Accepted: 27 July 2022