4C Daidoji

Panel Title:

Transmission of Bodily Techniques in the History of China and Japan

Panel organizer: Keio DAIDOJI

Chair: TBA

1) Hsiu-fen CHEN (National Chengchi University, Taiwan)

Massage: The Oral and Written Transmission of a Healing Art in China, 1600-1900

2) Sumiyo UMEKAWA (Nihon University, Japan)

From the First Love; The Japanese Understandings of Chinese Art of the Bedchamber

3) Keiko DAIDOJI (Keio University, Japan)

Palpating Emotions: Transmission of abdominal diagnosis during the Edo period

Discussant: Shinji KAJITANI (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo)

Hsiu-fen Chen

Hsiu-fen Chen is Associate Professor of History at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. She has published several articles on the topics of madness, emotions and regimen in late imperial China. Her first book ‘Nourishing Life and Cultivating the Body: Writing the Literati’s Body and Techniques for Preserving Health in the Late Ming’ (2009) was awarded as one of the best books of humanities by the National Science Council (Taiwan) in 2010. Now she is writing her second book entitled as ‘Empire of the Mind: Emotions, Madness and Mental Healings in Ming-Qing China’, partly based on her doctoral thesis at SOAS, University of London. In addition to the history of body and mind, Chen is also interested in medical images and visual representation in Ming-Qing China.

Sumiyo Umekawa

Sumiyo Umekawa is Part-Time Lecturer at Nihon University, Meiji Pharmaceutical University, and Otsuma Women’s Junior College.  She is the author of the book in collaboration with Professor Yoshinobu Skade, Ki no Shiso kara Miru Dokyo no Bochujyutsu [The Daoist Art of the Bedchamber in the Light of Ideas of Qi].  Her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled as “Sex and Immortality”, investigated Chinese sexual art from medical and religious perspectives.  She is also researching the alliance of ideas and techniques of sexual affairs between China and Japan, which includes comparative studies.

Keiko Daidoji

Keiko Daidoji is affiliated with Keio University as a postgraduate research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. She graduated the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2009 with a thesis considered the complexity of transmission of medical knowledge in relation to the local experience of illnesses in pre-modern Japan. Her recent research is to analyse the history of treating emotion-related disorders in Japanese Kampo medicine, from the perspectives of the transnational flows of medical knowledge. She is also interested in the relationship between the expressiveness of local language and its effect on the translation of foreign medical ideas.

Shinji Kajitani (the discussant)

Shinji Kajitani is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Intercultural Studies at the University of Tokyo. His main research field is phenomenology, cultural studies and medical history. His recent publications are “Leib und Seele vor und nach der Modernisierung der japanischen Medizin – an Hand von Büchern zur Kinderpflege” (in: Neue Phänomenologie zwischen Praxis und Theorie, Karl Alber: Freiburg/München, 2008), “ Die Fremdheit der Natur und die Funktion des Fests in der volkstümlichen Religion Japans” (in: Was bleibt von Gott? Beiträge zur Phänomenologie des Heiligen und der Religion, Neue Phänomenologie Bd. 9, Karl Alber: Freiburg/München, 2006), “ The Change in Understanding of the Body in the Edo-Period, and its Philosophical Connotations - Research into Japanese Childcare Books before and after the Introduction of European Medicine” (in: Annals of Existential Thought, vol. 23, 2008). Basic Problems of the Phenomenology of Hermann Schmitz (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2002). He is now interested in the change of understanding of the human and the world in the process of modernization.

Panel Title: Transmission of Bodily Techniques in the History of China and Japan

Discussant: Shinji KAJITANI (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo)

Panelists: Hsiu-fen CHEN, Sumiyo UMEKAWA, Keiko DAIDOJI

The difficulty of transmitting bodily techniques lies in the diversity of medical culture itself. In the East Asian medical tradition, the study of physical touch was developed in various forms, from therapeutic methods to sexual arts. This panel will look at how bodily techniques were used and transmitted in pre-modern China and Japan.  The survey of the variety of texts on the subject tells us that profound ambiguities are inherent in the writing and reading of bodily techniques. Some knowledge was marginalized in the landscape of medical orthodoxy, while some was secretly transmitted among those who were specifically concerned. This was partly due to the difficulty of translating physical sensation into language either in oral or written form, and partly due to the particular cultural representations of these techniques within the distinctive locales. Instead of simply introducing the application of bodily techniques in China and Japan, this panel will further highlight the need for an insight that draws attention to the interaction between texts as informant and readers as recipient in order to map out the history of these transmissions. How and by whom were the texts read and applied?

When unraveled, the complex history of bodily diagnosis, treatment and sensation, the gap between learned and popular medicine, the issues of translation and interpretation, the imagination of the body, and medical commercialization reveals the hidden struggle of the practitioners for both professional and popular esteem in different local, social, and historical settings. By jointly discussing these diverse facets of vernacularization in the medical domain, the papers will elucidate how the application of physical techniques was tied into the specific context of society in which they were practiced.

 

Massage: The Oral and Written Transmission of

a Healing Art in China, 1600-1900

Hsiu-fen Chen

National Chengchi University, Taiwan

Abstract

Massage is a popular healing art for treating diseases and preserving health in both traditional and modern China. By analyzing various manuscripts and printed books, this paper is aimed at a survey of massage involved in medical therapies, bodily techniques and secretly transmitted knowledge in Ming-Qing China. It will be especially focused on the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century when massage was gradually despised by scholarly doctors and marginalized from the learned medical landscape. On the one hand, its application was often restricted to the treatment of children’s diseases and bone dislocation. On the other hand, it was rather popularized by itinerant doctors, religious practitioners, female healers and even barbers. For explanations of such transition, I suggest that the competition among different types of healers, the differentiation of medical knowledge, the transformation of oral transmission into written and visual forms, and not least, the Confucian gender segregation, all help to enlarge the gap between learned and popular medicine. In so doing I hope this paper will contribute to better understandings about how massage was circulated in pre-modern Chinese society, and to show how secret medical knowledge became public owing to its printed genres and book marketing.

 

Title: From the First Love; The Japanese Understandings of Chinese Art of the Bedchamber

Sumiyo UMEKAWA

Nihon University, Japan

Abstract

  Japanese had long received certain amount of influence from China even in the field of sexual activities, as one can well observe in Ishinpo 医心方 of Heian period.  Later in Edo period, Japanese were still reflecting Chinese ideas of sex.  One of the instances should be Fanhua Liqin 繁華麗錦.  It was a Chinese sex manual of the period roughly around the Ming and the Qing.  Although the original Chinese version was seemingly lost, R.H. van Gulik has reported the existence of a copy or copies of this particular manual in Japan.  Indeed, an edition with Japanese commentary comes down to us, by the name of Hanka Reikin Wakai 繁華麗錦和解; Japanese Commentary for Fanhua Liqin.

  As it was the late imperial compilation, Fanhua Liqin has several features different from earlier sex manuals, for instance, those which were quoted in Ishinpo.  Those features were apparently quite new to Edo people and indeed several of these features were rather “esoteric” which one would not decipher without knowing codes.  Therefore, no matter how hard Edo Japanese tried to understand and no matter how well they could read Chinese, they were unable to achieve the full understandings of this later sex manual, without codes apparently transmitted orally.  Consequently, they seemingly needed to do certain amount of guess work, which should surely reflect their own ideas of sexual affairs and thus disagree with original Chinese concept.  The Japanese Commentary for Fanhua Liqing shows such “diversions” in Japanese understandings of Chinese sex manuals.

Taking the Japanese Commentary for Fanhua Liqin as an instance, this paper will survey how Edo Japanese understood Chinese later sex manuals by comparing and contrasting the original Chinese parts and Japanese commentaries.  By so doing, it will show how greatly Edo Japanese had been put under the influence of earlier Chinese sex manuals, as well as how cultural factors affect the ideas of people sharing the same/ similar ideology of sex.

 

Title. Palpating Emotions: Transmission of abdominal diagnosis during the Edo period

Keiko DAIDOJI

Keio University, Japan

Abstract

Abdominal diagnosis is a method developed in Japanese traditional medicine (Kampo) to palpate the patient’s abdomen in order to locate pathogenic causes in Japan since pre-modern times. Although the techniques of abdominal palpation were often considered esoteric to the point of being of ‘inexpressible’, the fact remains that a number of texts on the subject were written between the 17-19th centuries. In order to elucidate how the sensation of bodily touch was talked about, written about or kept secret in the context of Edo-period medical culture, this paper will focus on an Edo-period doctor, Yoshimasu Todo 吉益東洞 (1702-1773) who is known for his adherence to Shanghanlun, a great medical classic of Han China, and his extensive use of abdominal palpation in diagnosis. By analysing the onomatopoeias and metaphors used in Yoshimasu’s abdominal diagnosis for emotion-related disorders, it will not only shed light on the interpretation of a Chinese text by an Edo Japanese doctor, but also reveal a form of empiricism which permeates Yoshimasu’s adherence to this particular text and diagnostic method. How are emotional problems which mostly found in Shanghanlun recognised as tangible objects in the abdomen, and reconstructed with verbal expressions? Showing the complexity of the development of this diagnostic method, the Japanese translation of Chinese medical texts, the expressiveness of phonetic sounds in oral transmission, as well as the Japanized vision of empiricism which was generated from transnational exchanges of knowledge, can all help underscore how Edo-period doctors’ approach to emotional disorders was differentiated from other East Asian areas where abdominal diagnosis rarely gained attention.