Title

 Nakashima Yūgen’s Medical Cases: Acupuncture Practice in Late Tokugawa Japan

Author

Mathias Vigouroux

Genre

Article

Pages

529-574

DOI

10.6503/THJCS.202309_53(3).0004

Download

PDF

Language

English

Key words

Tokugawa Japan, acupuncture, clinical practice, Edo period, Sino-Japanese medicine

Abstract

The publication of Sino-Japanese acupuncture textbooks and the production of acupuncture mannequins and charts became necessary components of the appropriation and dissemination of the channels theory in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868). However, very little is known about its implementation in clinical practice. There is also scant information on why and how often patients visited acupuncture specialists, or what treatment they received. The casebooks of Nakashima Yūgen’s 中島友玄 (1808-1876) daily practice add an important perspective, hitherto neglected, to the history of late Tokugawa period acupuncture practice. In this article, I begin by examining the changing medical environment of Tokugawa Japan from the late seventeenth century, focusing on the vernacularization of medical knowledge and the new concern for clinical practice as a source of knowledge. In conjunction with biographical information, I then reconstruct Nakashima Yūgen’s day-to-day acupuncture practice focusing on the data within five of his acupuncture casebooks, and discuss how the theoretical knowledge related to the channels theory that circulated in print during the Tokugawa period translates into his clinical practice.