Mukai Genshō

Mukai Genshō ( Japanese 向 井 元 升 ; * March 7, 1609 in Sakimura, Kanzaki district , Hizen province (today Kanzaki city , Saga prefecture ), Japan ; † November 25, 1677 in Kyoto ; Japanese calendar : Keichō 14/2 / 2-Enpō 5/11/1) was a neo-Confucian who also made an important contribution to the scientific development of the 17th century in astronomy, medicine and medicine.

Life

Authentication of the report written by Mukai Genshō in 1657 on the medical instructions by the surgeon Hans Juriaen Hancke (manuscript copy)

Burial place of Mukai Genshō and his descendants

Mukai Genshō was born in the village of Saki ( 酒 村 or 崎 村 ), which was in the Kanzaki district ( 神 崎 郡 ) of the Hizen province. At the age of nine, the father moved to Nagasaki , where the family lived in the Kōzen district. Shortly afterwards, the trading post of the Dutch East India Company was relocated from Hirado to Nagasaki on the islet of Dejima , only 300 m from Mukai's house .

Little is known about the course of study. According to the epitaph written by Kaibara Ekiken in 1694, Mukai acquired his enormous knowledge through tireless self-study. This also applies to medicine. Kaibara describes him as one of the outstanding doctors of his time.

Mukai enjoyed the confidence of the Nagasaki authorities, which were under the direct control of the Tokugawa government. In 1639 he was commissioned with the censorship of the landed Chinese books. In 1647 he took over a Confucius temple built in the Kōzen district , and the following year he established the Honindō ( 輔仁 堂 ) private school in the Imakago district. He in 1655 wrote Scripture, what belongs to '( 知耻篇 , Chichi-hen ) Christianity as well as coming in by 1654 the country monk Ingen Ryuki (Ch. Yǐnyuán Longqi) propagated teachings of the Obaku school criticized likely have further strengthened his reputation in Nagasaki Governorate as well as at the court in Edo .

In those years, the internal security of the country was the responsibility of the Reich Inspector Inoue Masashige ( 井上 政 重 ), who - partly out of personal interest, partly to stabilize the system of rule - intensively promoted the adoption of western technology, surgery, astronomy and other useful things. At the beginning of the 1950s he commissioned Mukai to edit a text on astronomy that the Jesuit priest Christovão Ferreira (alias Sawano Chūan) , who had fallen away from Christianity , had written in Japanese, but in Latin letters. The 'Critical Explanation of Heaven and Earth' ( 乾坤 弁 説 , Kenkon bensetsu ), translated into the Japanese writing system by Mukai in 1656 and provided with comments, was the first treatise on European astronomy in Japan.

After the ten-month stay of the Leipzig surgeon Caspar Schamberger in 1650, interest in Western medicine, especially surgery, had grown at the court in Edo. The first reports were written by interpreters who understood little about medicine. In 1656, the Imperial Inspector Inoue issued an order to Mukai that he should inform himself with the Wroclaw surgeon Hans Juriaen Hancke stationed on Dejima and compile a report on Western remedies and surgical therapies. The work, completed in 1657, combined western therapies with the etiological concepts of traditional Sino-Japanese medicine. The manuscript was distributed in handwritten copies well into the 18th century. Parts of it can be found in the 'Good Recipes of Holland Surgery' ( 阿蘭 陀 外科 良方 , Oranda geka ryōhō ) published by Yamawaki Dōen ( 山 脇 道 円 ) in 1670 , the first Japanese printed work on the so-called 'Surgery of the Dutch'.

In 1658 Mukai moved to Kyoto. The following year, Kaibara Ekiken appeared in Kyoto, and the meeting of the two led to a lifelong friendly relationship. In 1671, at the request of the sovereign ( daimyō ) of Kaga , Maeda Takasada ( 前 田 孝行 , 1628–1707) under the title Hōchū biyō wamyō honzō ( 庖厨 備用 倭 名 本草 ), a work on healthy and life-extending foods that is still useful today. Mukai chose about 460 useful plants and herbs from the edible herbs book Shíwù běncǎo ( 食物 本草 ) by the Chinese Li Dōngyuán ( 李東垣 ) and other writings and describes their properties and effects.

Mukai Genshō died in Kyoto in 1677. His grave can be found together with the graves of his descendants in the cemetery of the Shinshō-Gokuraku Temple (Shinshō-Gokuraku-ji 真正 極 楽 寺 , also Shinnyo-dō 真如 堂 ).

The second son Mukai Kyorai (1651–1704) made a name for himself as a haiku poet among his children .

One of Mukai's students, Iwanaga Sōko ( 岩 永 宗 古 , 1634–1705) later supported the Dutch doctor Willem ten Rhijne when he tried to discover the secrets of acupuncture and moxibustion on Dejima . His name is mentioned in Ten Rhijnes "Dissertatio de Arthritide: Mantissa Schematica: De Acupunctura: Et Orationes Tres" (1683), which introduced the term acupuncture in Europe.

literature

• Hubert Cieslik: The Case of Christovao Ferreira. In: Monumenta Nipponica , No. 29 (1973), pp. 1-54
• Hiraoka Ryūji: The Manuscripts of Kenkon bensetsu. In: Bulletin of Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture , Vol. 1, (2006), pp. 51-63. ( 平 岡 隆 二 「乾坤 弁 説」 諸 写 本 の 研究 『長崎 歴 史 文化 博物館 博物館 研究 紀要』 ) ( digitized version )
• Ryuji Hiraoka: The Transmission of Western Cosmology to Sixteenth Century Japan. In: Luis Saraiva and Catherine Jami (eds.): The Jesuits, the Padroado and East Asian Science (1552-1773): History of Mathematical Sciences - Portugal and East Asia III. Singapore: World Scientific, 2008, pp. 81-98.
• Ryuji Hiraoka: Clavius ​​and His Astronomical Data during the 'Christian Century' in Japan. In: Historia scientiarum. Second series: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan , Vol. 18 (3), 2009, pp. 213-236. ( Digitized version )
• Hiraoka Ryūji: Nanban-kei uchūron no gententeki kenkyū (source-critical investigations into the cosmology of the southern barbarians). Fukuoka: Hanashoin, 2013, pp. 131-133, 134-140, 148-155.
• Kokushi daijiten [Great Lexicon of Japanese History]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1979. ( 『国史 大 辞典』 吉川弘 文 館 )
• Komoguchi Isao: A Sketch of Mukai Gensho's Zhi Chi Pian: His Views of Shintoism, Buddhism and Early Christianity in Japan. In: Studies in Chinese Philosophy , Vol. 19 (1993), pp. 54-69. ( 菰 口 治 「向 井 元 升 の『 知恥 篇 』素描 ー 神道 ・ 仏 教 ・ キ リ シ タ ン 観」 『中国 哲学 論 集』 ) ( digitized version )
• Wolfgang Michel: On Early Red-head-style External Medicine and the Confucian Physician Mukai Gensho. Journal of the Japan Society for Medical History , Vol. 56 (2010), No. 3, pp. 367-385. ( ヴ ォ ル フ ガ ン グ ・ ミ ヒ ェ ル 「初期 紅毛 流 外科 と 儒 医 向 井 元 升 に に つ い て」 『日本 医 史学 雑 誌』 ) ( digitized version )
• Wolfgang Michel: Hans Jurian Hancke, Mukai Genshô and Zacharias Wagener - aspects of an 'instructive' encounter in the 17th century. In: Bulletin of the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies , Kyushu University No. 1 (1995), pp. 109-114. ( Digitized version )
• Wolfgang Michel: On the Confucianist Physician Mukai Genshō and the Introduction of Western Medicine and Herbs into Japan. In: Wakaki Tai'ichi (ed.): Nagasaki as a Stage of Cultural Exchange between the East and the West . Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2013, pp. 161-186. ISBN 978-4-585-22058-9 ( ミ ヒ ェ ル 「儒 医 向 井 元 升 と 西洋 医学 ・ 本草 学 の 受 容 に つ い て」。 若 木 太 一 編 『長崎 ・ 東西 文化 交 渉 史 の 舞台』 )
• Wakaki Taiichi: On the Tombstones of the Mukai Family in Shinnyodō, Kyōto - Genealogy of the Literary Man Mukai Genshō. In: Bulletin of Faculty of Liberal Arts, Nagasaki University . Vol. 33 (1993), no. 2, pp. 1–15 ( 若 木 太 一 「京都 向 井 家 墓碑 考 ー 文人 向 井 元 升 の 家 系」 『長崎 大学 教養 教養 部 紀要 人文 科学 篇』 ) ( digitized version )
• Watanabe Kurasuke: Kyorai no chichi Mukai Genshō. In: Mukai Kyorai . Nagasaki; Kyorai Kenshōkai, 1954, pp. 354–415, 705-708 ( 渡 辺 庫 輔 「去 来 の 父 向 井 元 升」. 毎 日 新聞 社 図 書 編 集 部 編 『向 井 去 来』 長崎: 去 来 顕 彰 会 )

Remarks

1. ↑ More on the grave site and the epitaph in Watanabe (1954) and Wakaki (1993).
2. ↑ Japan's rulers tried by all means to stamp out native Christianity. This included u. a. an import ban on books with Christian content. Since it was known that Jesuits were working at the court in Beijing and writing Chinese works, all printed matter brought to Nagasaki, Japan's only port of call, was checked.
3. ↑ More on this in Komoguchi (1993).
4. ↑ More on this in Cieslik (1973), Hiraoka (2006, 2008, 2009).
5. ↑ More on this in Michel (1995, 2010).
6. ↑ More on this in Wakaki (1993).
7. ↑ More on this in Watanabe (1954).

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Mukai is the family name, Genshō the first name.