Medicine in the Chikusai Monogatari

Abstract

The Chikusai Monogatari (1623) has a distinctly humorous and parodist character. This description also applies to the medical fragments, which are thought to be primarily intended to entertain the reader. In support of this, textual similarity between the medical novellas of the Chikusai Monogatari and the stories in Seisuishō (1623) by Anrakuan Sakuden (1554 1642) is often pointed out. However, Tomiyama Dōya (1584 1634), the author of the Chikusai Monogatari, was a physician himself, having studied medicine with Manase Gensaku (1549 1632), one of the most prominent physicians of the early 17^th century. Therefore, noting solely the entertaining nature of the medical short stories in the Chikusai Monogatari, researchers seem to deny Tomiyama an opportunity to say something about medicine contemporary to him. The late 17^th century was marked by the establishment of new Japanese medicine, led by Manase Dōsan (1507 1594). Dōsan’s new approach found that neither any experienced physicians nor up-to-date medical treatises existed in late 16^th-century Japan. Borrowing knowledge from the Chinese treatises that flooded the Japanese book market in the 1590s, the Japanese were mastering new material, which, as can be seen from the text of the Chikusai Monogatari, continued into the 1620s, even if not always successfully. Chikusai encounters a variety of illnesses, from fever to syphilis, and often successfully fulfils his medical duties by curing the patient. His success was accompanied by good fortune, and it was this good fortune that elevated Japanese doctors in the early 17^th century: at a time when old medicine was recognized as ineffective, while new medicine had not yet gained a firm doctrinal footing, it was good fortune that allowed doctors to continue practicing their profession. The analysis of the medical short stories of the Chikusai Monogatari allows us to trace the history of new Japanese medicine; to rethink Chikusai’s medicine work by presenting it as inept by necessity due to the limited development of medical knowledge in Japan; and to understand who was assumed to be the original readership of the Chikusai Monogatari.