La médecine d'Ishizaka Sōtetsu (1770-1841) en tant que modèle culturel de l'époque d'Edo

Abstract

Ishizaka Sōtetsu (1770-1841), physician-acupuncturist of the late Edo period, is mostly known as the founder of the school bearing his name, which is still active to-day. Even if the acupunctural points generally used in that school do not correspond to those which are mentioned in the Chinese classics, the abundant writings of Ishizaka Sōtetsu show that he mastered these classics, but, according to him, they needed to be almost entirely remoulded, because they had been heavily corrupted with the passing of time. In order to remould them, Ishizaka Sōtetsu first used some elements of the classics with which he agreed, but he also made use of elements from Western medicine. For him, Western medicine not only does not contradict Chinese medicine, but helps a better understanding of it. Although using classical Chinese terminology, he is obliged to alter the meaning of some terms in order to agree with results of Western anatomy to which he was introduced by Japanese translations, his relations with Ōtsuki Gentaku and two meetings, in 1822 and 1826, with Tullingh and Siebold. The Ei e chūkei zu (plates showing the arteries, veins and portal veins) of 1825 is an example of Ishizaka Sōtetsu 's inclusive approach. It shows his concrete way of integrating fundamental anatomic notions of Western medicine, such as veins and arteries, in the frame of traditional Chinese medicine. This method seems of course to be at the antipodes of Western scientific thought. Nevertheless, we have to take into account that he applied a much diffused way of thought of pre-modern Japan to the medical field. Moreover, it cannot be forgotten that he contributed to the modernisation of Japanese medicine during his time as his inclusive and syncretistic method made innovations look familiar, integrated as they were in a system claiming to remain traditional. In the conclusion is shown the parallelism between the syncretic attitude of Sōtetsu in the medical field and predecessors like Kūkai and Yoshida Kanetomo (especially Yoshida Shintō, which encompasses Shintō, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, enjoyed a general acceptance from the Muromachi period until the end of Edo). A syncretist like Sōtetsu is now considered as marginal, because of being alien both to the radical modernisation of medicine and to the pure conservation of tradition. Nevertheless, in his time, he was important and merits the historian's consideration: his misinterpretation of negating the difference between Chinese and Western medicine probably made the swift triumph of Western medicine in the following age easier.