is the oldest surviving

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese medical text. It was completed in 984 by Tamba Yasuyori (also referred in some sources as Tanba no Yasuyori) and is 30 volumes in length. The work is partly based on a Chinese medical work called '' Zhubing yuanhou lun'' (諸病源候論 ''General Treatise on Causes and Manifestations of All Diseases''), compiled by

Sui dynasty The Sui dynasty ( ) was a short-lived Dynasties of China, Chinese imperial dynasty that ruled from 581 to 618. The re-unification of China proper under the Sui brought the Northern and Southern dynasties era to a close, ending a prolonged peri ...

writer Chao Yuanfang. Many of the texts cited in ''Ishinpō'' have been lost in China, and have only survived to the present through their inclusion in the work. It is a national treasure of Japan. The structural organization of the text is as follows: The ''Ishinpō'' preserved more than 200 important medical documents that were all Chinese in origin and no Japanese sources. The medical knowledge in the tome covered clinical treatments that drew from the ancient Chinese traditional medicine and influenced by Indian medical theories found in

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

scriptures as well as

Taoist Taoism or Daoism (, ) is a diverse philosophical and religious tradition indigenous to China, emphasizing harmony with the Tao ( zh, p=dào, w=tao4). With a range of meaning in Chinese philosophy, translations of Tao include 'way', 'road', ...

references (e.g. Taoist drugs). For instance, there was the so-called ''Scripture on Pregnancy'', which outlined the physical developments and fetal movements. Scholars cite its similarity with a prescription from the old Chinese medical text called ''Taichan shu,'' which contained doctrines about the development of embryo and fetus as well as proper hygiene for pregnant women. The ''Ishinpō'' is also notable for preserving some of the Taoist sexual manuals from the Han to the Tang dynasty. The twenty-eighth section of the ''Ishinpō'' contains a complete transcription of a Daoist text known as '' Sunü Jing'' (The Classic of Sunu) which is a dialogue between the Dark Maiden and the

Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch, or Huangdi ( zh, t=黃帝, s=黄帝, first=t) in Chinese, is a mythical Chinese sovereign and culture hero included among the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. He is revered as ...

, with the former providing advice on sexual practices to the latter. While the text is written in

kanbun ''Kanbun'' ( 'Han Chinese, Han writing') is a system for writing Literary Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period until the 20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for offici ...

, Japanese terms are written to the side in

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...

for plants, animals, and minerals. A facsimile reproduction of the 1859 edition, 30 volumes in 2 hardback cases, plus a 270-page modern commentary, was issued in Tokyo in 1973.

Notes

References

* *Wile, Douglas. ''The Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics including Women’s Solo Meditation Texts''. Albany: State University of New York, 1992. *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ishinpo 984 10th-century Japanese books Healthcare in Japan History of science and technology in Japan Late Old Japanese texts Old Japanese texts Medical manuals National Treasures of Japan Traditional Japanese medicine Heian-period books