| 研究実績の概要 |
During FY 2017, I continued my research on mushi 虫 in Harikikigaki 針聞書. As intended, part of my research has involved finding other examples of mushi in medical materials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For this purpose, I visited the National Diet Library and looked at, among other works, material belonging to the Yoshida 吉田 school of acupuncture.
I have used the published research of Prof. Hasegawa Masao (長谷川雅雄) and his coauthors for more than ten years (see their 2012 book, 腹の虫の研究 -日本の心身観をさぐる). However, even their extensive review of mushi 虫 does not cover late-Muromachi and early-Edo mushi in detail. For example, there is a scroll belonging to the “secret tradition” 口伝 of the Yoshida school 吉田流 of acupuncture that includes hand-painted images of mushi that are not dissimilar to the ones in Harikikigaki, but there are only six mushi in the Yoshida scroll.
So far, I have not found any other medical material that is remotely similar to the mushi 虫 in Harikikigaki 針聞書. I am tempted to suggest that Harikikigaki is not an actual medical treatise but rather a playful parody of medicine. This suggestion is quite radical, and I am not yet ready to commit to it.
In August 2017, I participated in the 9th International Congress on Traditional Asian Medicines. I was the chair of a panel, “Worms, Demons and Gods: Disorder and Health Within the Body.” My paper was “Weird Worms and Odd Gods: Two Japanese Medical Manuscripts.” My presentation relied in party on my study of Harikikigaki.
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