Abstract This paper investigates the comprehensiveness of the fenye 分野 (“field allocation”) system created by Chen Zhuo 陳卓 (ca. 230–ca. 320). Fenye was an omenological heuristic used in pre-modern China to correlate events in astral and terrestrial regions by artificially assigning precise astronomical measures of lodge-entry du ( ruxiu du 入宿度) to the latter. The schemes and measures of fenye underwent numerous adjustments and evolved into various models over history. There was a clear trend in imperial times to reconcile and fuse together earlier independent models, and previous research has regarded Chen Zhuo’s fenye as a synthesis and as the pinnacle of this evolution. This paper argues, however, that Chen Zhuo’s fenye achieved only formal reconciliation, failing to ensure the perfect alignment between astronomical measures and terrestrial regions. The imperfections evident in Chen Zhuo’s fenye were only truly resolved by Li Chunfeng 李淳風 (602–670), whose more refined Tang-era “guiding framework” ( jigang 紀綱) had a significant influence on expert literature. Given the impact of the intensifying bans on omenology, however, Li Chunfeng’s expert writings were less well known than his Jinshu 晉書 “Tianwen zhi” 天文志, which instead ensured the widespread circulation and authority of Chen Zhuo’s fenye , even into late-imperial times.
Abstract This article examines how Ming and Qing local gazetteers rendered environmental difference intelligible through the rubric qihou and its pairing with fenye (field allocation). Drawing on LoGaRT to trace qihou headings across over 4,000 gazetteers, I show that the rubric first consolidated in the Ming South before diffusing northward, eventually absorbing Republican-era meteorological data. I argue that compilers used the fenye–qihou pairing as an authorizing format: fenye supplied a political-cosmological coordinate, while qihou offered a flexible interface for recording seasonal rhythms, bodily concerns, and local ecological variation. Reframing cosmology as constituted through compilation practices as well as articulated in them, the article shows how gazetteers made local difference portable through headings, textual adjacency, and documentary form. This operative logic proved durable, persisting across the Republican epistemological shift even as qihou itself transitioned toward the modern concept of climate.
Abstract This article provides a detailed analysis of a single fenye 分野 (field allocation) document in a local gazetteer. We propose that fenye chapters in local gazetteers occupied an “intermediate status” between private scholarly works and centrally sponsored imperial compilations. This is a status that we attribute to local editorial practices, the official background of their compilation, and the sensitive nature of fenye knowledge which was related to military and political astrology. By examining the “Xingye” chapter of the Ningguo fuzhi 寧國府志 completed in the early years (1673–1674) of the Kangxi reign, we highlight that the fenye knowledge articulated in this gazetteer was the result of the interplay between authoritative power—namely, political authority, the authority of the Sage Kings, and academic authority—, personal factors—particularly the individual author’s scholarship—, and scholarly contexts, including regional academic traditions and the scientific background of the period. This study offers a new perspective on fenye in local gazetteers and contributes to a deeper understanding of the historically situated modes of expression of scientific knowledge.
Abstract Among the many astronomical facts included in the “Xingye” 星野 (Star Field) and “Fenye” 分野 (Field Allocation) chapters of local gazetteers are figures for the polar distance and equatorial and ecliptical width of the constellation with which a given locality is associated. Though these are “fixed stars” ( hengxing 恆星), the orthodox values of these measures vary from one historical sky survey to another as a function of secular motion, the precession of the equinoxes, instrumentation, and observational practice. An astronomer knows this, and knows to use the latest values, but a local historian in a time when the study of the subject was technically illegal might instead opt for antiquarian values, mix and match, or otherwise scramble scientific data. The astronomer might also copy and paste, propagating an error through subsequent generations and editions. This paper will examine these phenomena, identifying the origins of such data, tracing their separate transmission within the gazetteer genre, and reflecting upon differences in epistemology, presentation, and function between popular and expert astronomy. How are survey data treated differently, if at all, from astrological and historical facts? What relation do they have to the state of the field in the astral sciences? And what do these data matter to the history of a prefecture or town?
This article revisits the supposed absence of animal anatomy in early modern China through a focused case study of the “wandering” elephant gallbladder. It begins with a 1730 report by the Jesuit Dominique Parrenin to the French Académie des Sciences on a Kangxi court dissection of an elephant, in which the gallbladder was said to migrate seasonally within the animal, switching between the legs. By juxtaposing Parrenin’s correspondence with European scientists over whether elephants possess a gallbladder at all, the article reconstructs a shared yet divergent landscape in comparative anatomy in China and Europe. To elucidate the rationale behind this anecdote, this paper traces the longstanding discourse on animal viscera in materia medica , medical books, and in formal and unofficial historical records. It then examines how Chinese physicians and veterinarians used animal dissections primarily to authorize drugs and to think through cosmological and moral questions – the association, for example, of the gallbladder with courage, the application of Five Phases and zodiac schemes to explain why some species “lack” organs, and the notion that only the human body is structurally complete. The article argues that, rather than indicating indifference to animal bodies, the scattered records on elephant gallbladders and equine viscera reveal a distinct Chinese style of animal anatomy: one embedded in practical dissection, numerology, and the meridian models, and that was premised on a strong homology between human and animal bodies. This perspective both complicates narratives of Chinese “anatomical backwardness” and enriches the global history of comparative anatomy.
Manuscripts dating from the second-century bce to the first-century ce , recently recovered from tombs and other ancient sites, provide new details on the transmission of medical knowledge and practices in the early imperial era in China. The texts show that the correlative cosmology reflected in the transmitted medical canons was not fully formed in the early imperial era and that the definitions for illnesses and for parts of the inner body remained in flux. Notably, they show the persistence of ancient understandings traceable to the pre-imperial era, including the reliance on demonic or supernatural explanations of disease. This essay reviews the recently discovered bamboo texts written on the subject of the “heart” ( xin 心) and notes that, while it is obvious that the transmitted medical literature had certainly been influenced by the practices and ideas reflected in the recovered manuscripts, the transmitted canons represent an endpoint of ideological development that was not yet achieved during the Qin-Han era.
Distinct from “Classical Medicine,” ritual healing was common in ancient China. The Iu-Mien 勉, a branch of the Yao ethnic group, produced many manuscripts written in Chinese on the subject of ritual healing, including talismans, incantations, and instructions. This article discusses the Iu-Mien fertility talismans. Spells, talismans, and talismanic charts in healing rituals must be incorporated into the ritual process and accompanied by the requisite visualizations ( cunxiang 存想). Visualizations in the Iu-Mien fertility talismans, however, are not merely mental imaginations produced by ritual specialists, but are instead further concretized as “scenes” to enhance healing efficacy. This is done by homeopathic magic; through imitative association, ritual specialists harness the corresponding power of the imitated object. Talismans not only supplement religious texts but also convey a holistic picture associated with the ritual’s purpose. Rather than a dichotomy, an interpenetrative hybridization obtains between Daoism and local religions. Iu-Mien ritual healing demonstrates the adoption of both healing practices from Song-Yuan religious movements and popular beliefs in southern China. Iu-Mien ritual specialists integrated external rites and talismanic charts into their practices through selection, hybridization, and re-creation to address the challenges and impacts of external religions. Occurring spontaneously among local people (Han and non-Han alike), this cultural hybridization is similar to the mutual influence between local communities and religious organizations in early Daoism.
Abstract To curb the spread of myopia among students in primary and middle schools, the central government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched the Protecting Students’ Eyesight Campaign in 1960. In the years that followed, local officials created a kaleidoscopic range of eye health guidelines aimed at transforming school facilities and students’ personal habits of seeing, reading, and resting. Medical experts drew on knowledge derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine to devise eye exercises (眼保健操), which Chinese students still practice today. This article argues that the 1960 Campaign stemmed from anxiety among the PRC party-state leadership over the future of socialist construction, which depended on cultivating young people into morally, intellectually, and physically strong socialist workers. During the first decade of the PRC, party-state leaders grew increasingly worried about students’ engagement in schoolwork, which was thought to be increasing myopia rates and jeopardizing students’ revolutionary commitment. The Campaign thus sought to maximize socialist labor productivity by eliminating behaviors dangerous to students’ optical health and by instilling the discipline required to turn them into “successors to communism.” At the same time, although the Campaign began as a top-down war on myopia, it evolved along local trajectories into a bottom-up movement sustained by medical experts, local officials, and grassroots promoters. I argue that the vitality of the Campaign owed much to the considerable freedom enjoyed by these local actors in adapting high-level state directives, with their locally devised practices ultimately institutionalized and integrated into school curricula. The institutionalization of eye health practices transformed the Campaign into a routine school program that persists to the present day.
Abstract Following the advent of psychiatry, neurology, and brain science in Japan during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this new knowledge was rapidly disseminated throughout the network of Japanese Imperial Universities. It reached colonial Korea via the recently established Keijō Imperial University. However, medical knowledge was also deployed as a vehicle to propagate racist ideologies. In 1921, Japanese anatomist Kubo Takeshi made an unsubstantiated accusation against Korean students, claiming that they had stolen from his cranial collection. His accusation was underpinned by the assumption that the racial constitution of the accused was inferior, making them more prone to commit theft. The ‘Kubo incident’ provides an illustrative example of scientifically disguised discrimination. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the subtle racist implications of neuroanatomy and neuropathology. By circumventing visible physiognomy, the discovery of hidden features of the brain enabled a narrative fit to maintain racial hierarchies within a changing colonial regime, one that was increasingly consolidating power through assimilation rather than associative differentiation. This historical episode is once again linked to the name Kubo, but this time to a coincidental namesake: Kubo Kiyoji, professor of psychiatry and neurology at Keijō Imperial University. By focusing on Kubo Kiyoji, and various contributions to the Keijō Journal of Medicine and the Folia Psychiatrica et Neurologica Japonica , this paper uncovers discursive entanglements between the neuro-turn in medicine and colonial rule in the early–twentieth century Korea.
