[SCENE ONE- Narrator]

[Instrumental of Childish Gambino’s Summertime Magic]

Seeing is understanding. Or is it?

Exploring the intimate relationship between the eyes and the mind, vision and cognition, or simply, seeing and understanding is considered crucial to appreciating the complex evolution of eighteenth century Japanese medicine. During this time, Edo period physicians were confronted with all types of knowledge about the body as well as how to interact with the body from the systems of kampo, or Chinese-method medicine, to rampo, or Dutch-method medicine.(1) But as Sugita Gempaku notes in Kaitai Shinsho, the revolutionary Japanese translation of Kulmus’ Anatomische Tabellen, the arrival of the Dutch fostered memboku o aratameru or the “changing of one’s outlook.”(2) From viewing the beautiful illustrations in Dutch anatomical texts to observing the dissections of grotesque corpses, the significance of sight in reconstructing Japanese representations of the body is undeniable. But what I would like to turn the attention to here is the plausible contributions of the sense of touch and particularly the touch of the eta to Japanese anatomy. 

[SCENE TWO- Eta]

[Edo period classical Japanese music]

[Sounds of the early morning and village life]

Ugh… I groan as my wife shakes me awake. Pushing aside my groggy protests of how the sun isn’t even up yet, she tells me to hurry. She reminds me that I have to do an entire day’s worth of work in just a few hours because some ishi [physician] in Kyoto wants to peer inside a criminal’s body.

As I leave my home to get ready for work, I see others of my etamura [village] doing the same. I greet my brother, the tanner. My uncle, the undertaker. My friend, the executioner. And in turn, they greet me, the butcher. Walking past my friend, I wonder whether the person he’s set to take the life of later today is the same person I will use to learn about life itself.

[Sounds of the dissection]

Head bowed, eyes to the ground, make no sound. These are the three principal rules that us eta must obey when in the presence of those purer than us. Once the ishi situated himself behind me, distanced quite a bit from the corpse I must say, I began my work (Figure 1). I made my first cut into the body, starting with the inferior stomach because I knew that those parts rot the quickest. My hands soon became a filthy mess and waves of sweat dripped down my forehead. I could almost taste the metallic tinge of blood in the air whilst smells of rot invaded my nostrils. Regardless, I kept going. I took the intestines out of the body and unfurled its entirety, expressing exactly how it felt between my fingers. Switching to a sturdier knife, I fought against the corpse as I sawed through his ribs to reach the heart and the lungs. When I got to an organ of which I didn’t know the name, I described it as best as I could, reaching for my past experiences as a butcher to pull me through. The ishi simply kept nodding, transcribing, and muttering about the nine-organ theory and the koumou ryu [the red-haired] and soon we were done. 

 

 

[SCENE THREE- Narrator]

[Instrumental of Childish Gambino’s Summertime Magic]

Through this speculative account of Japanese anatomical history, we are questioning the notion of eta dissectors as invisible technicians who passively performed manual labor. Instead, we are exploring a narrative in which they served as active agents of inquiry who felt, strained, learned, modified, and contributed to the process of medical information creation. So now the question becomes: how could it even be possible that the eta, as individuals who were forced into a perpetual state of impurity and disempowerment, were parties to the making of medical knowledge?

The answer to this question lies in the cardinal nature of anatomy. Fundamentally, anatomy is a field deeply rooted in action, practice, and performance. As important as sight is in establishing anatomical information, it is the convergence of the eye and the hand, of vision and touch, that shapes true understanding of the body.(4) Among all of the actors involved in Edo period Japanese dissections, the sole individuals who performed at the intersection of seeing and doing are the eta. Equipped with “ocular hands,” the eta synthesized their personal occupational experiences with real-time sensory observations of dissections to become active contributors to the production of medical knowledge.(5) 

Ultimately, what we’re curious about is how much of the eta’s sensations and observations were communicated to and recorded by the attending physician as well as how much of the eta’s choices, influenced by his own expertise, contributed to the “success” of this creation of knowledge. In any case, it is abundantly clear that the contributions of eta dissectors to Japanese anatomy are inextricably intertwined to a solidarity between visual and tactile modes of sensation and perception. Bringing back Sugita Gempaku’s call to change one’s outlook, what I am proposing is that the development of Japanese medicine remained incomplete even with Kaitai Shinsho given the absence of the physician’s touch on the human body, signifying that the evolution of true anatomical knowledge in Japan was not yet at its finish.

 

Notes

1. Morris Low, “Medical Representations of the Body in Japan: Gender, Class, and Discourse in the Eighteenth Century,” Annals of Science 53, no. 4 (1996): 347, https://doi.org/10.1080/00033799608560821.
2. Shigehisa Kuriyama, “Between Mind and Eye: Japanese Anatomy in the Eighteenth Century,” in Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge, ed. Charles Leslie and Allan Young (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 22.   
3. Unknown painter of the Kano Group, “Scroll (untitled),” (Japan: Late Edo Era): Formerly in the Wada Museum of Medicine in Kyoto and now kept in the collection of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
4. Rafael Mandressi, “Of the Eye and of the Hand: Performance in Early Modern Anatomy,” TDR/The Drama Review 59, no. 3 (2015): 62-63, https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00491. 
5. Mandressi describes the phrase “ocular hands,” coined by physician Jean Riolan (1580-1657 CE) while describing the manner in which one must conduct research, signifying the importance of the convergence of sight and touch for scientific pursuits, see Rafael Mandressi, “Of the Eye and of the Hand: Performance in Early Modern Anatomy,” TDR/The Drama Review 59, no. 3 (2015): 62, https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00491.

 

Bibliography

Leslie, Charles, Allan Young, and Shigehisa Kuriyama. “Between Mind and Eye: Japanese Anatomy in the Eighteenth Century.” Essay. In Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge, 21–43. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1997. 

Low, Morris F. “Medical Representations of the Body in Japan: Gender, Class, and Discourse in the Eighteenth Century.” Annals of Science 53, no. 4 (1996): 345–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033799608560821.

Mandressi, Rafael. “Of the Eye and of the Hand: Performance in Early Modern Anatomy.” TDR/The Drama Review 59, no. 3 (2015): 60–76. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00491.

Unknown painter of the Kano Group. “Untitled.” Scroll. Tokyo: National Museum of Nature and Science, Late Edo Era.