Enlarge / Priest successful Meditation, 15th century. Possibly the unsighted Chinese clergyman Jianzhen (Ganjin successful Japanese; 688-763).
Heritage Images/Getty Images
The signifier of herbal medicine successful Japan is known arsenic Kampo, and specified treatments are often prescribed alongside Western medicines (and covered by the nationalist wellness attraction system). The archetypal idiosyncratic to thatch accepted Chinese medicine successful Japan was an 8th period Buddhist monk named Jianzhen (Ganjin successful Japanese), who collected immoderate 1,200 prescriptions successful a book: Jianshangren (Holy Priest Jianzhen)'s Secret Prescription. The substance was believed mislaid for centuries, but the authors of a recent paper published successful the diary Compounds stumbled crossed a publication published successful 2009 that includes astir of Jianzhen's archetypal prescriptions.
"Before the publication Jianshangren’s Secret Prescription was found, everyone thought it had disappeared successful the world," Shihui Liu and his co-authors astatine Okayama University successful Japan wrote. "Fortunately, we recovered it earlier it disappeared completely. It has not yet been included successful the intangible taste heritage. As we each know, intangible taste practice itself is precise fragile. Everything has a process of generation, growth, continuation, and extinction, and the remains of intangible taste practice are besides successful specified a dynamic process. We anticipation to gully much people’s attraction to support galore intangible cultures that are astir to disappear, including Jianshangren’s Secret Prescription."
Born successful what is present Yangzhou, China, Jianzhen became a disciple of Dayun Temple astatine 14 years old, yet becoming abbot of Daming Temple. He was besides known to person aesculapian expertise—passed down from monks to disciples for generations—and adjacent opened a infirmary wrong the temple. In the autumn of 742, a Japanese emissary invited Jianzhen to lecture successful Japan, and the monk agreed (although immoderate of his disciples were displeased). But the crossing did not succeed. Nor did his adjacent 3 attempts to question to Japan.
Enlarge / A representation of Jianzhen's six attempted voyages to Japan.
S. Liu et al., 2022
On Jianzhen's 5th effort to spell to Japan successful 748, helium made a spot much progress, but the vessel was blown disconnected people by a storm, and helium ended up connected Hainan Island. The monk made the arduous travel backmost to his temple by land, lecturing astatine monasteries on the way. It was astir 3 years earlier helium got back, and by then, helium had been blinded by an infection. The sixth attempt, however, proved successful. After a six-month voyage, Jianzhen made it to Kyushu successful December 748, reaching Nara the pursuing spring, wherever the monk received a lukewarm invited from the emperor.
According to the authors, Jianzhen brought galore accepted ingredients with him to Japan, including musk, agarwood, snail, rosin, dipterocarp, fragrant gall, sucrose, benzoin, incense, and dutchman's tube root, arsenic good arsenic chromatic and sweetener cane—all of which formed the ground for immoderate 36 antithetic medicines. He besides managed to cod different ingredients implicit the people of his travel from China to Japan.
After settling successful astatine Toshodaiji Temple, the monk began increasing medicinal herbs successful a garden, distributing his medicines to those successful need—including Emperor Shomu and Empress Komyo. Despite being blind, Jianzhen could inactive trust connected smell, taste, and interaction to place the assorted medicines. And helium taught galore Japanese however to cod and marque those medicines, too. In fact, galore Japanese medicines were erstwhile wrapped successful insubstantial decorated with a representation of Jianzhen.
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