Floating Along in the World of Japanese Prints

The Anatomical Drawings of Minagaki Yasukazu

 

The Kaibo Zonshinzu (Exact Anatomical Drawings) is a collection of eighty-three anatomical drawings, contained within two scrolls, compiled in 1819 by the Kyoto doctor Minagaki Yasukazu (1784-1825). The drawings, produced by the doctor himself, were based on observations made during the dissections of more than forty executed criminals. Praised by the renowned German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold (who added a complimentary inscription to the first scroll), the Kaibo Zonshinzu was designated an important cultural property in March 2003 by Japan's Ministry of Culture.

Of course, the Japanese weren't the only ones to investigate the workings of the human body by dissecting executed criminals. For Europeans, execution and dissection used to go hand in hand. In Britain, for example, Henry VIII had granted the Barber-Surgeons Company of London the bodies of four executed criminals per year from 1540, for use in their public anatomical dissections. By the nineteenth century dissection was a recognised form of punishment in Britain; the Murder Act of 1751 had mandated that all murderers be dissected or hanged in chains following execution, as a 'further Terror and peculiar Mark of Infamy'.

But when comparing Minagaki's drawings with those favoured by European doctors of the nineteenth century, two examples of which are included below for comparison, the prior grisly fate of the anatomist's subject is very evident in the Kaibo Zonshinzu. For anyone accustomed to the rather sterile (though astoundingly accomplished and beautiful) illustrations produced in the West, the realism of Minagaki's drawings can be somewhat startling. The individuals depicted in European drawings look more like they've peacefully nodded off rather than kicked the bucket. Minagaki's subjects, on the other hand, with their tortured faces and dribbles of bodily fluid, are very definitely dead... more to the point, they're very definitely beheaded! He has not just provided accurate depictions of their inner workings; he has captured their tortured endings. In that, I think his anatomical drawings are quite unique.

Deep View of the Dissection of the Pterygoid Region, G. H. Ford, 1864.

The Superficial Muscles of the Thorax and the Axilla, G. H. Ford, 1876.

Kaibo Zonshinzu images courtesy of Tohoku University Museum.

Something to Get Your Teeth Into

 

I'm very interested in 18th-19th century Japanese dentistry. I've written two posts about toothy subjects before (the one about ohaguro and the one about tufted toothpicks). Today, I'm writing about wooden choppers.

If you had a tooth ache during the Edo period (1615-1868), you could choose from a number of different treatments. You might opt for a spot of moxibustion or acupuncture. Alternatively you may prefer to wear a magical charm or have an incantation recited for the benefit of your molars. Dentists serving middle class patients offered special potions made up using secret ingredients; they drew in customers by placing signs outside their shops that claimed special techniques and miraculous results. And if your teeth were too far gone to be saved, and you happened to be well-off enough, you could have your troublesome toothies pulled out and then replace them with a nice set of wooden choppers; a wooden base, often made from boxwood, cherry or apricot wood, could also be used to support ivory teeth, or ones made from animal bones, or real teeth reclaimed from elsewhere.

The image on the right shows the upper half of a set of 18th century boxwood false teeth that were found in a ditch in Yokkaichi, in Mie Prefecture. The standard of wood carving suggests that Japanese dentists were capable of producing some of the finest falsies in the world. How these teeth ended up in a ditch is anyone's guess, but it's very doubtful that such fine gnashers would have been thrown away, so they were most likely lost by their owner.

With the mouth being such a wet environment, the wooden parts of the dentures could be lacquered to prevent the build up of nasty odours. And ladies could have a nice set of choppers carved from ebony or black persimmon wood, with the darkness of the wood imitating the lacquered finish achieved by applying ohaguro. 

The writer Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848) charted his relationship with his dentures over a period of several years in his diary. Concerning the purchashing of a new set of dentures, he wrote:

'On the morning of June 5th in the 10th year of Bunsei (1827), a little past 5:30, I left my house and visited the denture-maker Yoshida Genjirō in Ushigome Kagurazaka. I had ordered a set of upper and lower dentures, had the shape measured and paid him 1 ryō. The fee for the new upper and lower set of dentures was set at 1 ryō 1 bu, and in May of 1827 I paid 1 bu in advance. Repairing of the old dentures was done, but my new dentures have not yet been constructed. The denture-maker delayed finishing the work.'

The image below shows a section from the scroll Kidai Shōran (Excellent View of Our Prosperous Age) of 1805 (artist unknown). The establishment near the centre of this line-up of shops is a pharmacy. The white advertising post situated just outside the shop tells us that the store sells expectorant pills (seiyōtan) and dental prostheses (on-ireba), as does the curtain above the entrance of the shop. 

What if you weren't terribly well-off and couldn't afford to go to the dentists and pharmacists operating out of stores in fashionable shopping areas? The lower classes were served by quacks who stood on street corners and attracted customers by performing tricks. They offered potions to relieve pain and an extraction service for teeth that were beyond saving. There were also travelling dentists who practiced both dentistry and chiropody, though their services usually consisted solely of extracting teeth and cutting corns.

A tooth would have been removed using forceps or the fingers, sometimes after initially loosening it by hitting it with a wooden stick with the aid of a mallet. Whatever method of extraction was used, there would have been no general anaesthetic available to render the patient unconscious, so having your molars molested in Edo period Japan would have been an uncomfortable experience.

Central sheet from a triptych entitled Medical Treatment for an Incurable Disease (Kitai na meii nanbyō ryōji) by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c.1850. A woman is having her teeth pulled out. On the floor alongside her there are sets of false teeth.