MS Japanese 120

A woodblock printed partial Japanese translation in katakana-majiri script of an early Chinese work on forensic pathology, Wuyuan lu 無寃録 by Wang Yu 王與(1260-1346) of the Yuan dynasty, which seems to have been completed in 1308. The translator was Kawai Naohisa from Izumi; he translated the text in 1736, according to his preface of the same date, although it was not published for thirty years. It is not a complete translation, for he explains in the preface that he omitted those parts relating to the laws of ‘that country’ (i.e China) and selected only those parts that he deemed useful for Japan; thus, the entire first volume of the original is omittted. It is clear from a note attached by the publisher to the inside front cover that the translation was made not from a Chinese edition but from an annotated Korean edition of the Chinese text, and this is confirmed by the inclusion of the three original prefaces and one postface from the Korean edition, Sinju muwŏnnok 新註無寃録. The publisher’s notice affixed to the inside front cover and dated 1768 bears the name of Sūbundō 崇文堂 (=Maekawa Rokuzaemon) of Edo; this firm was presumably the original publisher, but the only surviving copies of the 1768 edition bear instead the names of two other Edo publishers, Suwaraya Kasuke and Tanbaya Rihei. As the colophon of this copy makes clear, the original blocks were later purchased by Maekawa Rokuzaemon for a reprint in 1799. It seems likely, therefore, that the publisher’s notice was actually produced in 1799 and backdated to 1768.

Japan, 1799

Material: paper; ２冊 | 2 volumes; binding dimensions: height 261mm, width 192mm, depth 25mm

This copy bears the ownership seal of Shirai Mitsutaro (1863-1932), a botanist who was the first plant pathologist in Japan.