Song Version of Taiheisei Eho (Kanazawa Bunko Edition)

What This Cultural Property Is

The Taiping Shenghui Fang — literally "Saintly Benevolent Prescriptions of the Taiping Era" — is a colossal medical encyclopedia that the Northern Song Emperor Taizong commissioned in 978. The lead compiler was the imperial physician Wang Huaiyin, joined by a team of court doctors including Wang You, Zheng Yan, and Chen Zhaoyu. After fourteen years of careful editing, the work was completed in 992 in one hundred volumes. It became the very first official medical formulary of the Song Dynasty and was widely praised as "the foundational formulary of the dynasty."

The copy preserved at the Hosa Library is a printed version produced during the Southern Song period (twelfth–thirteenth centuries). It is a fukuro-toji (pouch-bound) book with double-ruled borders, thirteen vertical lines per page and twenty-five characters per line, measuring approximately 28.8 cm tall and 18.2 cm wide. Of the original one hundred volumes, roughly half have been lost over the centuries; what remains today consists of twenty-four original Song-printed booklets plus twenty-seven supplementary booklets transcribed by hand during the Keichō era (1596–1615) to fill in the gaps, together with two booklets of corrections (Seikei-hō Seigo) compiled in 1799. Every original volume bears the black ink stamp of "Kanazawa Bunko" and the red seal "Gohon" (御本, "honorable copy"), which together identify its remarkable lineage.

Why It Was Designated an Important Cultural Property

This book is treasured for three intertwined reasons that go far beyond ordinary rarity.

First, the content itself represents the high-water mark of Chinese pharmacology before the modern age. Across its 1,670 thematic sections, the encyclopedia records 16,834 medical prescriptions covering pulse diagnosis, internal medicine, surgery, gynecology, pediatrics, ophthalmology, traumatology, dietary therapy, alchemy, and acupuncture. It contains the earliest detailed surviving description of cataract couching surgery (a needle-based eye operation), pioneering distinctions between acute and chronic infantile convulsions, and the seminal "five favorable and seven unfavorable signs" framework that shaped East Asian surgical theory for centuries. Each prescription is paired with diagnostic theory drawn from the earlier classic Zhubing Yuanhou Lun, making the book both a clinical handbook and a theoretical synthesis.

Second, this is among the very few Song-period printed copies of the work to survive anywhere in the world. The original Song imprint vanished in China itself, and modern Chinese editions of the text have been reconstructed largely from Japanese manuscript copies. The Hosa Library's edition is therefore a primary witness to what the printed Song book actually looked like — its typeface, layout, and editorial choices.

Third, the volume's provenance is a chain of historic figures. The "Kanazawa Bunko" stamp shows it was held in the library founded around 1275 by Hōjō Sanetoki, the head of the Kanazawa branch of the Hōjō clan and a senior official of the Kamakura shogunate. After the fall of the Kamakura government, the book passed through the hands of Toyotomi Hidetsugu and various aristocrats and monks before reaching Tokugawa Ieyasu, who treasured rare classics and added it to his Suruga library. Upon Ieyasu's death in 1616, his ninth son Tokugawa Yoshinao inherited a portion of these books — the "Suruga Ozuriibon" — which became the founding collection of the Owari domain's library and, eventually, the Hosa Library.

Highlights and Points of Interest

For visitors fortunate enough to see this work during a special exhibition, the visual and historical highlights are remarkable.

The Song-period printing technique itself rewards close inspection. Carved woodblock characters cut by skilled Southern Song artisans display a confident, rhythmic style that influenced Japanese typography for centuries. The double-ruled borders and the careful spacing of thirteen lines per page reflect the mature aesthetics of Song book design at its height.

The seals tell a layered story. The black "Kanazawa Bunko" stamp at the head of every volume marks its time in Hōjō Sanetoki's library, while the vermillion "Gohon" seal records its later status as an honored possession of a daimyō house. Looking carefully, viewers can sometimes detect the faint traces of earlier reading marks left by Japanese physicians who studied the text during the Muromachi and early Edo periods.

The supplementary Keichō-era manuscript volumes are themselves a fascinating artifact. When Tokugawa Ieyasu received the incomplete set, his retainers commissioned skilled scribes to copy the missing portions from other surviving sources. The contrast between the printed Song originals and the hand-copied early Edo replacements gives a vivid sense of how knowledge was preserved across centuries through deliberate scholarly effort.

Visitor Information

The Song Edition of the Taiping Shenghui Fang is preserved in the storage vaults of the Hosa Library and is not on permanent public display. Because of its fragility and irreplaceable value, it is exhibited only during occasional special exhibitions, typically once every several years. Visitors hoping to see the original should monitor the Hosa Library and Tokugawa Art Museum websites for announcements of relevant special exhibitions, especially those focused on Kanazawa Bunko books, Owari Tokugawa heirlooms, or East Asian medical history.

Even when this specific work is not on display, the Hosa Library is well worth visiting. The exhibition rooms regularly rotate other treasures from the Owari Tokugawa book collection, including national treasures and other Important Cultural Properties such as the Genji Monogatari (Kawachi-bon), Shoku Nihongi, and Saimin Yōjutsu. The library is physically connected to the Tokugawa Art Museum, allowing a single ticket to cover both institutions. The reading room is free of charge for anyone who wishes to consult bibliographic resources.

Visitors should note that the library is closed on Mondays (or the following weekday if Monday is a public holiday), during the year-end and New Year period, and during the annual special inventory period. The library can be reached by JR Chūō Line to Ōzone Station (about a ten-minute walk), by city bus to Tokugawaen-Shindeki stop (about three minutes' walk), or by the convenient "Meguru" Nagoya Sightseeing Route Bus, which stops directly at "Tokugawaen, Tokugawa Art Museum, Hosa Bunko."

Surrounding Attractions

The Hosa Library sits within one of Nagoya's richest cultural districts.

Immediately adjacent is the Tokugawa Garden (Tokugawaen), a magnificent strolling garden built on the site of the second Owari lord Tokugawa Mitsutomo's retirement villa. The garden's centerpiece pond, waterfalls, and seasonal plantings — peonies in spring, irises in early summer, and fiery maples in autumn — offer a contemplative complement to a museum visit.

The Tokugawa Art Museum, connected to the library by a passageway, holds more than ten thousand items handed down through the Owari Tokugawa family, including nine national treasures and over fifty Important Cultural Properties. The famous Genji Monogatari Emaki (Tale of Genji Picture Scrolls) is among its most celebrated holdings.

Within walking distance is Kenchū-ji Temple, founded in 1651 by the second Owari lord to honor his father Yoshinao. Kenchū-ji served as the family temple of the Owari Tokugawa house, and its grounds preserve a quiet atmosphere that complements the historical themes of the library. Slightly farther afield, Nagoya Castle — once nicknamed Hōsa Castle, the source of the Hosa Library's name — and Atsuta Jingū Shrine offer broader context for the historical landscape from which this remarkable book emerged.