A Study of the Manuscript Nyugan no zu, in the Possession of the National Diet Library: A Comparison with the Manuscript Seishu sensei ryo nyugan zuki.

Abstract

In May 1810, the wife of Rihei Hiroseya, from Takayama, Hida Province, received an excision of a breast cancer tumor at Shunrinken in Hirayama, Kishu Province. Hirose asked Gaku Nomura, one of the Hanaoka's disciples, to make a manuscript describing his wife's surgery. In reply to Hirose's request, Nomura made the manuscript including her history and operative procedures, with illustrations of 13 other surgical cases of breast cancer, and he gave it to him the next month. The manuscript, titled Seishu sensei ryo nyugan zuki, is extant and this is considered to be the one that Nomura gave Hirose because there has been no other manuscript with this title and the manuscript is carefully recorded and bound. This suggests that there must be a draft of Seishu sensei ryo nyugan zuki. A manuscript titled Nyugan no zu is in the possession of the National Diet Library and it is considered to have been originally stitched temporarily, and then bound later. However, the contents of this manuscript are identical to those of Seishu sensei ryo nyugan zuki. In particular, illustrations in both manuscripts are highly likely have been made by the same illustrator, although sentences in both manuscripts are recorded by different hands. Thus, it is likely that Nomura asked an illustrator to make two sets of illustrations and Nomura used one for his presentation to Hirose and another for a draft, and that Nyugan no zu is a draft of Seishu sensei ryo nyugan zuki.