JAPANESE ACUPUNCTURE: Blind Acupuncturists, Insertion Tubes, Abdominal Diagnosis, and the Benten Goddess

/Home/Chiropractic & Acupuncture/Japanese Acupuncture

JAPANESE ACUPUNCTURE: Blind Acupuncturists, Insertion Tubes, Abdominal Diagnosis, and the Benten Goddess
by Subhuti Dharmananda, Ph.D., Director
Institute for Traditional Medicine, Portland, Oregon

The development of acupuncture in Japan, with its unique style we recognize today, has been attributed to Waichi Sugiyama, who is known as the "blind acupuncturist." Born into a samurai family in 1610, he went blind at an early age. For the blind in Japan, the primary jobs available were acupuncturist, moxibustionist, or massage therapist. He chose to be an acupuncturist.

At eighteen, he left the country home of his well-to-do parents and traveled to Edo (now called Tokyo), where he met his first teacher, a sighted acupuncturist named Takuichi Yamase. But, his skill did not progress as he had hoped. After five years under his tutelage, Takuichi threw Waichi out, saying his pitiful techniques would forever keep him from being an accomplished acupuncturist. Heartbroken, Waichi began the long journey home, but halfway there, he collapsed from exhaustion in the town of a famous doctor. As fate would have it, this doctor had been Takuichi's mentor and, after regaining his health, Waichi got another stab at being a disciple of an acupuncturist.

With practice, Waichi's needling skills progressed, but, even after a few years of dedication, he still wasn't good enough to practice on others. Desperate for help, he traveled to Enoshima, a small islet about 30 miles from Edo, to pray to Benten for better skill. Benten is the only female deity among the seven Japanese gods of good fortune. She is goddess of language and literature, love and wisdom, music, and the sea. Benten was originally a Hindu goddess (Sarasvati in Sanskrit) later adopted by Buddhists in India. She was enshrined in Japan by the Shogun Yoitmo Minamoto (1147-1199) in support of Buddhism. The Benten figures are usually placed near water's edge to serve as a guardian deity of sea voyages.

The Benten enshrined at Enoshima was reputed for her ability to fulfill the wishes of worshippers, but access to the cave with her statue was restricted to special visitors. In 1600, the Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa (1542-1616) visited the Enoshima Benten and made the site an official prayer hall for the Tokugawa family, which spurred the faith in Benten. In 1603, the temple/shrine complex was opened to the public. It is now a Shinto shrine.

Waichi stayed at the shrine, fasting and praying in the cave for three weeks. At the story goes, when he came out of the cave after the fast, he stumbled over a stone (see Figure 1). As he fell to the ground, a pine-tree needle stuck deep into his leg. Cursing, he picked it up, and, as he did, he realized that it was sticking out from a reed of bamboo. Inspiration struck: for the acupuncturists, it is a critically important to stick the needle straight down and attain the proper depth: this pine needle in its bamboo cradle had done just that. Upon his return, he began using a small pipe to help guide the acupuncture needle vertically to pierce the patient's skin. That bamboo reed became the basis for a device known as a kudabariÊ a needle insertion guide tube that is now standard equipment for both blind and sighted acupuncturists worldwide.

Waichi's innovation made him a successful acupuncturist; he is credited with having developed 100 acupuncture techniques. Waichi's skill was proven when his acupuncture skill cured Shogun Tsunayoshi Tokugawa (1646-1709) of a serious illness. As an expression of gratitude, the Shogun retained him as his personal physician, conferred the title of Kengyo, the highest official title given to the blind, and he gave Waichi a chunk of land, which became the home to Shinji Koushujo, Edo's first organized school for the blind. In appreciation of his success, Waichi donated a three-story-pagoda in the name of Benten (which was, unfortunately, removed after the Meiji Restoration) and he had 47 mileposts built between Enoshima and Fujisawa, of which 11 are still in existence. He visited Enoshima so often to worship Benten that he was not always available when Shogun Tsunayoshi needed him. To keep Waichi nearby, the Shogun erected a mini-temple sacred to Benten in Waichi's residence.

By the time of his death in 1694, at the age of 84, Waichi had established 45 acupuncture schools for the blind throughout Japan. By having books read to him, he studied and then simplified volumes of ancient medical texts, making a substantial body of knowledge available to the blind on a practical level. The stone Waichi had tripped over at the Benten shrine became known as the "Stone of Good Luck." The Benten statue, to which Waichi prayed, was damaged after being set aside during an anti-Buddhist phase of the Meiji Restoration, and has been reconstructed and is available for viewing at Enoshima, though it serves as a museum piece rather than a sacred artwork due to failure of the reconstruction to match the original.

WAICHI SUGIYAMA AND ABDOMINAL DIAGNOSIS
Waichi Sugiyama, in his teachings, made a significant contribution to the theoretical basis of abdominal diagnosis and influenced the practical method of carrying out the diagnosis. In particular, he relied on study of the Nan Jing to develop a five-element abdominal pattern for detecting imbalances. This pattern involved having the fire element (heart/small intestine) evaluated at the upper part of the abdomen; the water element (kidney/bladder) at the lower part of the abdomen; the wood element (liver/gallbladder) at the left part of the abdomen; the metal element (lung/large intestine) at the right part of the abdomen, and the earth element (spleen/stomach) at the center (see Appendix 1). To perform the diagnosis, he recommended using the palm and finger tips of the left hand to gently touch and palpate the skin surface. There is no deep pressure exerted. The diagnosis proceeds from the center to the left and right, and then from the top to the bottom of the abdomen. Abdominal diagnosis would replace, for the blind, the observational diagnosis of traditional Chinese medicine, such as appearance of the tongue and complexion. Among the features to be felt on the abdomen were temperature variations, tightness or looseness of the skin, tension of the muscles, pain or tensing on light pressure, fluid movements (as occur in the intestines) during palpation, sensation of movement across an abdominal region, and any lumps or swellings.

Soon after Waichi's death, an herb doctor, Todo Yoshimasu (1702-1773; see Figure 2), also gave a substantial boost to the use of abdominal diagnosis. He developed the concept of conformations-symptom/sign complexes-that were to be associated with each of the essential traditional formulas. He assigned the herb formulas to certain diagnostic indicators found by gently palpating the abdomen. Thus, both acupuncture and herb therapy became tied intimately to the abdominal diagnostic method that thereafter dominated the Japanese system for both the blind and sighted acupuncturists.

Complete article may be viewed online.