근현대 한국, 일본 고방파의학의 도입 및 문화적 변용: 감각 가능한 증후 중심의 실행 스타일과 동아시아의학의 역동성

Abstract

Traditional perceptions regarding the history of global scientific exchange are based on a unidirectional “center-periphery” diffusion model: knowledge is seen as flowing from Europe to non-European regions, and within East Asia, from China to Korea and then to Japan. Underlying this perception are modernist thoughts that presuppose Europe as a universal standard, Orientalist dichotomies, and nationalist projects that attempt to define China as a singular historical center. Critically reflecting on these existing views, this study analyzes the introduction and transformation of Japanese Kampō (漢方) medicine—specifically the Kohōha (古方派) medicine, which emerged in the 18th-century Edo period—in modern and contemporary Korea. Through this analysis, the study aims to illuminate the complexity of East Asian medical exchange and the diversity and dynamism of its medical traditions. The Kohōha medicine, the foundation of Japanese Kampō, was an indigenous innovation triggered not by the shock of Western science but by internal inquiries within East Asian academia, specifically the evidential scholarship (考證學) of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The Kohōha medicine rejected Chinese correlative thinking—such as Yin-Yang, the Five Phases, and Organ-Meridian Theory—dismissing them as mere imagination and speculation. Instead, it proposed norms that emphasized personal verification (親試實驗) and clinical realities. Due to these characteristics, during the modernization process of the 20th century, the Kohōha medicine was invoked as an East Asian alternative capable of countering Western medicine and was appropriated into the discourse of “empirical medicine.”In 20th-century Korea and East Asia, the acceptance of Kohōha medicine was determined by a complex interplay of factors, including regional nationalist discourses, Japanese imperialist propaganda, and East Asian solidarity against Western medicine. However, the most noteworthy influence was the epistemological competition between different styles of medical practice. The Kohōha medicine focused on tangible or palpable symptoms and the body surface rather than on directly invisible layers such as the universe, social structures, visceral movement, or internal cellular mechanisms. For them, the medical body was a “body without organs,” where physiological and pathological mechanisms were black-boxed. Both disease and drugs were defined as “poison (毒).” Consequently, the essence of treatment lay in attacking and expelling the disease rather than in tonification or life cultivation. The ideal physician was defined not as a moral exemplar but as a technical expert in clinical practice. This represented an attempt to reconstruct the philosophical terrain of medicine beyond mere clinical norms. Notably at the turn of the new millennium, Korean practitioners critically re-examined the epistemological premises of the Kohōha medicine to seek a unique path. Unlike the original Kohōha physicians, they redefined the essence of medicine as “human healing” rather than just “disease treatment.” By radically reinterpreting the Treatise on Cold Damage (傷寒論)—the canonical text of the Kohōha medicine—they created a medical landscape distinct from that of China or Japan. This serves as a case of cultural reconfiguration based on the locality of Korea, demonstrating the creative dynamism of the East Asian medical tradition. In conclusion, the emergence, transmission, and reconfiguration of Kohōha medicine as a style of practice challenge both Eurocentrism and Sinocentrism. It demonstrates that the East Asian medical tradition is not a static monolithic entity but a “recipe of knowledge” selected and hybridized by specific groups within historical contingencies and sociocultural contexts. This study highlights key issues in East Asian medical history and provides a significant case illustrating the diversity and creative dynamism of East Asian medicine, mediating between regional identity and the universality of science.