XVI. MARCH 4, 1771 (THE 8TH YEAR OF MEIWA ERA). RYŌTAKU, THE ONTLEEDKUNDIGE TAFELEN AND I.

Everything prepared, I went to the tea house early in the morning.  My friends were all there waiting for me.

Ryōtaku produced a book from his bosom, and told us that it was a Dutch book called Ontleedkundige Tafelen and that he had bought it in Nagasaki some years before and had treasured it in his house since.  I found it the same even to the edition as the one I had procured a while before, and which I had with me then.  It was a strange coincidence; we were moved to clapping our hands together.

Ryōtaku opened the book and explained according to what he had learned in Nagasaki the various organs such as the lung called "long" in Dutch, the heart called "hart," the stomach called "maag" and the spleen called "milt."  They looked so different from the pictures in the Chinese anatomical books that many of us felt rather dubious of their truths before we should actually observe the real organs.

XVII. MARCH 4, 1771 (THE 8TH YEAR OF MEIWA ERA). THE DISSECTION AT KOTSUGAHARA.

All of us together arrived at the designated place in Kotsugahara.  The executed body to be dissected was of a female criminal about 50 years old who, born in Kyōto, had earned herself the nickname of "Aochababa (Green Tea Hag)."  She had committed a heinous crime, we were told.

Toramatsu, an Eta and a skillful dissector, was expected to perform the task, but he failed to appear on account of a sudden illness.  His 90 year old grandfather, a sturdy-looking man, took his place.  He said that he had performed a number of dissections ever since his youth.  In dissecting the human body, the custom till then was to leave everything to such outcast people.  They would cut open the body and point out such organs as the lungs, the liver and the kidneys and the observing doctors simply watched them and came away.  All they could say then was; "We actually viewed the inwards of a human body."  With no sign tag attached to each organ, all they could do was to listen to the dissector's words and nod.

On this occasion too, the old man went on explaining various organs such as the heart, the liver, the gall-bladder and the stomach.  Further, he pointed to some other things and said: "I don't know what they are, but they have always been there in all the bodies which I have so far dissected."  Checking them later with the Dutch charts, we were able to identify them to be the main arteries and veins and suprarenal glands.  The old man also said:  "In my past experience of dissection, the doctors present never showed puzzle or asked questions specifically about one thing or another."

Comparing the things we saw with the pictures in the Dutch book Ryōtaku and I had with us, we were amazed at their perfect agreement.  There was no such divisions either as the six lobes and two auricles of the lungs or the three left lobes and two right lobes of the liver mentioned in old medical books.  Also, the positions and the forms of the intestines and the stomach were very different from the traditional descriptions.

The Shōgun's official doctors - Yōsen Okada and Rissen Fujimoto - had beheld dissections seven or eight times before, but always what they saw were different from what had been taught in the past thousand years, and their puzzle had never been solved.  They said they had been making sketches every time they saw something that struck them as strange.  On this basis, I suppose, they had written that perhaps the Chinese and the Japanese were different in their internal structures.  This I had read.

After the dissection was over, we were tempted to examine the forms of the bones too, and picked up some of the sun bleached bones scattered around the ground.  We found that they were nothing like those described in the old books, but were exactly as represented in the Dutch book.  We were completely amazed.

XVIII. MARCH 4, 1771 (THE 8TH YEAR OF MEIWA ERA). OUR WAY HOME. BECAME DETERMINED TO TRANSLATE THE ONTLEEDKUNDIGE TAFELEN.

On our way home, three of us - Ryōtaku, Jun-an and I - talked of what a startling revelation we had seen that day.  We felt ashamed of ourselves for having come this far in our lives without being aware of our own ignorance.  How presumptuous on our part to have served our lordships and pretended to carry our duties as official doctors when we were totally without knowledge of the true make of our bodies which should be the foundation of the art of healing!  Upon today's experience, suppose we should, by some means, learn even the bare outline of the truth about the body, and practice our medicine according to that knowledge, we should be able to justify our claim for medical profession.

Thus we talked and sighed.  Ryōtaku, too, said all was very true, he was in complete agreement.  I broke the spell saying, "Even this one volume of Ontleedkundige Tafelen - suppose we translate it - many facts about the body will be clarified and the art of healing will be greatly benefited.  I would like, by some way or another, read this book without the aid of a Nagasaki interpreter."

Ryōtaku replied: "I have had the cherished desire of reading a Dutch book, but I have not found a friend to share the purpose and I have been passing the days in regret.  However, if you are all for it - I have been to Nagasaki and learned something of the language - shall we, then, make mine the seed of our knowledge and start work on this book?"

"That makes me glad!"  I said, "If you would join forces as comrades, I too will show you I can rouse myself to action."

Ryōtaku, very much elated, said, "'For good purpose, do not tally,' the proverb says.  Let us meet in my home tomorrow.  We will find some way to go at the work."

Promising earnestly to follow his words, we parted.

XIX. MARCH 5, 1771 (THE 8TH YEAR OF MEIWA ERA). WE CAME TOGETHER AT RYŌTAKU'S AND TACKLED THE ONTLEEDKUNDIGE TAFELEN.

Next day, we gathered at Ryōtaku's house.  We talked over the experience of the day before.  Then we faced the book.

But it was as though we were on a boat with no oar or rudder adrift on the great ocean - a vast expanse and nothing to indicate our course.  We just gazed at each other in blank dismay.

Ryōtaku, however, had studied the Dutch language for some years.  He had been to Nagasaki and had learned something of the Dutch words and syntax.  He was also an old man ten years my senior.  So, we decided to make him our leader and respect him as our teacher.

As far as I  was concerned, I knew nothing of the Dutch language, not even the 25 letters of the alphabet as the project was such a sudden event, I had to begin by learning the letters and gradually familiarizing myself with the language.

XX. THE DIFFICULTY OF TRANSLATION.

We conferred and discussed together how to approach the translation and put it into proper and intelligible Japanese.

We thought it too difficult to attack the internal structure of the body at the incipient stage of our work.  At the beginning of the book, there were illustrations of the full view of human body, front and back.  As we were familiar with all parts of the body's outside, we thought it would be easy to pair off the signs on the illustrations and on the explanatory notes, thus to learn the names of the parts of the body; at any rate, these were the first of the illustrations - we decided to begin with them.  The result of this work was the compilation of the volume called Atlas and Nomenclature of the Human Body (Keitai-meimoku-hen) in A New Book of Anatomy (Kaitai Shinsho).

But coming to such auxiliiaries as "de" (of), "het" (it), "als" (as) and "welke" (which), we were often completely at sea.  We had a fragmentary knowledge of Dutch words, but their connections in a sentence were always puzzling to us.  For example, we once came across the sentence: "The wyn-braauwen (eyebrows) are the hair growing above the eyes."  To us its meaning happily remained hazy in spite of a long spring day being spent on it.  It was not rare that we would be thinking and staring together till sunset and yet unable to decipher a line or even a sentence one or two inches long.

On another occasion, we came across the description: "The nose is a part which 'verhevene'."  We thought hard about it, but the expression remained a puzzle to us.  Of course, we had no such thing as a Woordenboek (dictionary).  We had only a small word book which Ryōtaku had procured in Nagasaki.  In it we thought we read, "When a branch of a tree is cut, the cut end will 'verhevene.'  When a yard is swept, the dust and dirt brought together 'verhevene.'"  We tried to conjecture the beaming, as we always did, by straining its interpretation to the greatest conceivable extent, but in vain.

Just at this moment it occurred to me: "When we cut a branch of a tree, and the cut end heals, it grows high; or when we gather dust or dirt, it will make a heap; the nose of a human being looks like a heap in the centre of the face.  So 'verhevene' may probably mean 'heaped up.'  How would this go?"  This was my suggestion to my fellow-workers.  They all agreed it fitted the sentence very well and decided on it.  Our delight was beyond words.  We felt as though we had found a "gem of 15 castles worth" as the old Chinese saying goes.  Such was the way we sought the equivalent Japanese for a Dutch word, and gradually enlarged our vocabulary and added them to Ryōtaku's notes of translated words.

Often, however, we encountered such a word as "Zinnen" (sense) which was beyond our comprehension.  In such a case, we let it alone with a sign expecting that we might some other time get enlightened on it.  The sign was a cross in a circle which we called "a bit with a cross."  Every time, therefore, when we had vainly struggled with an unintelligible word, we would exclaim in despair, "Let's give it the bit with a cross."

We used to say, "Man proposes, and God disposes."  With this belief, we went on laboring and expending energy in six or seven meetings every month.

None of us missed an appointed date although there was no immediate prospect of success.  Truly, as the proverb says: "Mind would light itself."  After the passage of one year or so, our vocabulary was enlarged, and naturally we became informed of Dutch things in general.  By and by we found ourselves capable of translating as many as ten lines a day without much trouble when the language was not very complicated.

Needless to say, we did take questions to the interpreters who came to Edo annually.  Also, between times we attended the dissections of human bodies and oftener we opened the animal bodies to confirm what we read.