2025 Volume 21 Issue 2 Pages 18-34
During the late Edo period, the emergence of Dutch studies (rangaku) led to the development of numerous Japanese translated words, some of which ──including sen (腺) and sui (膵)── remain in use as contemporary medical terms. This study focuses on the anatomical terminology in the treatise Hachifu of Unagami Zuiō (1758-1811), who introduced numerous new Chinese characters in his translations. Analyzing the correspondence between the translated terms and their Dutch counterparts, this study identifies a pattern in which Dutch morphemes systematically map onto elements of newly created Chinese characters. This contrasts with other rangaku scholars, who typically rendered Dutch compounds as multicharacter Sino-Japanese words. This distinction suggests that the creation of new characters functioned as a form of translation.
Through an examination of the correspondence between morphemes in the source language and elements in Chinese characters, this study offers a new perspective on the translation methods of single-character terms such as sen (腺), sui (膵), and chitsu (腟). Although these were not coined by Unagami Zuiō, they illustrate broader principles in character creation in medical translation. This study suggests that the proposed translation strategy is based on a conceptual framework that considers the semantic and phonetic components of Chinese characters serve as functional equivalents of morphemes. This approach enables single characters to encapsulate the meaning of an entire compounds.
