Abstract
This paper considers what the ideal time theory was from the perspective of breathing in China. The theory that a person breathes 13,500 times a day is described in the Ling shu, the oldest surviving medical texts in China, and later became a theory that supporting Zhu Xi’s idea of space operation. The word xi, which means nasal breathing, has already been associated with short time since the Western Han era, functioning as a unit of time to a certain extent. The 13,500 breathing theory has been introduced into Japan and is presented in numerous commentaries to the Nihon shoki, but there is also a new theory development can be seen, which is the Japanese breathe less each day than the Chinese. And Ichijo Kaneyoshi states in his Nihon shoki sanso that this theory can be used to tell time. In fact, it seems that Sun Wukong, the main characters in the Journey to the West xiyouji, have practiced that theory. On the other hand, after the Southern Song Dynasty, a new theory of knowing time by taking turns breathing through the nostrils, and it is described in Yu Yan’s Fu shang xi tan and Fang Yizhi’s Wu li xiao shi Moreover, a further development of this theory can be found during the Republic of China, however, the traditional Chinese theory of breathing and the ideal time for breathing were eventually destroyed been disrupted by the advent of Western scientific knowledge and modern medicine during this period.
