Translation Standard
Every passage is presented as an evidence chain, not as an anonymous English quotation.
- Source record: title, author, edition, image identifier, and page.
- Diplomatic transcription: characters as verified against the image, with uncertain readings marked.
- Japanese kundoku: the Japanese classical reading, clearly labeled as a reading rather than the source image itself.
- Close English translation: syntax and technical ambiguity preserved where possible.
- Interpretive translation: readable English, separated from the close translation.
- Historical note: what the term meant in its textual and medical setting.
- Clinical reasoning note: what a practitioner may reasonably take from the passage today.
- MLMN mapping: an explicit modern analytic layer, never misrepresented as the historical author's own theory.
- Verification status: draft, source-checked, or independently reviewed.
Sample 1: Medical Books Require a Capable Reader
| Field | Reading |
|---|---|
| Work | Utsugi Kontai, Igaku Keigo (within Kokun Iden), preface |
| Japanese kundoku | 医籍有りと雖も、苟くも其の人無ければ、則ち其の術息むに幾し。 |
| Close translation | Even when medical books exist, if there is no such person, the art itself is nearly extinguished. |
| Interpretive translation | Preserving medical books is not enough. Without a practitioner able to understand and use them, the medicine they contain is close to disappearing. |
| Clinical note | Textual preservation and clinical competence are different tasks. Kontai places responsibility on the reader-practitioner who must recover a usable art from a large and disputed literature. |
| MLMN connection | MLMN is a present-day method for making that act of reading explicit across constitution, cause, body system, substances, channels, disease depth, spatial distribution, driving fire, environment, and time. |
Sample 2: Constitution, Cause, Site, and Suffering
何をか八条目と謂ふ。曰く宿、曰く因、曰く本、曰く病、曰く診、曰く証、曰く名、曰く治、これを八条目と云ふ。Utsugi Kontai, Igaku Keigo, “Eight Items” — Japanese kundoku; draft under source-image review
Close translation: What are called the Eight Items? They are: inherited or pre-existing condition (shuku), cause (in), root or primary site (hon), illness (byō), examination (shin), clinical configuration or evidence (shō), name (mei), and treatment (chi).
The English glosses remain provisional because each term carries a history. In particular, shō should not automatically be flattened into the modern English word “pattern,” and hon here concerns the primary location or root of the disorder rather than a generic philosophical “root cause.”
Why this matters for Kampo
Kontai begins with the patient’s pre-existing condition, the precipitating cause, the principal site, and the actual suffering before moving to examination, evidence, naming, and treatment. The order itself is a clinical argument.
Why this matters for MLMN
The eight-item sequence is not identical to MLMN. It is one historical source that shows why a case cannot be responsibly compressed into a single label. MLMN is a modern comparative framework built to keep multiple axes visible.
Editorial Safeguards
- No English sentence is presented as a direct historical quotation unless its source layer is identified.
- Source transcription, kundoku, translation, and modern interpretation are visually separated.
- Uncertain characters and contested terms remain marked rather than silently normalized.
- Clinical explanation is educational and does not create an individualized diagnosis, prescription, or treatment recommendation.
- Drafts are revised after source-image comparison and, where available, specialist review.