Andrew Goble sets out to answer a standard two-part question for premodern Japanese history in terms of appropriated continental knowledge: What did medieval Japanese know? How did they use it? By examining Kajiwara Shōzen (1265–1337), a Buddhist monk and practicing physician, Goble shows that the importation of Song-era printed medical texts allowed medical men to update their archives with some of the latest ideas from the continent, revealing how medieval Japan appropriated Chinese knowledge and constructed new forms of medical practice. This is the first English book-length study of medieval medical history, and Goble places Confluences within the historiography that characterizes medieval Japan in terms of “[m]obility, fluidity, redefinition, violence, and experimentation” (Kenmu: Godaigo's Revolution [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996], 273.).
In thirteenth-century Kamakura, contact and trade with the continent through the Kyushu port of Hakata was a defining characteristic of the city. Buddhist priests established and extended...
