Body and Analogy : The Epistemology of Body on the Discourse of Personal Health in the Edo era (1)

This essay clarifies the epistemology of body on discourse of yojo (personal health care) in the Edo era, examining the analogies of body. The main analogies of body on the discourse of yojo from the 17th Century though the middle of the 19th Century are heaven and earth, plants and house. After the 19th Century, city as the analogy of body appears. Basically, the cosmological way of conceiving body that is drawn heaven and earth continues until the middle of 19th Century, but it gradually decreases. On the other hand, it is not until the 18th Century that the plants and the house as the analogy of the body appear. The epistemology of body on the discourse of yojo changes from the cosmological body to the object of artificial operations, the social existence and the consumed object as signs.