One of the earliest Chinese textbooks of astronomy

YOU YI.

天經或問.Tenkei wakumon [Chinese: Tianjing huowen = Some questions about Astronomy].

Edo: Shōyōken Yorozuya Seibē, 1730.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. Item #003600

3 volumes in classical Chinese (方密之先生鑑定 / 閩中游子六輯著 / 天経或問 / 書林大集堂梓) and 1 Appendix volume by Nishikawa SEIKYU in Japanese. 大略天學名目鈔 : 天經或問附. Tairyaku tengaku myōmokushō. Tenkei wakumon furoku. Mixed edition: Vol. 2 and 3: Nihonbashi, Edo Shōyōken, Yorozuya Seibē, Kyōhō 15 [1730]; Vol. 1: Edo Sūzanbō, Kobayashi (Suharaya) Shinbē, Kyōhō 15 [1730]; Dates, locations and printer's names from colophon for the first 3 vols. Vol. 2 and 3: single-line border on all four sides, no vertical guide lines, no 'fishtails' at the center of the folio; 9 columns of 24 characters each per page. Book size ca. 265-275 x 175 mm. Xylographically printed on folded sheets of native paper, with 19 (10 double-page) astronomical illustrations and maps. Original brown wrappers with 3 (of 4; 1 chipped with loss) xylographic title-slips (some worming, staining and soiling, stronger to appendix, partly reinforced, stitching renewed). Printed paper with minor browning and some spotting or minor waterstaining in places, some marginal worming, occasionally affecting the text and causing some loss at inner margins of first few leaves. Provenance: red seal to mikaeshi or first leaves. ----

EXCEEDINGLY RARE FIRST EDITION, first issue of vols. 2 and 3, third issue of vol. 1, of the classical Chinese textbook of astronomy printed in Japan. No copy of the Chinese original edition of c.1672 has obviously survived. According to Hiraoka, vol. 2 and 3 belong to designated Group A, vol. 1 to group C. The Appendix vol. 4 cannot be assigned to any of the yet known groups A to H (Hiraoka, p. 97). Of the first issue (Qing printed edition, group A) only two copies (referred to as the 'Dajitang edition' after the publisher shown inside the cover) are known to exist in Japanese libraries, one (defective with missing parts) in the Cabinet Library of the National Archives of Japan and the other in the Library of the Faculty of Education, Shiga University).
The work was edited and supplemented by an extensive appendix with explanations in Japanese by Nishikawa Seikyū (1693-1756). In his presentation, You already takes into account the Western astronomy brought to China by Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall von Bell, Ferdinand Verbiest and other Jesuits, which came to Japan for the first time this way. His work had a significant influence on the development of Japanese astronomy, particularly Shibukawa Harumi. "In his references to Western theory, Harumi based his information exclusively on T'ien-ching huo-wen, by Yu I . . . Harumi was especially impressed by its clear explanation, using a geometrical model of eclipses, which he had never found in Chinese calendrical writings" (DSB). The many illustrations in this work include celestial maps, a simplified version of the famous world map by Matteo Ricci and a beautiful double-page map of China at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty.
"Tianjing huowen was first printed in Edo in 1730 by the publisher Shōyōken Yorozuya Seibē 松葉軒萬屋清兵衛 with Nishikawa Seikyū, a Japanese astronomer, editing the text and supplying kunten. Scholars have previously noted four different variants of this book, each with a different colophon, but all are considered part of the same edition. [Hiraoka] [. . .] has identified four more versions of the printed text with hitherto unreported colophons, necessitating a comparison of the eight versions to establish their order of appearance. [He] divides the 67 printed copies of this work now preserved in Japan, China and South Korea into eight groups labelled A to H in presumed printing order." [. . .] All of the copies [. . .] were printed from the Shōyōken's original blocks. All have the name 'Shōyōken' in their block center, and it is unlikely that the publisher name would have been retained if new blocks had been created using kabusebori or similar techniques. Even more important evidence is provided by the gaps in the outside borders [. . .] Comparing these gaps is known to be an effective way of distinguishing whether similar-looking editions were printed from the same blocks or not. These gaps result from damage to the blocks themselves, meaning that copies with the same gaps are from the same edition, and the more gaps a copy has, the later in the printing run it was produced. In early modern Japan, gaps in the text itself were amended with techniques like ireki 入􀎕木􀉼 in which a smaller piece of wood was embedded in the original block, but gaps in the outer border did not affect the legibility of the text and were therefore often left unamended [. . .] Group A's colophon and inside cover note states that the book was printed in 1730 by Shōyōken Yorozuya Seibē. Given that the 'Shōyōken' in the block center survives in all other copies, this group must have been the original (first) Japanese printed edition. The colophon information and border gaps evolve steadily through the series of groups, from A to B to C and so on; note in particular that gaps observed in an earlier group are never absent from later groups." (Hiraoka, p. 98). Vol. 1 of this set belong to designated group C. "Published by Sūzanbō Kobayashi (Suharaya) Shinbē 嵩山房小林新兵衛, also based in Nihonbashi. The inside cover and colophon are the same as Group B, except with the publisher name updated. Many copies have covers of thin, plain light brown paper. It seems that Sūzanbō obtained the blocks for Tianjing huowen from Wakanaya along with the blocks for Irie's commentary: Sūzanbō also printed Irie's commentary, and its colophon is the same as the Wakanaya printing with the publisher name recarved to 'Rights purchased by Sūzanbō Kobayashi Shinbē' (嵩山房 / 小林新兵衛求版)."
"The Tianjing huowen brought to Japan about 1672-79, combined ancient Chinese theories of the natural philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200), and the recent philosophical opinions of Fang Yizhi (1611-71) with knowledge that had been obtained from the Jesuits [. . .] Of particular importance was its illustration of the stars around the South Pole, which had not been shown on previous celestial maps; the book therefore provided the Japanese with their first knowledge of such stars" (Miyajima p. 585). The original Chinese first edition of c. 1672 does not seem to have survived, with the earliest extant Japanese edition of 1730 surviving in only a few copies. The work escaped censorship and was allowed to be imported into Japan "because of its purely astronomical nature [. . .] During the Tokugawa period everyone with an interest in astronomy read it" (Nakayama p. 101). The highly influential Jesuits, Matteo Ricci and Ferdinand Verbiest, who introduced western knowledge of cartography and astronomy to China, are specifically mentioned in the text and the maps in the present example are entirely based on their work. The terrestrial maps are of particular interest: four separate maps form a double-hemisphere world map, including a southern hemisphere with a very distinctively-shaped Australia joined to a southern continent.
Literature: Miyajima Kazuhiko, Japanese Celestial Cartography before the Meiji Period, p. 584 ff. (in: History of Cartography, vol. 2, no. 2); DSB XII, 404 & XV, 733; Nakayama, A history of Japanese astronomy (Cambridge MA, 1969), pp. 101-104. FUNG, KW. You Yi and his Tianjing huowen Qian hou ji. In: The 7th International Conference on the History of Science in China, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China, 16-20 January 1996, 15 pp.; HIRAOKA, Ryuji. Printed Editions and Manuscripts of Tianjing Huowen. In: Historia Scientiarum, Vol. 29-1, 2019.

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