With neither intention nor planning, this issue has nevertheless emerged as one on differentiating and balancing perspectives. It includes three beautifully written articles on how medicine takes variegated forms as a cultural and social mediator in the political settings of war, exile, and a more engaged China. Additionally, after more than fourteen months of preparation, we are pleased to present a forum on an intellectually intense and emotionally taxing article by John Law and Wen-yuan Lin, two senior members of the EASTS editorial board.
Keiko Daidoji and Eric Karchmer's article on Suzhou National Medicine Hospital during the Second World War shows how two differentiated medical traditions, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Kampo, sought convergence in the making of a single institution. Under a temporary political scheme established by two weak regimes, a number of innovative ideas were proposed for Suzhou National Medicine Hospital as a part of Eastern medicine, a term loosely defined as a rival to biomedicine. As the authors point out, this convergence proved short-lived, because the practices were too experimental to be successfully received, and the fragility of the hospital resulted in the inevitable parting of TCM and Kampo as the war intensified. In his article on Tibet's traditional Sowa Rigpa medicine as reestablished in exiled communities, Stephan Kloos outlines how, just like the people who use it, it has become differentiated from its geographical origins. Noting the transformation of the concept of Sowa Rigpa from national essence to popular commodity, the author shows how Tibetan doctors are envisioning this increasingly institutionalized Tibetan medicine as something both scientific and profitable. Engaging with the same kind of entanglement between medicine and politics, Daniel Asen traces the discourses on the twelfth-century judicial official Song Ci, whose Xiyanjilu (Collected Writings on the Washing Away of Wrongs) is often praised as the world's first systematic treatise on forensic medicine. In contrast to casting a rather Needhamian eye over a Chinese text in a way that might well see content recognizable as scientific, Asen, by examining the different ways of casting this unremarkable figure, ably captures how the Chinese situate their medical heritage in an expanding landscape of biomedicine across Asia. The differentiation of these discourses and their convergence not only reflect the ambiguities present while the Chinese were bargaining a position for their traditions but also present a peculiar literature that reflects China's long and intricate path toward modernization.
The forum on John Law and Wen-yuan Lin's article “Provincializing STS: Postcoloniality, Symmetry, and Method” is experimental in two ways. As Chia-Ling Wu says in her introduction, their article contains the kind of invigorating prose and fresh arguments that are not usually set out in an acceptance lecture by Bernal Prize winners. The forum is also an experiment for EASTS: critical of the West, EASTS seldom addresses confrontations among East Asian scholars who hold different perspectives. Law and Lin's article, in this sense, serves as an intellectual and cultural spark for us, stimulating responses across disciplines and illuminating distinct viewpoints using Asia as both topic and method.
I shall stop there, leaving the forum for readers to explore. My gratitude goes to Chia-Ling Wu, the initiator of this forum; to the editors in Taiwan who dealt with early comments and revisions of Law and Lin's article; and to the four outstanding scholars who kindly accepted our invitation to join the forum. Differentiating and balancing perspectives are necessary and healthy for a growing EASTS. As Hamlet said, “Blest are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled.”
