Departures of note

Sugiyama Waichi, blinded by an eye disease in infancy, was sent from Kyoto to Edo at age ten to study massage and therapy under Ryomei Irie, a prominent medical practitioner. Irie dismissed him as dull, and Sugiyama left the apprenticeship. On his way back to Kyoto, he fasted and prayed for 100 days in a cave, where he reportedly discovered the shinkan—a guiding tube for acupuncture needles—after pricking himself on a needle wrapped in a leaf.

The shinkan, combined with his use of extremely fine gold and silver needles, allowed for comparatively painless acupuncture, greatly expanding the practice. Sugiyama established around forty-five schools teaching massage and acupuncture to other blind people, cementing the association in Japan between blindness and physical therapy. After he cured a neurotic disease afflicting shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, his work received official state endorsement, which boosted the popularity of his schools.

Sugiyama's teachings were recorded by his disciples and first printed in 1880 as Ryōji no taigaishū, Senshin no yōshū, and Igaku setsuyōshū. His grave is in the graveyard of the Miroku-Temple in Tokyo's Sumida-ku.