In The Expressiveness of the Body, Shigehisa Kuriyama explores the differences between Western and Eastern concepts of the body through the lens of classical Greek and Chinese medicine. In examining classical Western medicine, Kuriyama draws primarily upon the work of Plato and Galen, while he uses the concept of mo to drive his understanding of classical Chinese medicine. Kuriyama divides his work into three sections, focusing on the pulse and veins, musculature and coloration, and blood and breath. Kuriyama concludes, “This is how conceptions of the body diverge – not just in the meanings that each ascribes to bodily signs, but more fundamentally in the changes and features that each recognizes as signs” (pg. 272). In working toward this conclusion, Kuriyama examined Western medicine’s need for clear language and abandonment of metaphor, writing, “The core problem lay in the human inability to see the imaginings of others” (pg. 80). Further, he writes, “…We cannot peer into other minds. Does your idea of ‘undulating’ correspond to mine? We simply cannot know,” recalling the work of Merleau-Ponty on phenomenology (pg. 81).
The differences in cultural approaches demonstrate how something so universal, the human body, can take on multiple meanings dictated by the needs of various cultures. For example, musculature, which seems so ubiquitous and commonplace in Western depictions of the body, did not factor into classical Chinese portrayals of the human form. I found Kuriyama’s argument that “in tracing the crystallization of the concept of muscle, we are also, and not coincidentally, tracing the crystallization of the sense of an autonomous will” quite compelling (pg. 144). Both that section, and the discussion of the Greek search for a hegemonic organ while the Chinese considered the various parts of the body interconnected demonstrates the manner in which cultural values and perceptions shape what cultures look for in their examinations. As Kuriyama writes, “Alternate visions of the body reflect alternate readings of the vital self” (pg. 192). ( )

Badly written. ( )