The legacy of a mystical monk who brought Chinese culture to Japan is celebrated in a major exhibition, writes David McNeill
Even in a country as history-conscious as Japan, the response to an exhibition dedicated to an isolated monastery founded 1,200 years ago has been remarkable. In one month, almost 100,000 people filed through the Tokyo National Museum to view Treasures of a Sacred Mountain.
The show, which opened last month and ends today, will move to the Wakayama Prefecture Museum in autumn. After that, the exhibits will be returned to their original home, a sacred monastery on Mount Koya.
Part of the attraction, aside from the priceless collection of nearly 160 Buddhist artefacts, is the monastery's founder, a wandering monk named Kukai, who is considered a major figure in Japanese culture. But it's what's happening in Japan today that's driving crowds to pore over dusty objects from the seventh and eighth centuries.
Japanese are becoming less enthralled with the US and more engaged with China, even though there is political tension between the two countries.
Kukai is a key early link between the Middle Kingdom and the country that borrowed so much of its culture and traditions. When the then 30-year-old Japanese monk Kukai, later known as Kobo-Daishi, travelled to Ch'ang-an in China in 804 AD, he was astonished to find a society far in advance of his own. Tang Dynasty China boasted a booming economy, a sophisticated form of central government run by professional bureaucrats and a flourishing religious and cultural world then drawing inspiration from Indian Buddhism.
'Kukai went to study esoteric Buddhism and brought it back to Japan where he established it as a religious movement,' says the Tokyo National Museum's vice-curator Shinryu Izutsu. 'While he was there, he was captivated by what he saw. He returned with poetry and calligraphy, and helped them take hold in Japan, contributing to the formation of Japanese culture. The exhibition shows this transmission of Chinese culture to Japan, which is one of the reasons it has proved so popular.'