Ōtani Kōzui

Ōtani Kōzui (1903)

Ōtani Kōzui , Japanese 大谷 光 瑞 , (* December 27, 1876 ; † October 5, 1948 ) was the 22nd colonel ( 門 主 , Monshu ) of the Buddhist temple Nishi Hongan-ji of the Jōdo-Shinshū (the True School of the Pure Land ) in Kyoto, Japan . After 1868 he was raised to the nobility based on the western model and was given the title "Graf". He financed expeditions to Buddhist sites in Central Asia , such as Subashi . After resigning for fraudulent activities, he devoted himself to research into Buddhism in mainland Asia. The connections of the sect and its Ōtani university with Tibet go back to him.

Life path

Ōtani Kōzui was called Takamaro in his childhood . He was the son of a concubine of his father Ōtani Koson. At the age of 10 he entered the order, where he received the Buddhist name Kyō-nyo ( 鏡 如 ). He received his education at the noble school ( gakushū'in ) in Tokyo. Under Maeda Keiun , he had already studied Buddhist and Chinese classics in Kyoto.

Europe trip

Ōtani and his wife "studied" in London, but did not consider it necessary to learn the English language, as he had an adequate entourage of interpreters (pp. 52, 92). He became the first Japanese member of the Royal Geographical Society and met several Central Asian researchers, such as Sven Hedin and Albert von Le Coq .

While still in England, he organized three smaller expeditions which, coming from three different directions, were supposed to explore Buddhist monuments in Central Asia . In fact, only one of these research trips started. He himself went "in style" from London to the Caspian Sea, from there by horse to Kashgar and the Pamir .

Afterwards he devoted himself to the Buddhist sites in India. In Sarnath he left a plaque with the inscription that "Kozui of Japan" has rediscovered this site. In Bodhgaya in 1903 he met Kawaguchi Ekai , who, coming from his first trip from Tibet, gave the young Hakushaku first hand information about this country (p. 4, 93).

Temple ruler

After the death of his father Myōnyo (1850-1903) in 1903, quickly returning to Japan, he succeeded the head of Nishi Hongan-ji . At the same time, the 27-year-old inherited the Kazoku title Hakushaku. At the same time he continued to sponsor expeditions. After a trip to Manchuria in 1906, he devoted himself to the "modernization" of Japanese Buddhism, which should look so that the other schools of Jōdo-Shinshū should be subordinated.

The important school had been active in missionary work in China and Manchuria since the first Sino-Japanese war . In 1908, his younger brother Sonyu met the Dalai Lama who was staying at Wu Tai Shan ( 五臺山 ) (p. 76).

On the Rokko hill overlooking Kobe , Ōtani built the lavishly furnished Villa Nirakuso, whose stones were imported from China. It also included a weather station, a printing shop and a training center for young people. He made no distinction between his personal fortune and that of Nishi Hongan-ji. He kept English maids and a butler.

In 1910 he went to India for the third time, a large-scale hunting trip that continued to the Middle East and Europe. His wife became infected with malaria, of which she died shortly after returning to Japan.

His lavish lifestyle saw him and the sect face bankruptcy in 1913. The debt was about 5 million yen . The sale of some works of art in the temple could not cover the amount. He tried his hand at speculative deals and fraud. The attempt to sell temple land to the imperial family for 20 times the price was thwarted when the corresponding attempts at bribery became known. The financial scandal, hushed up by the press, forced him to resign in 1914 and lost his title of nobility. On November 1st he left the country convinced that he would never be able to return (p. 148ff). His underage nephew Shōnyo (1911-2002) was 23rd head. The villa burned down under unexplained circumstances. The pension he was granted allowed him to continue to live decently in mainland Asia. He acquired plantations on Formosa, Java and in China.

Research activity

The other participants in his first expedition returned to Japan in May 1904.

Ōtani himself never took the trouble of a trip to Tibet, but he was the driving force behind the corresponding expeditions, particularly during the period 1910–1920, when Tibetan-Japanese relations were developing. In 1908 and 1911–1912 he sent Tachibana Zuichō and Yoshikawa Koichiro to the Dunhuang region . During their eight-week stay, they collected 400 manuscripts. Every step they took was monitored by agents of the Russians and British, as it was believed that it was actually an espionage mission. Aoki Bunkyo ( 青木 文教 ) stayed for the sect in Lhasa.

About a third of the collections Ōtani sold to the long-time friend of the family, General Terauchi Masatake , when he was governor-general of Korea . This, the highest quality part of his "Ōtani collection" of antiques, remained in Korea after the end of the war and has been on display in the Korean National Museum since 1988 (p. 97 fn. 8). The other parts are still important for Central Asian studies, although they are scattered today. In addition to his religious obligations and Central Asian activities, Ōtani wrote about China, Manchuria, and Chinese china .

Political activity

Ōtani was a fanatical, xenophobic nationalist who spoke out against learning English in Japanese schools. Politically he was strongly committed to the imperialist development of Japan. During the Russo-Japanese War , the patriarch asked his believers to subscribe to war bonds, for which he placed 1,500 of his priests in 29 temples, which earned him a commendation from the Tennō two years after the end of the war . 130 of his priests served as army chaplains, who then stayed as missionaries in Manchuria (p. 3, 93ff). He also expressed his interpretation of the Nirvana Sutra that the killing of the inferior (by Japanese weapons) was in itself an act of grace, as it would give such subhumans the chance of a better rebirth.

Soon after the nationalist ideologies close to Ōtani were elevated to doctrine in Japan and the militarist faction took over government, the financial affair grew grass and he was able to return. He was appointed to the Dai-Tōa kensetsu shingikai in 1941. After the defeat in 1945, he withdrew from the public eye to Kyoto.

family

His wife Kazuko, whom he married in 1898, was the older sister of Empress Teimei Kōgō , daughter of the Imperial Prince Kujō Michitaka and is described as a strong personality who also played a leading role within the sect. She accompanied him on all of his travels until her untimely death in 1911 (p. 92f).

The poet Kujō Takeko is his younger biological sister.

Works

The Japanese National Library lists his works under the "Author Heading = / 大谷 光 瑞 18761948"

• Kokumin ni jikaku . Tokyo 1930 ("The Volkish Awakening")

literature

• Sugiyama, Jiro: Central Asian Objects brought back by the Otani Expedition . Tokyo National Museum, 1971
• Peter Hopkirk : Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia . The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst 1980, ISBN 0-87023-435-8 .
  • German: Peter Hopkirk : The Silk Road. In search of lost treasure in Chinese Central Asia . rororo, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-499-18564-4 .
• JP Laut and K. Röhrborn (eds.): Turkish Buddhism in Japanese research . Wiesbaden 1988
• Hans-Joachim Klimkeit (Ed.): Japanese studies on the art of the silk road . Cologne 1988
• David A. Suzuki: Crisis in Japanese Buddhism: case of the Otani Sect . Los Angeles et al. a. 1985, ISBN 0-914910-51-5 .
• Richard Anderson: Nishi Hanganji and Japanese Buddhist Nationalism 1862–1945 . Berkeley 1955

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Scott Berry: The Rising Sun in the Land of the Snows . New Delhi 2005, ISBN 81-87138-97-1
2. ↑ 1938: 8484 temples, 25754 priests, over 5 million followers. Martin Ramming: Japan Handbook . Berlin 1941, p. 74
3. ↑ cf. Peter Hopkirk: Foreign Devils on the Silk Road . Oxford 1980
4. ↑ cf. Kwon, Young-pil: The Otani Collection . In: Orientations (Hong Kong), Vol. 20, no. 3 (Mar. 1989), pp. 53-63
5. ↑ Winston Davis: Buddhism and the Modernization of Japan . History of Religions, Vol. 28 (1989), p. 327
6. ^ Richard Anderson: Nishi Honganji and Japanese Buddhist Nationalism 1862–1945 . Berkeley 1955, pp. 248f, 267f
7. ↑ Ōtani Kōzui: Shina jihen ni taisuru waga kakumin no kakugo . In: Daijo, Vol. 10 (1931), p. 28
8. ^ Japanese Biographical Archives . Munich 2007, ISBN 3-598-34014-1 , Fiche 273
9. ↑ Otani, Kozui | Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures

Web links

• The Otani research trips to Chinese Turkestan
• Werner Sundermann: Turfan Expeditions (English)
• Otani, Kozui | Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Ōtani is the family name, Kōzui the first name.