Pathway to Japanese Literature

Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.

New Journey to the WestAuthor: Hisao Jūran

Original Title	新西遊記
Author	久生十蘭
Genre	Popular Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In 1900, driven by an unwavering quest for spiritual truth, a young Japanese monk embarks on an audacious journey to Tibet’s forbidden heart. His mission: to retrieve ancient Buddhist scriptures lost to time, texts that could illuminate Mahayana Buddhism’s obscured origins. Yet Tibet—a land veiled by ice-clad mountains and fanatical secrecy—guards its mysteries fiercely. Behind towering Himalayan passes lie blizzards that freeze breath, nomadic tribes bound by arcane laws, and Lamaist monks whose cruelty transcends imagination. Forbidden to outsiders for centuries, Lhasa’s holy capital remains a mirage to explorers, its labyrinthine checkpoints and ritualized brutality crushing all intruders. Undeterred, the monk navigates glacial wastelands and polyglot shadows, his resolve tested by starvation, betrayal, and the specter of a fate worse than death. What begins as scholarly devotion spirals into a decades-long odyssey where faith collides with fanaticism, and survival hinges on transcending human limits. Will sacred texts redeem a fractured legacy, or become relics of a vanishing world? The answer lies beyond mountains where gods and demons walk—and no soul returns unchanged.