Pathway to Japanese Literature

Since Japanese Mahayana Buddhism originated from China, it was inevitable that its scriptures too would be Chinese translations of Sanskrit (ancient Indian language) originals. Yet when comparing editions—Song, Yuan, Ming, and Longzang—one found discrepancies and omissions in passages everywhere, hindering comprehension. Then came new translations like the Tenkai, Obaku, and Manji editions, compounding the confusion further.

The ambiguity of the Chinese-translated Tripitaka had long been problematic, and eight years later—during the Russo-Japanese War—Emperor Meiji went so far as to purchase the undated Manchu Tripitaka and Mongolian Tripitaka from the Huang Temple in Fengtian, bestowing them upon Tokyo Imperial University as collation materials. Yet Buddhism, having already suffered devastating blows from Hinduism's resurgence, faced further ruin when Islam invaded in the late eighth century, burning every temple, pagoda, Buddha statue, and sutra scroll while slaughtering monks and lay believers indiscriminately—a cataclysm that lasted two centuries. With Buddhism reduced to a mere shell in India, and only fragments of Sanskrit sutra manuscripts surviving in Ceylon and Burma, correcting errors in the Chinese Tripitaka remained beyond hope.

Mahayana Buddhism entered Tibet around the seventh century when a monk named Tonmi brought the original scriptures from India and translated them into Tibetan. Subsequently, the Lotus Master integrated Buddhism’s esoteric teachings with Tibet’s indigenous religion, laying the foundation for Tibetan Buddhism, which would come to have ten million adherents across Manchuria, Mongolia, Siberia, and as far as the Caspian Sea coast, centered in Tibet. The Tibetans are a branch of the Pamir highland indigenous peoples of India, and since the Tibetan language was created by Tonmi using the Lantsa script of Sanskrit, the two sections of the Tibetan Tripitaka—the Kangyur, the primary canon of 1,044 volumes, and the Tengyur, the supplementary canon of 4,058 volumes—faithfully transmit the subtleties of sutras and vinaya while containing many doctrinal texts absent from Chinese-translated Buddhism. The Manchu Tripitaka housed at Huang Temple and the Mongolian Tripitaka were both translations of it; even the collation of Sanskrit Buddhist manuscript copies relied on assistance from the Tibetan translations. If one could obtain them, then for the first time in the 1,300 years since Buddhism’s arrival [in Japan], one could access the true teachings expounded by Shakyamuni.

From Meiji 21–22 (1888–1889) until the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War—a span of seventeen or eighteen years—national sentiment surged to unprecedented heights, awakening in the Japanese people a novel consciousness of the nation-state. From Okamoto Kansuke’s formation of the Chishima Loyalist Society to Lieutenant Colonel Fukushima’s Siberian horseback crossing, Captain Gunji’s Chishima expedition, and Mr. and Mrs. Nonaka Itaru’s meteorological observations atop Mount Fuji—amid this patriotic fervor that expanded to encompass even these endeavors—several self-sacrificing types emerged who willingly devoted themselves to national causes. Among them, Tamai Kisaku and Yamaguchi Chikai’s actions stood out with particular distinction.

Tamai Kisaku was known to be from Mii Village in Yamaguchi Prefecture, but beyond that, nothing else about his background was known. In December of Meiji 26 (1893)—ten months after Captain Gunji’s Chishima expedition had set out and as Lieutenant Colonel Fukushima was completing his solo equestrian journey—he joined a Russian tea caravan in Irkutsk and embarked on a trans-Siberian trek on foot, taking the reverse route of Lieutenant Colonel Fukushima. At that time, journeys of tea caravans through Siberia were fraught with every conceivable calamity—bitter cold, *purga* (blizzards), wolf packs, battles against bandits, plague, and famine—and by the time one such caravan reached the Polish border, its numbers had dwindled from 450 people to a mere third. Tamai Kisaku remained with the caravan until the end, enduring an unimaginable 15,000-kilometer journey. In February of Meiji 28 (1895), he entered Germany and published a book in Berlin titled *Karawanen-Reise in Sibilien* (“Travels Through Siberia with a Caravan”). The superb sketches of the 1,800-kilometer stretch from Irkutsk to Tomsk were recognized as the sole documentary record illuminating the lives of tea caravans bridging Europe and Asia, and were archived in the German Geographical Society’s travelogue collection—yet Tamai Kisaku himself vanished somewhere in Europe thereafter, never to be seen again. In his book’s preface, Tamai Kisaku states, “Shutting oneself in a steamship cabin to reach Europe is banal—I merely chose this path deliberately.” Yet if dismissing commonplace journeys as banal were reason enough, could anyone endure such tempests and tribulations? If this were true, one could only call it inexplicable.

The ascetic trials Yamaguchi Chikai endured from his secret entry into Tibet to his arrival in Lhasa—the Holy City—were more violent and desolate than Tamai Kisaku’s, evoking the shadow of a tragic fate that crushed both fortune and misfortune alike. Whether it be crossing the 21,000-foot Himalayas, enduring a hundred-day journey across frozen plains in utter solitude, or facing fanatical Lamaists who dismembered nonbelievers into eight pieces to feed wild dogs—to say nothing of bandits and snow leopards—setting aside such trappings, the very act of attempting to enter Tibet was itself a reckless endeavor and futile expenditure. Rarely has there been an example of the human spirit so tormenting the flesh, so desperately driven toward a meaningless purpose.

Lhasa in Tibet—today reachable by automobile from Darjeeling, India (near the Bhutanese border, a small independent state between Tibet and India), in about five days—remained until the early twentieth century a stubbornly closed nation that utilized mountainous ramparts ranging from 16,000 to 30,000 feet encircling its borders to enforce a spirit of alienation and exclusionism. From the Qianlong Emperor’s prohibition of external contact in 1749 to the Simla Conference of 1914, not a single European or American succeeded in infiltrating even Tibet proper (the southern valley region), let alone Lhasa, over those 165 years. As demonstrated by all British, Russian, French, and German expedition teams that attempted to enter Tibet after its national isolation in 1749.

Tibet was the fierce Tubo kingdom that invaded the Western Regions during the Tang Dynasty and launched a long-distance assault on Chang’an—encircled by the Kunlun Mountains to the north, Tanggula to the east, the Himalayas—including 29,000-shaku Everest and 28,000-shaku Kangchenjunga—to the south, and the majestic Transhimalayan range to the west, with half its territory forming a vast plateau exceeding 15,000 shaku in elevation.

Tibet was divided into Inner and Outer regions—Outer Tibet being a high, arid wasteland called the Northwestern Plateau with an area roughly three times that of Japan’s main islands—averaging 18,000 shaku in elevation where winters plunged to -48 degrees Celsius, transforming it into a desolate tundra devoid of permanent inhabitants where only scattered nomad tents could be seen during June, July, and August.

Inner Tibet spread across lowlands south of the Northwestern Plateau—an area roughly equivalent to Japan in size．Though termed lowlands，this valley region stood at 9，000 shaku above sea level with an average elevation of 14，000–15，000 shaku—2，000 shaku higher than Mount Fuji’s summit—supporting an area equivalent to Japan’s entire landmass．Here dwelt two million formidable Lamaists who prided Tibet as a land perfectly suited for Buddhist teachings． Lamaism is a secret mantra-based religion that combines Esoteric Buddhism （a sect of Buddhism preaching divine empowerment through mystic forces） with Tibet’s indigenous animistic faith （a form of Shamanism），believes in reincarnation and rebirth，and venerates supernatural forces．According to Lamaist doctrine，the human body is composed of four elements：earth，fire，wind，and water．Therefore，even when returning death’s remains through four paths—earthly interment，cremation，air dispersal，or water dissolution—corpses rank as supreme impurities；thus they disdain burial for perpetuating defilement underground．Cremation would prove ideal，but given sparse forests and perpetual fuel scarcity，they inevitably resort to water burials or sky burials．Water burials involve consigning remains to rivers—not through mere casting．They chop off hands and feet，dismembering bodies into formless fragments before riverine release．They claim this eases piscine consumption．Sky burial entails feeding corpses to dogs or vultures．Practitioners carry bodies to rocky plateaus，separate flesh from bone，pound remains with stones，knead them into grotesque clumps—then drink tea with serene faces，hands unwashed．

Lamaists were all vehement fanatics, and regarding their unique form of cruelty (sadism), the Italian Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri—who had entered Tibet in 1706 prior to its national isolation—wrote in his travelogue: “Merely recalling it makes one’s hair stand on end.” The flourish of cruel techniques mastered by Lamaists was evidenced by their torture methods and penal codes: their legal code specified seventy-two major crimes, matched by an astonishing 1,886 distinct punishments.

“The tortures and punishments conceived by Lamaists’ fervent love of cruelty and fanaticism surpassed all methods recorded in human history through their technical delicacy and ingenuity, demonstrating a perfection unattained even by Torquemada (the Spanish Inquisitor who devised genius torture methods) or Alva (who conducted unprecedentedly cruel executions during Dutch rebellion trials).” To give an example, it was carried out in this manner. Under Tibet’s legal code—which operated entirely on collective responsibility (where a child’s crime implicated the parent, and a parent’s crime implicated the child)—fathers and sons or husbands and wives arrived at the execution ground together; the executioner monk first presented them with large Yattoko pliers and declared that the tooth extraction punishment would now commence. Having done that, he began shaving both their heads with a razor. The prisoners could not comprehend why their heads were being shaved for a tooth extraction punishment, but they would soon come to realize just how astonishingly refined Tibetan penal techniques were. After shaving their heads, the executioner monk handed the Yattoko pliers to one of the prisoners, making them alternately extract each other’s teeth—the father extracting the child’s teeth and the child extracting the father’s teeth. The executioner monk did nothing directly. He merely spurred them on from the sidelines to ensure the punishment proceeded smoothly. At first, the prisoners gently cared for one another, but soon they began cursing each other, culminating in an unbearable scene where they hurled every ounce of hatred they could muster. All their teeth had been extracted, but the punishment was not over. That was where it began. This time, they had to hammer the extracted teeth into each other’s skulls with a metal mallet. They now understood for the first time that the earlier head-shaving had been a considerate measure to facilitate embedding the teeth into their skulls. Moreover, when the prisoners were enemies of Buddha, they were meticulously instructed from the side to arrange the hammered teeth into a figure of the Sanskrit character representing Buddha’s initial.

Even in punishments involving burning prisoners’ bodies—where Spain and Germany would merely run an iron filled with burning coals over the skin or patiently singe armpits with candle flames—Lama monks ignited a lump of sulfur, waited for it to melt into a viscous mass, then scooped up the flaming molten sulfur with a stick’s tip and smeared it capriciously wherever they pleased. The more the prisoners struggled to extinguish the flames, the wider the fire spread, hastening how quickly the phosphorus corroded their bones. In other words, the management of the punishment’s crucial moments had been entrusted to the prisoners’ own free will.

Even taking just these two examples, one could clearly see that Lamaist monks understood the true essence of cruelty. The depth of their insight and imagination into pain itself—the very agony they inflicted—surpassed what any intellect could fathom. They were neither dazzled by superficial gruesomeness nor intoxicated by objective brutality. Utterly practical and meticulously calculated based on prisoners’ sensitivities, they not only avoided naive errors like supplementing or discounting others’ suffering through imagination, but through original combinations of simple techniques produced unimaginable depths of cruelty whose effects defied measurement.

While the cruel spirit of Lamaists remained active, their punishments were still manageable; but when it grew idle and stagnant, the torments became unspeakably ghastly. One example of this was the Tibetan-style Carolina Criminal Code.

In the center of a ten-shaku square clearing enclosed by a double palisade of unbarked logs sat a cage approximately four shaku long and one shaku five sun high. It was a prison cell where prisoners were confined alive. The prisoners had their necks and both arms bound together with a single chain—unable to sit or lie down flat, forced to remain hunched over for years on end—until their limbs wasted away to mere bone and skin. Food was thrown haphazardly through the cage’s iron bars whenever the guard monks remembered. Even on cold days of minus twenty degrees—not uncommon in Tibet—they were provided nothing but a single sheepskin as covering. The Carolina Criminal Code of Europe was designed so that confinement led to starvation, whereas the Tibetan method could be seen as removing the starvation component from the Carolina Code and adding Hamburg’s chain torture and Spain’s compression torture.

This was the result when Lamaists’ sadism lay dormant—under such conditions, prisoners were forgotten for at least five to twenty years. As for those condemned souls, the pain of their crushed bodies defied description. Starved, frozen, and tormented by the guilt of being cursed—how could they possibly endure living? It defied human understanding, yet one had to acknowledge here too the triumph of Lamaists’ meticulously perfected cruel techniques. The reason lay in something akin to a life-prolonging drug that had been invented—a substance preserving these wretched prisoners’ tenuous grip on life, allowing them to linger languidly until their natural lifespan concluded—which guards secretly mixed into water and administered when thirst peaked. They exploited an inevitable human frailty—that even those attempting suicide by refusing food could not resist drinking water—so while each prisoner agonized over why death eluded them despite such torment, observers marveled at their ability to survive such conditions.

Around the same time, Francesco della Penna—a Capuchin missionary who entered Tibet in 1719 during Japan’s pre-isolation Kyōhō era—became the first European to document Lamaism’s true nature through detailed reports on both the tragic circumstances of its pontiff and ministers’ overt regicidal customs. Lamaism had split into old (Red Sect) and new sects during medieval times; its institutional foundations began when Kublai Khan of China’s Yuan Dynasty converted to New Sect Lamaism and entrusted governance of Tibet to Phagpa—a monk whose successors thereafter managed state affairs through successive abbots. Subsequently, when civil war erupted during Kangxi’s fifty-ninth year (1720), Qing Emperor Shengzu dispatched troops under pacification pretexts and installed a Superintendent Commissioner who meddled in governance and justice—soon reducing Tibet entirely into Qing dependency.

“Tibetan Buddhism floats within an ineffably profound pantheism beyond its teachings of reincarnation and rebirth; yet according to Lamaist doctrine, the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara who, upon death, immediately reincarnates—emerging crying from someone’s womb to succeed to the Dalai Lama’s position through rebirth.” Among the Dalai Lamas, some—well-prepared to die—left testamentary instructions on their deathbeds: “I shall be reborn as so-and-so’s child in such-and-such village; recognize that child as me.” When this was not done, they divided tasks to search for children born at the exact moment the Dalai Lama drew his last breath. It would be best if there were only one [candidate], but when there were three or even four, they designated all existing children as candidates, waited until they turned five years old, sealed papers bearing the children’s names into silk cocoon-like pellets, placed them in a gilt urn, and had the Superintendent Commissioner pluck out one pellet with ivory chopsticks. That child became the next Dalai Lama.

The selection of the Dalai Lama was considered Tibet’s most solemn ceremony; however, it could not be asserted that there was absolutely no corruption involved. When one’s child became the Dalai Lama, it brought immense prosperity to the entire clan; thus, families exerted themselves to lavish massive bribes upon the Commissioner of Political Affairs and Grand Councilor, striving to have their child’s name inserted.

While the viceroy acted as regent until the young Dalai Lama reached his majority, those ten-odd years became nothing less than a golden opportunity for ministers and high officials. Since no real power was granted to the viceroy, they could govern haphazardly on their own and line their own pockets as they pleased. Their wish was for the Dalai Lama to remain five years old forever or to be an idiot; they detested above all else the brilliant and capable types. From the Third to Seventh generations, not a single one of the five Dalai Lamas survived past twenty-five years of age; there were compelling reasons to believe they had all been assassinated through ingenious methods.

When the Eighth Dalai Lama suddenly fell ill and took to his deathbed, those selected as official witnesses gained the opportunity to observe the court physicians’ strenuous efforts at the Dalai Lama’s palace; yet the circumstances surrounding his passing merit thorough description if only to demonstrate that such methods of assassination exist in this world. The Eighth Dalai Lama was a resourceful, wise, and exceptionally healthy individual who had never experienced anything resembling an illness until he fell seriously ill at twenty-three years of age. His fever ran high, sweat poured from him, and each time he coughed spasmodically, a mild spasm would occur. It was a condition where a common cold had worsened to the brink of bronchial asthma—something that could have been completely cured in four or five days with prompt treatment.

The treatment began with a clamorous prayer ritual. In Lamaist belief, all illnesses stem from demons, malignant spirits, or wandering souls; thus no physician could enter the sickroom until exorcists had expelled these evils—even the most potent medicines would prove useless otherwise. Not even for the Dalai Lama could this law be broken. When sixteen exorcists led by the Grand Ascetic entered, they threw open every window. However fervently they prayed, their efforts meant nothing unless they first created an escape route for the evil spirits. The exorcists sat cross-legged to form a large circle, letting the frigid wind blow through as endless chants of incantations continued to the clang of handbells and thump of drums. The Dalai Lama inhaled billowing incense smoke mixed with icy night air, coughing without cease. The Rakushaki and Kubandaki demons possessing him resisted the prayers' power in their death throes. The exorcists redoubled their drumbeats at this critical juncture. They persisted in these merciless rites until dawn. The Dalai Lama suffered respiratory spasms and lost consciousness from oxygen deprivation. The Grand Ascetic proclaimed the evil spirits expelled and relinquished him to the physicians. Only then did the true treatment commence.

The Chief Physician entered with about ten medical officers. First they drained approximately 0.18 liters of blood through bloodletting from his arm, then made an incision on his shoulder and extracted nearly the same amount using a suction glass. They shaved the Dalai Lama’s head and applied a foaming poultice made of eucalyptus oil mixed with mustard and gum arabic, then used hot water infused with nux vomica (Strychnos nux-vomica) seeds and datura (Datura metel) leaves to apply foot compresses. After performing these murderous procedures, they calmly began administering medication.

The Chief Physician meticulously tested each medicine for poison before returning it to the medical officers. First they made him drink approximately three cadex (about 0.54 liters) of a laxative consisting of betel nut and tamarind pulp decoction mixed with powdered tortoiseshell, administered a one-drachm (approximately 37.5 grams) emetic pill kneaded from yak dung, rue, and coin lichen, and gave two cadex each (about 0.36 liters per dose) of antitussives—a decoction of Indian hemp leaves, larch mushrooms, and honeysuckle flowers. They made him drink over one posram (approximately 0.9 liters) of a febrifuge—powdered bark from lacquer and silk trees dissolved in papaya latex—administered in rapid succession without delay.

There, they paused briefly to observe his condition. As his condition showed no improvement, they repeated the entire process from bloodletting to administering febrifuge from the beginning. In roughly three hours, they drew two lagena (approximately 1.44 liters) of blood from the Dalai Lama, replacing it with seven lagena (approximately 5.04 liters) of decoction made from noble medicines. As the second course of treatment neared its end, the Dalai Lama’s breathing grew faint and he flailed on the brink of drowning. After deliberation, the medical officers reached a consensus to implement emergency measures. The Superintendent Commissioner, Grand Councilor, Grand Secretary, ministers, and other key officials—wearing gold-embroidered official sashes and ceremonial hats adorned with large plumes—entered to inspect the final stages of administrative work meant to slightly hasten the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation.

The Chief Physician approached the Dalai Lama’s bed—a vividly colored couch inlaid with gilt Tibetan-style arabesques—carrying a large bowl of cardiac stimulant blended from antelope’s fresh blood, monkey brain extract, cannabis decoction, and camphor essence. The Dalai Lama screamed in terror and struggled futilely, but burly medical officers pinned him down from both sides and forcibly poured the stimulant down his throat, which could no longer accept anything. Five minutes later, he drew his last breath in unbearable agony.

Among the Jesuit missionaries’ distinctive “Foreign Mission Reports,” the geographical records of Louis Dorville—the first European to set foot in Lamaists’ holy capital in 1628—stood out both as travel literature and as material included in Kircher’s *China Illustrata*. Yet it was his perilously beautiful depiction of Lhasa, the luminous city said to preserve intact the brilliant cultural legacy of the ancient Nineveh Empire that had perished in the third century BCE within this dimly lit region atop the world at 16,000 shaku elevation—complete with a grand palace encircled by corridors spanning approximately one mile in circumference and thirty-eight miles in length, and three universities housing twenty thousand students—that reportedly lulled readers into dreamlike fascination and became the very cause of many explorers’ ruin around Tibet.

Ahead lay nothing but gentle, sloping hills.

The brown plain spread out boundlessly, rolling in gentle waves. The atmosphere maintained perfect equilibrium; not a trace of human presence remained. In a suffocating silence, nature halted the cycle of seasons as though enchanted. It was an uncanny vista abandoned by both humans and the seasons.

Beyond the mountains, another desolate wasteland must have been lying in wait. It had already been fully anticipated. Following the faint remaining trail of wild horses up to the summit, he was suddenly confronted—without any forewarning—by a majestic vista sprawling beneath him, leaving him breathless and rooted in place.

The fantastical vision of the wilderness—he couldn’t find words to express the astonishment he felt upon glimpsing that mirage. Never before had his spirit been shaken so profoundly.

In the midst of a vast plain stretching far and wide, a grand palace of snow-white limestone—backed by a looming rocky mountain—along with Buddhist halls and monasteries forming a massive complex stood out with unparalleled clarity under the dry air’s effects. Atop the rocky mountain stood a Buddhist hall whose daring scale evoked ancient Khitan architecture, its canopy of pure gold and yellow porcelain casting rainbow-like radiance into the sky through the interplay of bronze’s verdigris green and massive brackets’ vermilion. The palace below stacked colossal cubic stone blocks in countless layers, its front wall—pierced with geometrically arranged windows and slightly sloping forward—resembling the pylon (tower gate) style of ancient Egyptian temple architecture. A structure whose frontage alone spanned over half a league (approximately two kilometers) completely covered half the rocky mountain’s southern face; radiating outward from this central edifice, worship halls, shrine chambers, mausoleums, monasteries, pagodas, and hundreds of temple buildings interconnected through countless stone stairways, arcaded corridors, and arched gateways in all directions—forming a fantastical scene that appeared before one’s eyes like a restored vision of Thebes’ vanished splendor from four thousand years past.

One knew that in the Himalayan range scraping the sky—amidst its high-altitude zones and river-carved valleys—lay Lhasa: Tibet’s capital city and the Mecca for ten million Yellow Lamaist devotees spanning Xikang, Qinghai, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Russian Turkestan, and Caspian coasts. But who could have imagined encountering a majestic and resplendent metropolis that startles the eye—there at the extremity of a thousand-league wasteland scoured bare by the Tibetan plateau’s storms, beyond Jungring Lila Pass soaring twice Mont Blanc’s height?

The walls of the grand palace named Pongtama Ho (meaning "Jade Palace") were of extraordinary thickness. When seeing the three main gates with drum towers, lightning-shaped stone steps, and labyrinthine secret passages extending in all directions—up, down, and sideways—one understood this colossal structure served simultaneously as royal palace and fortress. Even without enumerating the astonishing collection of Buddhist halls carved with divine beasts and mandalas, or the sixteen-anpan (approximately eighty shaku) pure gold Buddha statue studded with jewels standing upon a golden lotus flower, there remained immutable proof that Lhasa was Lamaism's holy capital. The ceaseless drone of sutra chanting from innumerable monasteries and hermitages floated through the air to cymbal and drum accompaniment, while pilgrims who had trekked hundreds of miles toward this Mecca could be seen crawling along the half-league-long approach to the Great Buddha Hall, striking their foreheads against the earth with each step in devout prostration.

In Africa's Dark Continent, at the heart of the Sahara Desert, lay Tombouctou—a city of learning that had become the cultural center of an Islamic kingdom of Black peoples, where Sankore University was said to house Greek and Latin poetic manuscripts alongside Arabic classics; there existed apocryphal accounts of Islamic students using Tombouctou's golden wealth of goose quill pens to write missives to the Turkish king—but Lhasa existed not in legend. Rather, it stood as a great academic metropolis where the primordial forms of Syrian and Persian culture, having traversed India via silk trade routes through Bhutan and Pamir, had pooled and sedimented. In Lhasa's outskirts stood three universities—Drepung, Sera, and Galdan—each divided into three Tarsan (divisions), with every Tarsan containing eighteen Kamtsang (departments), where twenty-five thousand students studied Buddhist scriptures and doctrinal texts through dead languages such as Central Asian Sanskrit Brahmi, Zokt, and Uighur. The scripture repository of the Great Buddha Hall preserved in their original forms the texts of world religions that had vanished over a millennium earlier—including the Tibetan-translated Kanjur (Complete Buddhist Canon) published in the early 7th century; stone-rubbed sutra copies from the Six Dynasties and Tang periods; Zoroastrian scriptures (worship texts of fire religion); Manichaean doctrinal manuals; Nestorian (a Christian sect called Nestorianism) liturgical books; and Zarathustraist canons.

With the completion of explorations into Australia’s interior and Central Asia, the "blank spaces" on world maps—excluding the polar regions—in habitable areas became limited to the Islamic Kingdom in Africa and Tibet. As for the Islamic Kingdom, when a Frenchman named René Caillié saw Timbuktu in 1827 (the tenth year of Bunsei) and returned triumphant to France as the first European to emerge alive from there, it ceased to be a land of mystery and obscurity, leaving Tibet as the sole remaining unknown territory. Even though these matters were brought to light in Foreign Mission Reports, they remained mere fleeting glimpses of human customs and sentiments; thus, if one sought geographical knowledge, there was no choice but to enter Tibet and lift the veil with one’s own hands. Thus, beginning with Meyung in 1811 (Bunka 8), British, French, Russian, Hungarian, American, and Swedish explorers and geographers began challenging Tibet's formidable barriers.

To enter Lhasa from India, besides the main road via Darjeeling and Yatung, there existed a detour looping around Tokei and a mountain trail entering from the west through Kangchenjunga’s western saddle and the 23,000-shaku Jungring Lila pass. Those seeking to avoid entering Tibet from India could attempt routes through Xikang, Qinghai, Turkestan, or via Xining along the upper Nujiang River. Yet Tibet’s internal transport network had been designed with ruthless precision—like a master shogi player blocking all enemy advances with a single piece—ensuring that no matter what backroads one took, travelers inevitably ended up using main thoroughfares. Thus intercepted at some checkpoint in Outer Tibet, they faced charges of violating national law and defiling this Buddha-aligned sacred land with foreign boots—crimes punished by forced full-body prostration with foreheads pressed to earth in ritual obeisance. An escort officer mounted on a Tibetan horse and four guards would accompany detainees, compelling them to prostrate themselves while chanting mantras (Lamaist incantations), then crawl back—regardless of distance—to whichever border they had infiltrated in Xikang or Qinghai.

After it took weeks to crawl back to the border, they would transport them on bare horses all the way to Gansu and Xinjiang, then release them at the entrance to the Tsadam Desert beyond the Karakoram Pass after applying lacquer to the soles of their feet. They provided neither food nor water, but informed them in detail of a water source a day’s journey away and the direction they should take. Believing they would reach water after a day’s journey, they would set off walking frantically—only for blisters to form on their soles due to the blistering agent, leaving them no choice but to crawl forward. In arid lands, survival without water is limited to nineteen hours, but only those who crawled to a water source through exceptional endurance managed to return alive.

Even if one managed to slip through the outer checkpoint (a road barrier near the border), an inner checkpoint (the prefectural barrier) lay in wait beyond. No matter which direction one came from, entering Lhasa required undergoing inspections at five checkpoints—a process that took no fewer than twenty days even when rushed due to a complex procedure called the Hansaza Law (reverse liability system). First, at the initial checkpoint, travelers obtained a provisional pass (kari-shō), which required securing guarantors from both the district chief and five villagers. Under this system, if foreigners were mistakenly permitted passage, both the district chief and these villagers would be held equally culpable. When one proceeded to the second checkpoint with the provisional pass and underwent written and oral Tibetan examinations, authorities then transferred them to the third checkpoint under direct control of the Qing Dynasty's Amban in Tibet. Those who had entered disguised as Qing Chinese invariably met their end there. At the fourth checkpoint, travelers again petitioned for capital entry—surrendering their provisional pass to receive an official passport—before proceeding to the fifth checkpoint housing prefectural inspectors to pay customs duties and capital entry taxes while requesting visa endorsement on their passports. From there, they returned to the third checkpoint to sequentially obtain deputy seal endorsements from the third, fourth, and fifth checkpoint chiefs—only then finally gaining entry into the capital.

Of the explorers from Meyung in Bunka 8 (1811) to Sven Hedin in Meiji 29 (1896), only two succeeded in infiltrating Lhasa: the pair of French missionaries Huc and Gabet, and Saratchandra Chandra Das—a Bhutanese-Indian Tibetan linguist. All others met unfortunate ends in Tibet’s border regions. General Przhevalsky and others attempted infiltration four times over fifteen years from the north and east but ultimately failed to achieve their objectives; Bonvalot was discovered by Lamaist soldier-monks near Lake Tengri, about a hundred miles from Lhasa; the Littledale couple, having closed to within a mere fifty miles—close enough to see and call out to Lhasa—were likewise intercepted.

Dressed in a hempen robe, woven bamboo hat, cloth-wrapped bundle at his waist, gaiters, and straw sandals—the attire of a mendicant monk embarking on ascetic practices—Yamaguchi Chikai departed Japan. This summarized the history of Tibetan exploration up to Meiji 30 (1897), yet Chikai knew none of these circumstances. You claim you’re going to Tibet—but if asked what kind of place Tibet was, you would have answered that you didn’t know. In recent years Uheddo had published in the *Shina Yearbook* that Tibet’s area measured 1,199,998 square kilometers with a population of approximately 6,500,000—but even these figures faced numerous conflicting interpretations—so in an era when even explorers wandered fruitlessly around Tibet’s periphery, it had been hardly possible for Japan—fresh from the Sino-Japanese War—to obtain any precise conception of Tibet. As for what he carried: a hand-copied Tibetan map transcribed from the Kangxi 53rd Year Edition *Official Western Frontier Four-Region Atlas* (1714), and *Miscellaneous Travel Notes on Tartary*—published in Beijing during Guangxu 2 (1876) by Catholic priest Abbé Huc (*Haute voie de Tartare*). Alongside this lay the knowledge that about a decade prior, a Tibetan linguist named Saratchandra Chandra Das had smuggled out vast historical materials from Lhasa and was compiling a Tibetan-English dictionary in Darjeeling, India—he thus planned to first meet this man to inquire about entry methods and, if possible, obtain something akin to a letter of introduction.

On the map, one could simply walk northeast from Darjeeling through Bhutan in fifteen or sixteen days—but this route had been strictly closed for a hundred and fifty years. Thus he went instead to Nepal west of Bhutan, breached Dhaulagiri—the world’s fifth-highest peak at twenty-seven thousand shaku, twice Mount Fuji’s height—to enter southwestern Tibet. Where he should have turned east, he instead pushed westward for two hundred ri along Lake Manasarowar’s shores until finally veering eastward again. He swam across several roaring torrents from melting glaciers and endured hardships beyond description on a sixteen-thousand-shaku plateau of glacial moraine. Alone, he completed this twelve-hundred-ri detour—and in the sixth year since departing Kobe, entered Lhasa.

A photograph remains from his Ōbaku-san days, showing him standing with prayer beads in hand, his robe’s hem gathered in shabby disarray. A man with a gaunt frame and disproportionately large eyes—his unremarkable appearance devoid of any spark of wit, even bearing an air of timidity—seemed an improbable figure to have made such a dramatic arrival. Yet Chikai himself had apparently never believed he would succeed. Like a politician who fails repeatedly yet somehow sprouts success unnoticed, he placed no trust in himself—and made no frantic struggles either. The day before departing Kobe, he told a friend: “I have a weak constitution and am rather timid, so I won’t push myself as others do. Where others take seventeen years, I’ll take thirty—even forty if needed. I’ll consider it good enough if I can manage it before I die,” he said.

Likely having Xuanzang Sanzang’s seventeen-year journey to retrieve sutras from India in mind, Chikai meant that if even Xuanzang required such time, someone as mediocre as himself would do well to complete the task before death—yet this single remark unwittingly foretold his fate. When Julien Sorel fled his hometown in Stendhal’s *The Red and the Black*, he saw blood in the holy water basin and happened to read a newspaper article about a man’s execution. These were all omens of fate, but perhaps deep within his soul, Chikai foresaw his own destiny.

Upon arriving in Calcutta on June 1, Yamaguchi Chikai immediately took the train to Darjeeling. Darjeeling was a hill station located on a 14,000-shaku highland near the Bhutanese border, where just beyond it, Kangchenjunga could be seen thrusting its summit into the clouds and rising like a colossal pillar of ice. Since he had no other purpose, when he frankly stated his reason for visiting, Chandra wore an indescribable expression and gazed at Chikai’s face for some time.

Over this past century, not a single world-class explorer had succeeded—yet here was this young monk casually declaring he would "enter Lhasa in Tibet." While gazing at the face of the shabby novice monk who looked no older than a large child, Chandra—who unexpectedly had a worldly side—found it far from difficult to imagine what he was thinking. Putting aside the arrogant self-importance of fanatical Lamaists, since the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese had become an unpleasant race to the Qing Chinese, and among Qing officials in Tibet, the ideology of "Revive Qing, Destroy the Foreigners" was intensifying. Do they have any idea what kind of ordeal awaits if they were to enter such a place? He says he wants to enter Lhasa and obtain the Kanjur, but the Kanjur (the imperially commissioned translation of the complete Buddhist canon) is not "sutras"—it is "the Buddha" himself. The Beijing edition of the Kanjur is stored in the sutra caves of Leiyin Temple (Thousand Buddha Caves) in Dunhuang, Gansu Province; yet every year during the Kanbutsue Grand Ceremony in early May, even the King of Tsaidam from Qinghai and Prince Duan of Gansu-Xinjiang make the long journey to Dunhuang to venerate the complete Buddhist canon.

To Chandra, he must have doubted whether this man was in his right mind. The proposal was so preposterous that he lost all inclination to engage. However, as he listened further, he realized this was no madness but utter seriousness—left unchecked, Chikai seemed determined to head straight for Lhasa—so Chandra began earnestly trying to dissuade him. He explained with every example he could muster about how difficult it was to enter Lhasa, but “Yet you managed to enter,” Chikai retorted without budging. His face seemed to declare, “If you could do it, there’s no reason I couldn’t.”

When intelligence arrived that Chandra—a foreign barbarian—had lurked in Lhasa for nearly a year, achieved his purpose, and returned to India, the Dharma King’s Office in Lhasa was thrown into violent convulsions. Not only the checkpoint chief who had issued Chandra’s entry-exit passport, but all who had provided tangible or intangible assistance for his stay and passage—whether aware of his intentions or not—were confined to eternal prisons. As for Senchen Dor Jechen (“Great Lion Vajra Treasure”), Tibet’s foremost high priest accused of guiding Chandra’s Tibetan language studies, his corpse was submerged a hundred times daily into the Kongpo River for a year. The rotting flesh clinging to his bones was scraped off with spoons, bleached with atractylodes decoction, then his skeleton was buried twenty shaku beneath a checkpoint gate—positioned in perpetual prostration. In Lamaist belief, this meant Vajra Treasure would be unable to achieve eternal reincarnation, instead condemned to endure kalpa-long punishment for as long as the earth endured.

Tormented by constant pangs of conscience, Chandra remained acutely aware that while he had brought unexpected calamities upon others through his own convenience, he himself was leisurely compiling a dictionary in a pure, elevated land. He likely wanted to inform him that should a foreigner infiltrate Lhasa, it would bring calamity not only upon the individual but all humans connected to them directly or indirectly—yet ultimately lacked the resolve for such full confession. Instead, citing unimaginable dangers of countless varieties, he advised against recklessness and suggested abandoning the venture to instead study Tibetan there before returning home.

Religion is nothing but the expansion of others' happiness through one's own self-sacrifice. While undeniably concentrated on that very purpose for entering Tibet, Chikai was the type of ascetic who ceaselessly drove himself forward to confront hardships, forging his actions within such extremes—thus mere danger alone could never satisfy his resolve. Chandra’s perfunctory advice held no resonance in Chikai’s ears, but since acquiring Tibetan before entering Tibet had long been part of his plans, he followed Chandra’s suggestion and decided to enter Gumpaar Monastery, situated about one ri uphill from Darjeeling.

Gumpaar was a Yellow Sect Lama monastery, its square monk cells whitewashed with lime scattered across the hills. On the grassland before the stone gate, about five lamas robed in yellow were crouched in postures neither fully squatting nor sitting. What had initially perplexed him turned out to be their posture during defecation. Apparently through arrangements made by Chandra, an abbot named Shabzun agreed to open a monk's cell and provide lectures on Tibetan Buddhist scriptures for a monthly tuition of five Tangka (approximately ten sen). The monk's cell was a dimly lit room of roughly three tsubo (about 9.9 square meters), partitioned by thick walls and a heavy latched door, containing only a simple woolen-felt-covered bed and the fire hole of a heating stove.

The monastery housed about fifty monk-scholars, all of them robust, powerfully built young men who scarcely read sutras—instead devoting themselves to martial training in stone-throwing, high-jumping, and staff techniques—and who would rush out to the grasslands to duel at the slightest provocation. Once they had sustained enough injuries, someone would intervene to mediate, and they would drink reconciliation liquor—this was all they ever did. All academic work took the form of debates: one person would sit formally while another approached holding prayer beads, spread their hands facing each other, and with a great shout of “Chī-chi-kwa-choe-chang!”, clapped their hands together. It was the mantra known as “the Heart of Monju Bosatsu.” The questioned one responded, “Chī-tāwa-chimie-chang.” It signified debating based on the true Dharma of suchness within the cosmos—and from there, the dialectic began. Simultaneously with posing the question, he would raise his left leg high while spreading both hands, then at the moment of clapping his palms together, stomp his foot down with full force—a fierce ritual indeed.

In the mornings, he engaged in doctrinal studies; in the afternoons, he descended to Darjeeling for alms collection; and his nights were devoted to sutra recitation. The monastic classmates had concluded that Chikai was a Chinese Buddhist monk—a dull-witted fellow who did nothing but read sutras—and thus kept him at arm’s length. Yet occasionally, when overhearing their conversations, he learned that monasteries like this one—located near Tibet’s outer border regions—served as surveillance outposts to monitor foreign infiltrators into Tibet. Under the pretext of alms rounds or sermons, they gathered intelligence wherever they went and dispatched daily reports to Lhasa via relay. If necessary, they would even conduct surveillance and take on the role of assassins who incited villagers to eliminate targets, it seemed. Now he understood why these men were so savagely disposed, but under such thorough surveillance, it seemed all too natural that large-scale expeditions requiring extensive preparations would fail in border towns.

Abbé Huc’s *Travels in Tartary* provided various beneficial insights. Upon receiving orders in Beijing to proselytize in Tibet, Abbé Huc went to Dolonnuur in Mongolia, spent four years at a Lama temple and three years in Tibetan nomads’ tents—fully embodying a Lama monk—then conversed with over two hundred pilgrims to conduct meticulous research on checkpoint networks. According to Chandra, over the past century, the efforts of hundreds who aimed for Lhasa had all ended in failure; yet within this context, Abbé Huc alone had succeeded—solely due to his unshakable conviction and sincere character. He had been reading scriptures merely as an expedient means to master Tibetan, but realizing such superficial efforts would never fulfill his sacred vow, he resolutely stirred up a fierce resolve and wrote his pledge that very day.

Until fulfilling his sacred vow, he pledged to maintain the One Hundred Precepts according to Monju’s Sutra of Inquiry; abstain from the Four Impure Foods while consuming nothing but pure sustenance obtained through alms; renounce all geographical and blood ties as a Japanese by never meeting parents, siblings, teachers, or friends in this lifetime; and upon completion of his vow, atone for defiling Lamaist holy sites with a foreigner’s boots by severing both legs below the knees to offer them as alms to dogs and wolves—these being among twenty-six articles total.

The next day before dawn, he performed ritual purification in a mountain stream, then sat upon a plateau where Kangchenjunga's glacial mass loomed directly ahead. He completed 108 prostrations, recited his vow aloud, faced the mountain and intoned "May even bitterest trials forge paths to save others," before returning to seminary to seek the academic rank of doctrinal master. Lamaist doctrinal training followed three stages: nominal classification, ritual observance, and collected exegesis. In May of year thirty-one, Chikai progressed to intermediate studies; through that year he contemplated mind-essence and profound doctrines; by year thirty-two's end he attained minor doctrinal mastery.

In the midst of this, he heard that every year, for six months from early September in the lunar calendar to mid-February of the following year, Tibetan pilgrims would come to pay homage at the Great Stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Nepal was a semi-independent nation bordering Bhutan to the west, situated between Tibet and India, where nearly at its center—from east to west—the main Himalayan range encircled it like an icy rampart while five of the world’s highest peaks including Everest, Annapurna, and Dhaulagiri clustered together in this precipitous terrain. Tibet and Nepal had previously maintained communication through the Nora Great Pass in the Kuhingangri Mountains north of the Himalayas. Since Major Montgomery’s British expedition infiltrated the area in 1863 (Bunkyū 3), this route too had been closed off; however, given that large numbers of pilgrims continued to enter, there must surely be a passable path. When he inquired there and found potential advantages, in January of the following year (1900), he promptly left the monastery and traveled by train from Calcutta to Kathmandu. After participating in a ten-day memorial service, he inquired with pilgrims he had befriended and learned of a pass called Mendan that only pilgrims used; however, since one needed a travel permit from the Dharma King’s Office in Lhasa, this route too proved unviable.

He had been idling away his days at the hermitage of the Great Stupa until mid-February when he heard a tale that stirred something within him—how a century earlier, during the Qianlong era, Nepalese Gurkhas had crossed the thirty-thousand-shaku Dhaulagiri range to invade Tibet, pressing close to Lhasa. During this time, a Lama monk named Gyatsan, who had been staying in the same cell, came to bid farewell. He was returning to Kampūtan—a village at Dhaulagiri’s foothills—but having been invited (“There’s a manuscript copy of the Vinaya section from the Buddhist scriptures at our hermitage—would you care to read it?”), he gladly accompanied him.

Kampūtan was a frigid hamlet of some fifty households clinging like oyster shells to a mountainside at an elevation of approximately eighteen thousand shaku. The glacier descended right to the village’s edge, while the wind-scoured ridges of Dhaulagiri towered overhead, looming so close they seemed to brush one’s eyebrows. The residents were all pure Tibetans who had come from Tibet’s northern plateau and settled here; on every roof fluttered white flags printed with mantra phrases, matching exactly the Tibetan landscapes he had heard described. The men wore white woolen shirts and knee-length woolen robes resembling kimonos, loosely draped over their bodies with leather belts fastened atop. The sleeves hung astonishingly long—tubular extensions reaching below their upper garments’ hems. These sleeves served both for warmth and as rags to wipe utensils. When at home or needing their right hand free, they would slip one arm free and wind the long sleeve around their waist like a belly band over their belt. All men shaved their heads, donning felt hats shaped like overturned temple bells when going outside. They wore supple half-boots of yak leather with roomy tops holding pipes, tobacco pouches, tea caddies, and wooden bowls.

Tibet was a land of polyandry where even five or seven brothers made do with a single wife. The barren soil meant none could support separate households were they each to marry. The eldest son would first take a wife; when younger brothers came of age, their mother would mediate their union with this sister-in-law. Subsequent younger brothers would likewise form marital bonds with her, the brothers sharing one wife among them. There existed cases of fathers and sons sharing a wife, or two or three daughters taking in one adopted son. Living in cramped single-room dwellings, both men and women practiced adultery openly and without restraint. Within such customs, adultery bore no significance. They lived as naturally as untaught children - notions of modesty or propriety had never taken root in their way of life.

In Kampūtan, there were not enough sheep to slaughter for meat, so they subsisted on tsampa (roasted barley flour) and curdled milk from butter tea as their staple food. When brick tea boiled in an iron bowl over the fire, they would pour the black liquid into cups, add thick slices of pungent goat butter, then stir in roasted barley flour. They made do with this for days until meat became available. This was manageable enough, but both men and women changed clothes only once a year and lived without ever washing their hands or scrubbing grime from their bodies. Since they neither wiped after defecating nor cleaned their noses, their bodies turned sooty with accumulated grease while their clothes glistened from butter stains. After meals, they licked their bowls clean with their tongues. When guests visited, they wiped bowl rims firmly with grime-shined sleeves before pouring tea. One could scarcely imagine a people more unkempt than these Tibetans—yet through four months of devotedly enduring filth to fulfill his sacred vow, his face and body became like a weathered dry-lacquer Buddha statue until he resembled a true Changtang highlander.

The peaks at the village edge remained sealed by blizzards and snow clouds, appearance bleak no matter when one looked, but once mid-May passed, the hazy shroud that had lingered was abruptly torn away, revealing Dhaulagiri in its entirety. Beyond several overlapping jagged ridges in the mountain folds rose an icy peak of unimaginable height—so towering that one had to lean back to glimpse its summit. What he had until now believed to be Dhaulagiri’s summit was in fact the ridges of small mountains encircling the foothills at its base.

Around the end of May, Gyatsan came and advised that if he intended to go to Torbo-Sē, it would be best to start preparing. Torbo-Sē was a mountain sanctuary hidden in a valley on the other side of Dhaulagiri—about a ten-day journey away—where a copy of the Complete Buddhist Canon resided in its hermitage; however, Dhaulagiri remained impassable until May due to blizzards, and from late June onward, the snow softened again making traversal impossible. By late July fresh snow would begin falling and continue through May of the following year. The Dhaulagiri crossing window lasted only from mid-May through late June—a mere four weeks annually—meaning anyone who ventured across could not return before April of the next year. If he accepted these conditions Gyatsan would arrange for a mountain guide—such was their discussion. Atop its flattened summit area lay faintly visible a snowless rocky shoulder. Gyatsan indicated this was their crossing point. Given Kampūtan already stood at sixteen to seventeen thousand shaku elevation Dhaulagiri’s peak must measure at least twenty-seven thousand by conservative estimate. That humans could traverse such altitudes seemed nearly miraculous.

After about a week, he began seeing people who had crossed Dhaulagiri and descended to Kampūtan. Whether they were clandestine Buddhists or ex-convicts, given their precarious circumstances, they remained unable to pass through any checkpoints regardless. There was one who claimed to have come from Lhasa; when he discreetly inquired about their route, it emerged they had gone north from Lhasa, traveled west across the Changtang Plateau for a hundred days, circled Lake Manasarovar’s shores before turning southward, crossed the mountain range on Tibet’s border with Nepal, then walked south twenty days until reaching this Dhaulagiri. When compiling their accounts, this route proved consistent overall. When he asked whether border guards existed there, they answered that encountering nomad tents even once every forty days counted as good fortune—human presence being wholly unimaginable.

He would eventually have to cross Dhaulagiri. He had been agonizing over how difficult it would be to fabricate a reason, but this proved the ideal pretext for travel—the fact that he could openly prepare provisions was a godsend. He immediately set about gathering supplies: wheat flour, roasted millet, dried grapes, salt, chili powder, torreya oil, wooden bowls and spoons, a tsukutsuku sleeping bag lined with sheep's long wool, flint tools, and medicine. These he bundled into an eight-kanme load for Tenba the mountain guide to carry. Concealing a map and compass inside his boots, he departed Kampūtan on June 12, 1900.

They crossed the glacier at the village edge, followed the dried-snow mountain folds, and made camp early that day.

The second day dawned clear with a soft wind blowing. After crossing about three glaciers and reaching Dhaulagiri, they did not rest once until sunset. On the third day, they climbed northeastward along the mountain’s contours in relentless ascent. The eastern snow saddle they were meant to cross still loomed approximately half a ri above them at a height that forced necks to crane. They hastily ate lunch and began scaling the creviced rock face. At such extreme altitude, even slight movements made their lungs swell and hearts threaten to burst from their mouths. A gale laden with snow blew straight down, flakes clinging to their eyelashes until their eyes sealed shut. Within their hat’s earflaps, frozen breath formed icy shells that needled their cheeks. Having inched up to the eastern shoulder, they found last year’s avalanche had left mountainous snowdrifts blocking the intended pass. They sought shelter from the wind’s worst blows, huddling under tsukutsuku against rock faces—but between the cold and wind’s wailing fury, sleep remained impossible. Sitting zazen-like between wakefulness and slumber, they were caught near midnight in a blizzard where thunder roared. Through thunder and swirling snow came what seemed the very sound of creation itself.

Waiting for dawn to break, they set out to search for a pass on the opposite side. Dragging their lead-heavy legs as they climbed for about an hour, the frozen thin air took its toll—even Tenba, mountain-hardened as he was, began coughing. When he looked, Tenba’s lips had vanished. Both face and lips now shared the same ashen hue, his lips shriveled inward like morning glory buds. It was an unspeakably grotesque visage, but he lacked even the strength to wonder at it. Starved for air, they hovered at suffocation’s edge. With each step came four to ten gasps; five steps demanded a heart-threatening pause. All capacity for thought or judgment gone, he ascended mechanically as through a dream—until Tenba muttered something and pointed upward. Some fifteen hundred shaku above the glacier bed overhead stood two wind-scoured rocks flanking what might be a pass, its surface buried under granular snow.

When they crawled up to the glacier bed, a gale funneling through narrow spaces swept over the ground with ferocity enough to scour away every last thing, raging without mercy. From where the glacier ended, they followed a crevice in the rock and writhed upward in a rhythm of painfully slow ascent—five minutes of climbing followed by five minutes of rest—until their limbs numbed and became immobile, stuck fast to the stone. His mouth fell open on its own, his lower lip drooped limply, and everything that entered his eyes appeared double and out of focus. Just above, the granular snow pass glowed invitingly, but his strength had been utterly depleted, leaving him unable to climb up or descend.

Until yesterday, the glacier at Kampūtan village’s edge had glimmered like a white ribbon far below, but now there was only an infinite bluish-black expanse—if he were to let go, he would plummet ten thousand shaku downward. Amidst this, drowsiness crept over him, and he began to doze off. Clutching powerlessly to a rock protrusion, Chikai resolved that this was the end and made his final vow. “O Buddhas of the ten directions and three times—above all, our original teacher Śākyamuni Buddha—though my fundamental aspiration remains unfulfilled, may I be reborn once more for the sake of my parents, companions, and devotees, that I may repay Buddhism’s benevolence.” As he clung to this vow—that his life would end when his hands slipped from the rock—and murmured the verse in a daze, Tenba pressed coca leaves, which he called an elixir of vitality, against Chikai’s lips. He thought it futile to chew such a thing now, but when he did as told, his pounding heart gradually calmed, and he began to discern the weave of things somewhat. Now was the decisive moment between success and failure—and as he crawled upward in a frenzy, the wind’s direction suddenly shifted. There, on the western rock shoulder where fierce winds had scoured the rock layers into a flat expanse, a descent path became visible just ahead. Clasping his hands together, he inadvertently sat down right there.

After sleeping like the dead for about two hours in the rocky area they had descended to, they spent the entire next day descending and lodged in a frigid mountain village called Sanda. After resting there for about three days, he rewarded Tenba generously and sent him back, then shouldered the load—now reduced to roughly six kanme—and set out toward Torbo-Se. Around noon on the tenth day, he spotted what appeared to be a village in a deep valley below, but sensing that halting there would complicate his onward journey, he pressed steadily northward and ascended to the summit of Kuhigangri, which marked the border between Nepal and Tibet.

The mountain sloped gently down to the north, and through the overlapping ranges of the Tibetan Plateau’s mountains like layered waves, a single river flowed, gleaming white. When he looked back, Dhaulagiri—which he had crossed twenty days prior—revealed its abrupt, almost phantom-like form towering above the Himalayan ice walls, soaring so high it seemed to pierce the clouds. He had departed Kobe on June 26 of Meiji 30 (1897), and today was July 8 of Meiji 33 (1900). Though he had reached this point without encountering any major calamities, given that what lay ahead was an unpredictable and difficult journey, he could not afford to feel at ease with such progress. Consulting his map, he saw that Lake Manasarovar lay northwest from here, so he began descending the mountain while checking his compass.

On the Nepal side, where the slope faced the sun, there was little snow, but on the Tibetan side, which lay in shadow, a blanket of snow covered everything. Moreover, it was treacherous soft snow; every time he stepped into it, he sank up to his knees. When he descended about halfway down the mountain, three or so nomad tents became visible at its base. If he encountered anyone in such a treacherous place, his illegal entry would be exposed at once. I want to avoid the nomad tents somehow, but there are no paths to the east or west. That said, I can’t exactly wait around for the nomad tents to move. Unable to resolve his mind, he sat there and performed judicial meditation. In the contemplation of non-self, the inclination of his thoughts would determine the method to take. After sitting in zazen for several hours, awakening with expansive clarity, and descending the mountain, he was reading the Chinese-translated Lotus Sutra at the tent entrance when a Changtang man of about forty—presumed to be the master—emerged and invited him into the tent.

The next morning, when he stepped out of the tent, about thirty cow-like beasts—each seemingly weighing 170 to 180 kan—were grazing on the grass. Their bodies were covered in dense fur, with long hair cascading like waves from their foreheads to envelop their faces, obscuring any trace of eyes or nose. Their tails resembled those of Chinese guardian lions depicted in paintings, and their grass-chewing produced sounds akin to rhythmic oar strokes. Their eyes held such ferocity that one might think they would charge at any moment. These were yaks—wild oxen inhabiting the barren cold lands of the Tibetan Plateau. In northern regions, people used them primarily as pack animals and mounts, consuming their meat and milk while utilizing hides for boots, hair for textiles, and dried dung for fuel. Though fearsome in appearance, they were said to be gentler than ordinary cattle. Hearing this, he reasoned that loading his baggage onto them might halve his journey's hardships. When he produced Qianlong silver coins (Tibetan currency) to make his request, the man declined payment—directing him instead to leave the yak at his brother's tent by the river before Lake Manasarovar. Expressing gratitude, he borrowed one yak, entrusted his baggage to its back, and began walking northward. Xuanzang Sanzang had traveled with a monkey and boar as companions—the thought of his own journey being accompanied by a yak struck him as darkly amusing.

He kneaded wheat flour, coated it with salt and chili powder to eat, slept on rocky ground with patchy snow at night, and after about ten days encountered the first river. At the upper reaches of Tibet’s great Brahmaputra River, he waded chest-deep across a sixteen-thousand-shaku highland river born from melting glaciers amidst minus-ten-degree winds that howled mercilessly, then pressed north for twenty days—consuming too much highland snow until frostbite seized his lungs and he coughed blood—until, reduced to a shadow of a human, he reached the riverbank where the brother’s tent stood.

When he returned the yak, the master of the tent—perhaps taking pity—provided a goat as an attendant. He said there was a man named Myatso at Gyato Town's entrance where he should leave it. The next morning, he secured the load—no great weight—to the goat's back and headed north for four days. He had heard Lake Manasarovar was near, yet no matter how far he trudged, there stretched only barren wilderness devoid of human presence. Glacier-pushed boulders and permafrost—battered by millennia of bitter cold—had crumbled into ash-light particles that rose as sand mist when winds blew. The sole movements were cloud shadows gliding across earth and sand ripples. All existence lay parched to dust; not a sound remained as deathly stillness gripped the desolation. As he drifted like a mote across the Changtang Plateau—bereft of water or shade—a ferocious sandstorm one day came raging. The boundless plain surged like a tempestuous sea—swelling, churning, raging with monstrous undulations beyond imagining. Chikai thrashed blindly in sand-choked air where visibility vanished, but tidal waves of grit surged relentlessly from behind, burying him chest-deep in moments. When he tried at least to save the goat by pulling it close, the creature pressed against him with plaintive cries. Clutching the goat like his own child while chanting sutras, Chikai felt the wind shift imperceptibly—and the sandstorm peeled away.

Three days later, he finally reached the shore of Lake Manasarovar. He spent the night in a monk’s quarters with Kang Rinpoche’s sacred mountain visible on the opposite shore, and the next day, he finally took his first step toward southeast Lhasa.

Following the beaten path for 150 days, he passed through Shigatse—the large town second only to Lhasa—and arrived in Gyato on December 27. Many stone houses stood there, their customs carrying a metropolitan air, and the journey across the solitary, sorrow-filled northwestern plains seemed on the verge of conclusion. After searching for a man named Myatso and returning the goat, he was lent a mule in exchange. At Fukan’s entrance below Mount Genba-La where he had descended, the younger brother ran a liquor store. To obtain a provisional passport, a guarantee from the district chief was required, but since the younger brother was the district chief, it was said that relying on him would ensure proper handling. The next day, departing Gyato with the mule in tow, on the fifth day he lodged at a small temple called Daibirushiji at the foot of a rocky mountain. There, Meiji 33 (1900) came to an end.

After spending about three months at that temple, on March 18 of Meiji 34 (1901), he embarked on his final journey. Two days later, he climbed the steep slope called Genba-La and emerged at the top of the pass. Below him stretched a plain encircled by mountains on all sides, where two isolated hills floated like islands. One was a beautiful hill resembling Mount Fuji; the other teemed with white-plastered halls crowned by golden canopies stretching from summit to midslope. When he realized this was the sacred capital that countless explorers had desperately yearned to glimpse yet never reached, his own joy at entering it paled before thoughts of their unrealized hopes, and tears spilled unbidden from his eyes.

The slope he descended led to Fukan’s first gate. At the checkpoint gate, there was a shop selling liquor. The proprietor was a good-natured, flushed-faced burly man who not only provided the guarantee but even rounded up five co-signers. Thanks to these arrangements, he cleared the first checkpoint without difficulty. After crossing the river there, he passed through the second, third, fourth, and fifth checkpoints on the opposite bank all in that same day. Neither finding it strange nor realizing he had been manipulated, he entered Lhasa’s city center with an expression of serene composure.

The houses in the city were two- or three-story stone structures with their fronts whitewashed in lime, appearing beautiful from a distance; yet once inside the city, the streets ran with sewage, and the mud was deep enough to submerge one’s knees. He was taken aback, wondering if this was truly the holy capital. The large shops were gathered on a street called Barkhor, and each shop had what seemed like touts who clamorously called out to passersby. Amidst such chaos, yellow-robed lama monks skillfully handled spirited horses as they galloped ostentatiously. He took lodgings at a monk’s quarters on the outskirts of town and immediately set out to search for the Complete Buddhist Canon, but along the main street were only shops resembling stalls with sutra texts laid out. When asked about the Tibetan Complete Buddhist Canon, such works required the client to provide paper and pay for block preparation and printing fees to have them printed. At temples that produced grammarians were kept the printing blocks for grammatical works; at those that produced rhetoricians, blocks for rhetorical texts—with the Vinaya and Abhidharma sections scattered across different locations. Thus, they had to go from temple to temple borrowing the blocks. For portions kept at distant temples, they would separately cover travel expenses.

After spending about three days persistently visiting every sutra shop in the square，a man appearing to be a defrocked lama monk—about twenty-four or five years old—approached him．＂You seek Tibet’s Great Scripture Collection？ If desired，I can introduce you to an excellent scripture collector．＂ ＂The introduction requires ten Qianlong silver coins，＂the man stated． Yamaguchi Chikai，judging this sum acceptable，handed over payment．＂Let us depart immediately—the collector has ample leisure，＂declared the defrocked monk before striding ahead．

They crossed a Chinese-style stone bridge with a roof, traversed the wide garden of Hōrin Dōjō where elm and willow buds were greening, and arrived before a large mansion at its rear. When he asked whose mansion this was, [the monk] replied, “This is the residence of the Minister of Religious Affairs. Upon meeting the Minister, you must immediately give fifty silver coins—it’s an unavoidable meeting fee. The rest depends on your skill.” When they struck the gong hanging beneath the archway’s eaves, an attendant appeared. When the man who had guided him whispered something, the attendant led Chikai through a long corridor that twisted and turned several times before guiding him to a room carpeted with crimson-patterned rugs. On a large daybed draped with multicolored rugs so vivid they dazzled the eyes lay a fifty-five- or fifty-six-year-old gentle-faced man wearing a gold-brocade belt, idly reclining as he drew an opium table close and smoked.

Chikai bowed three times at the entrance, bared one shoulder by removing a sleeve of his robe, advanced three steps, placed the pouch containing silver coins on the table, and candidly stated his longstanding aspiration. The Minister replied, “That’s a simple matter. I’ll have my staff make the arrangements promptly.”

Nothing marred the Minister’s good humor. After exchanging various pleasantries，he shifted the conversation to the North Qing Incident. The North Qing Incident erupted when Boxers brutally murdered Japan’s foreign secretary and German minister at Beijing’s Yong’an Gate，leading eight nations—Britain，America，France，Germany，Russia，Japan，Austria，and Italy—to dispatch troops。Though the Qing government had fled in exile to Xi’an in Shaanxi Province，the previous December saw a consortium of foreign envoys thrusting a protocol containing sixteen demands upon them，with Zongli Yamen Minister Na Tong and Imperial Prince Chun being sent as envoys of apology to Japan and Germany。 He had been unaware of this three-year turmoil and was puzzling over why the Minister would raise such matters when a refined-looking man of twenty-four or twenty-five entered and announced that preparations were complete。 The Minister nodded and said，“This is Wadō。You may tell him anything you require，”then politely showed him out of the room。

Led by Wadō, he climbed the stone steps beside the grand Hōō Palace and emerged before the drum tower of the Great Buddha Hall. They walked about ninety meters along the stone-paved temple grounds and entered a solid stone building. Wadō passed through a corridor lined with several small rooms each about six tatami mats in size and opened the large stone door at the end. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a dim stone room—perhaps fifty tatami mats in size—revealed itself. Along its three walls stood bookshelves where sutra texts and scrolls rose ceilingward, their yellowed wrappers and vermilion-lacquered rollers bearing an ancient patina. As for the Complete Buddhist Canon, it comprised two collections: the *Kangyur*—the primary repository of 1,044 volumes containing translated teachings and discourses of the Buddha, namely the Sutra and Vinaya sections—and the *Tengyur*—the supplementary repository of 4,058 volumes containing translated commentaries on the Buddha’s instructions. Each bore sutra titles and colophons, bundled in blue cloth stamped with the imperially commissioned black seal in sets of ten volumes, filling the shelves to either side.

As Yamaguchi Chikai stood immersed in ecstatic bliss, Wadō said, “This way,” and led him to the adjacent room. A room slightly smaller than ten tatami mats—dimly lit by a single window—had stacks of hemp paper piled in massive quantities along its surrounding walls, thousands upon thousands of bundles. Beneath the window stood a sutra desk bearing writing brushes, ink, and an oil lamp fitted with a bronze oil pot. When he asked about the paper, Wadō replied, “This is the paper you will use for the rest of your life,” placed the first volume of the Kangyur on the sutra desk, and withdrew.

The sutras were formatted like calligraphy models: oblong sheets of ancient shell paper bearing approximately sixty thousand characters of ethereal cursive script written horizontally, left unbound between wooden covers and tightly rolled with leather cords. Combined, the primary and supplementary canons totaled 5,102 volumes; at an average of 60,000 characters per volume, this came to 306,120,000 characters. Writing 1,000 characters per hour while sleeping four hours and writing twenty hours daily would yield 600,000 characters monthly—7,200,000 annually. To transcribe both canons would thus require over forty years. Since he was now thirty, even allowing for some leeway, he estimated completing the work by age seventy-two.

As Yamaguchi Chikai had calculated, the primary canon’s 1,044 volumes were copied by April 8 of Meiji 41 (1908), when he was thirty-seven. Since the previous autumn, inflammation had developed in his knee joint; by the New Year of Meiji 41 (1908), it had rapidly progressed to gangrene. Simultaneously with completing the copying of the primary canon, he underwent amputation surgery of his legs. He was struck anew by the exquisite precision with which every aspect of his supplications manifested through the Buddha’s workings. With circumstances unfolding thus, he hardened his conviction that he would assuredly live to complete the supplementary canon. In Shōwa 15 (1940), at seventy-two years of age that spring, Yamaguchi Chikai completed transcribing all 5,102 volumes of both primary and supplementary canons upon finishing the supplementary repository; in July, he withered away and died at Hōshaku-in Temple in Lhasa. When he had departed Japan, his declaration of “I’ll take until death” proved not to be falsehood; through this very act, the intent behind his vow to never meet parents, siblings, teachers, or friends in this lifetime was carried through.

When Chikai crossed the Nepal border into Tibet, a notification had already been sent to Lhasa's Legal Affairs Bureau. In recent years, the penal code for illegal entrants had been revised; those who entered would no longer be expelled beyond the borders but kept under lifelong domestic confinement. Did Chikai know about the Tibetans’ underhanded method of successively attaching live consignments—from yaks to goats, goats to mules—as their way of handling things? In Yamaguchi Chikai’s *Tibet Journal*, he merely describes the Original Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha’s vast dharma benevolence in an archaic style, without touching on this point at all.