日本人とチベット : 河口慧海のチベット旅行を中心として

Abstract

In the nineteenth century Tibet, wary of other countries, especially Great Britain, closed its borders and placed strict restrictions on the entry of foreigners. For this reason little was known in the outside world about conditions inside Tibet and the interest of explorers, adventurers, scholars, surveyors and also religious figures and dreamers was therefore drawn all the more strongly to Tibet. In late nineteenthcentury Japan this interest manifested itself in the form of a "Tibet fever" among Buddhists. The first Japanese to reach the Forbidden City of Lhasa was Kawaguchi Ekai(1866-1945) , a Buddhist monk of the Ōbaku tradition. His aim was to study Tibetan and Sanskrit and to collect Buddhist scriptures written in these languages with a view to producing a readable and accurate Japanese translation of the Buddhist canon and thereby clarify the true teachings of the Buddha Śākyamuni. In this paper the author gives an outline mainly on Kawaguchi’s journeys to India, Nepal and Tibet in his life and appends a letter from Kawaguchi to his brother, Hanzui which is closely connected with the dispute known as the "Tibetan Tripit4aka affair".