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|  | |  | | | Sacred Koyasan: A Pilgrimage to the Mountain Temple of Saint Kobo Daishi and the Great Sun Buddha | | | | | SKU:
9780791472606_ln | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Takes the reader on a pilgrimage to Mount Kōya, the holy Buddhist mountain in Japan. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Philip L. Nicoloff | | Paperback: | 432 pages | | Publisher: | State University of New York Press | | Publication Date: | November 08, 2007 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0791472604 | | Package Length: | 8.7 inches | | Package Width: | 6.0 inches | | Package Height: | 1.1 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.15 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 2 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 2 customer reviews )
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21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Scintillating Summation of a Sacred Summit Feb 07, 2008
By Crazy Fox
Okay, just to put all the cards on the table, I was already predisposed in this book's favor at first sight. Shingon Buddhism and its founder, Kukai (Kobo Daishi), sparked my intense fascination all those years ago when I first started acquainting myself with Japan and Japanese Buddhism and has remained a persistent if sometimes understated obsession ever since. And my visits to Shingon's mountain headquarters, the extensive temple complex up on Koyasan, remain one of my fondest memories of the 1990's. So, yes, I was thrilled to see a substantial book-length study of Koyasan finally come out in English. And given Koyasan's immense importance as a religious site, about time too!
Given all that, the book still exceeded my expectations and is probably one of the most thoroughly enjoyable as well as brass-tacks informative books I've read in quite a while. The style is deceptively informal and colloquial, even a bit cheesy now and then, but a veritable mountain of painstakingly thorough research and years of firsthand experience have been weaved into this narrative with a deeply serious enthusiasm that only comes from true labors of love. All of which trumps the fact that, in a way, this is not a specialized work of groundbreaking original scholarship in the sense that something new has been translated and/or analyzed in expert's jargon. Rather it is a superb synthesis of such studies skillfully and accessibly unpacked while informed by a keen observational eye--all rendered in the engaging format of a kind of personally meaningful travelogue.
Indeed, a vividly concrete account of getting to and leaving Koyasan frames the main body of the work, the latter of which comes alive with detailed descriptions of the main buildings of this extensive temple complex--what they're like, what they contain, what goes on there, their place in the overall institutional framework, and such--AND the temple town and its many old and quirky shops (including a venerably vintage sake shop) as well as Koyasan's many and varied ritual and festival cycles all taking place at these many locations. Coupled with this and giving it depth is a highly reliable retelling of the life and thought of the man who established Koyasan in the 800's, Kukai (Kobo Daishi) along with the many legends that grew up around him--and then a fascinating and thorough history of Koyasan starting with Kukai's immediate disciples and following the tale through the ages up until the Meiji persecutions of the late 1800's and on into present times. One also gets a good solid portrait of the average life of a monk at Koyasan from youth to old age, from novice to head of the Shingon order.
A short review such as this actually can't do justice to both the variety and the fine level of detail packed not only in the main narrative but also in the footnotes. Definitely check the latter or you'll be missing out. That said, this is not a travel guide in the sense that you are given info about travel routes and accommodations and such; if you are actually planning to physically visit Koyasan, you will want to consult other sources for that. But for understanding what's actually going on once you get there this book might very well be almost indispensably useful. Anyway, whether you're riding up the cable car starting your own pilgrimage or sitting somewhere on the other side of the world imagining it all, "Sacred Koyasan" is just the thing for getting into the spirit of this holy place at once highly civilized and cozily rustic, quietly austere and exuberantly festive, mystically esoteric and down-home familiar, freshly contemporary and old as the hills.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Informative, readable, delightful Sep 24, 2010
By Dr. A. Sahal
There seems to be very little written about Shingon Buddhism/Koyasan so when I came across this title just before a trip to the sacred mountain I was very pleased that I'd get some background knowledge before setting foot in Japan. This is a very well written, extensively researched, fully indexed and usefully referenced book. It covers what most people would wish to know about Shingon or Esoteric Buddhism, its founder Kobo Diashi and the mountain where he founded this branch of Buddhism in Japan. It gives a full account of the founders life, his journey to China and his subsequent search for a suitable place to plant Shingon Buddhism in Japan-the mountain known as Koyasan. The author's writing is accessible to both the academic (it is very detailed) and the lay person (the author uses a lucid and pleasant writing style throughout) and the delightful accounts of his visits to the mountain make lovely reading. He describes the many important temples, monasteries and monastic life and the University as well as descriptions of the ceremonies, rites and festivals that take place on Koyasan. There are also some nice photos that help illustrate the text and act as a wonderful aide memoir when one returns from the mountain. I can't praise this book enough and I'm surprised it wasn't for sale in the many little shops that pepper the main road through Koyasan since I think the Western visitor would gain a much more enjoyable insight into the place if they had access to it.
If your visit to Japan includes a stay on Koyasan or if you are interested in knowing more about a branch of Buddhism that pre-dates Zen in Japan and was the 'Buddhism of the samurai' then you must buy and read this book.
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