KŪKAI

Twenty-six Japanese tales of Kūkai — the monk who brought the secret teaching home from Tang China, and the legend Japan has known for eleven centuries as Kōbō Daishi.

There were two of him. The first was a man: born in 774 in Sanuki, on the island of Shikoku; at thirty-one a traveller across the sea to the Tang; and afterwards the teacher who spent the rest of his life setting down what he had brought back. The second was made after him, and is still being made. In 921 an emperor gave him the title Kōbō Daishi, and the Daishi belongs to the villages and the temples: the monk who comes to a door and asks for water.

Not every wonder here is comfortable, and not everything the man does is kind. A rich man breaks a begging bowl at his gate, and the next day his eight sons fall ill. Two monks who pray for the emperor turn their death-rites against each other. The book does not sort the wonders from the unease; they came down together, and here they stay together.