Kukai

(774 - 835)

Born into an exiled aristocratic family in Shikoku, Kukai was educated by his uncle, a Confucian scholar; in his early twenties he wrote his first treatise, a fictional discussion between three men, each representing a branch of philosophy. In 804 he traveled to China to study Shingon Buddhism and related subjects, and upon his return to Japan in 806 he wrote Catalogue of Imported Items about what he had learned. “He absorbed all my instructions in his mind,” the Shingon master Hui-kuo later recalled of Kukai, “just like pouring water from one vase into another.”