. the role of esoteric buddhism 1031
ture and can be found, for example, in tattooes, depicted in manga
(Japanese graphic novels), and painted on trucks. In this sense,
esoteric Buddhism is truthful to its vocation to keep the Buddhist teach-
ings alive in all aspects of Japanese culture, especially when most Japa-
nese are incapable of explaining what Buddhism is or to what “mikkyō”
refers. In contemporary Japanese society, the esoteric traditions main-
tain a Buddhist influence that is far from being limited to elites.
At a scholarly level, studies of esoteric Buddhism have moved from
the narrow spaces of sectarian research to the more open and criti-
cal spaces of nonsectarian, multidisciplinary academic research. The
period encompassing the end of the twentieth and the beginning of
the twenty-first centuries has been a very insightful one for the study
of Japanese esoteric Buddhism. Some of the characteristics of recent
studies have included a distancing from sectarian analyses and an
emphasis on methodologies such as literary criticism, linguistics, and
semiotics. This is also the case concerning studies about Kūkai and his
tradition of esoteric Buddhism.
The research of Ryūichi Abé has played an important role in lib-
erating studies on esoteric Buddhism from the uncritical repetition
of sectarian positions. In 1999 Abé published the result of years of
research on Kūkai, The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construc-
tion of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. Abé’s Kūkai is much more than
the founder of a new Buddhist sect in Japan; he shows that all aspects
of Japanese society, including politics, literature, and the arts, have
received a lasting influence from Kūkai’s writing. This richly sugges-
tive study focuses on the legendary figure of Kūkai during medieval
Japan and shows that Kūkai’s thoughts in general and his philosophy
of language in particular played an important role in the assimilation
of Buddhism in Japanese culture. Abé offers a very original reading of
Kūkai’s major works and convincingly defends the thesis that Kūkai
tried to offer Japan an alternative model for a political system that was
not based on Confucian principles.
In 1997, three years before the publication of Abé’s epoch-making
work, however, Takeuchi Nobuo , a specialist of French lit-
erature (he has translated Mallarmé’s works) and poetry who teaches
comparative literature at Tokyo University, published his Kūkai
Nyūmon: Kōnin no Modanisuto -. This
work reflects Takeuchi’s passion for the Buddhist priest Kūkai and his
usage of Sanskrit. Takeuchi also spent time on Mt. Kōya , the
sanctuary of the Shingon tradition and one of the most visited sites