Ancient Buddhism in Japan

Marinus Willem de Visser (1875-1930) received part of his education in Breda, and in 1893, he enrolled at Leiden University in the Department of Classical Philology. In 1900, he graduated with distinction and shortly after receiving his degree, he began conducting ethnological research in Berlin, Paris, and London. His interest in this field soon led him to study the Chinese language, initially under the guidance of Schlegel, and then de Groot. He decided to dedicate himself to Oriental studies and in 1904, he joined the diplomatic service as a translator at the Dutch mission in Tokyo. In 1909, having come home on leave, he was appointed curator of the Far Eastern section of the Leiden Ethnographic Museum. A series of publications that came out during his stay in Japan, the translation of which is presented in this edition, proved that his Oriental studies were yielding splendid results. He resumed his studies with de Groot and immediately began writing a voluminous work "The Dragon in China and Japan," which in 1914 earned him the Stanislas Julien Prize from the Paris Institute des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. He became increasingly interested in Buddhological research, and in 1915, he released his first work in this field - "The Bodhisattva Jizo in China and Japan." In 1917, he became the head of the Japanese language department, and the following year, he was elected a full member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in Amsterdam. Continuing his Buddhological inquiries, he published in 1923 the work "Arhats in China and Japan." The following years were devoted to work commissioned for the series Buddhica, Documents et travaux pour l'étude du Buddhisme, titled "Buddhism in Japan, sutras and ceremonies of the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. and their history in later times."