The people and culture of Japan. Conversations between Donald Keene and Shiba Ryotaro

This book features conversations between Donald Keene - a preeminent scholar of Japanese literature, and Shiba Ryotaro - the author who continued to contemplate the human condition through his original and distinctive lens of history. These talks, which mainly explore the foundation of Japanese culture took place in Japanese on three occasions in 1971 in the historic cities of Nara, Kyoto and Osaka. Drawing on their profound insights into Japan's relations with foreign cultures over the course of Japanese history, the two engage in a passionate discussion of their first-hand impressions and observations of Japanese culture. This article contains a translation of the second chapter of the book «The People and Culture of Japan». The second chapter discusses the features of religious life in medieval Japan. The focus of the interview is given to Kukai, the founder of the Shingon Buddhist sect and legendary personality Zen master Ikkyu, and also the features of tantric Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. It also discusses the emergence and spread of Christianity in Japan. Donald Keene is a Japanologist who has published about 25 books in English on Japanese topics, including both studies of Japanese literature and culture and translations of Japanese classical and modern literature, including a four-volume history of Japanese literature which has become textbook reading for specialists in this area. Keene has also published about 30 books in Japanese, some of which have been translated from English. He is the president of the Donald Keene Foundation for Japanese Culture and received the Medal of Culture in 2008. Shiba Ryotaro was born in Osaka in 1923, and graduated from the Mongolian department of the Osaka Foreign Language School. In 1960, while working as a newspaper reporter, he received the Naoki Prize for his first novel «Fukuro-no shiro» (Castle of Owls), after which he became a full-time novelist. He has received many other awards, including the Japan Art Academy’s Imperial Award, for his many historical works such as «Kukai-no fukei» (Kukai the Universal: Scenes from his Life). He received the Order of Culture in 1993. Other main works include «Ryoma-ga yuku» (Ryoma Goes his Way), «Kaido-wo yuku» (On the Highway), «Kono Kuni-no Katachi» (The Form of Our Country), and «Saka-no ue-no kumo» (Clouds above the Hill). He died in February 1996.