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Egaku or Hui'E was a well-connected 9th century Japanese scholar-monk Chen 2010 who made frequent trips to Tang China for pilgrimage and bringing back Buddhist teachings to Japan. Egaku had a huge impact on the religious and cultural history of China and Japan.Tanaka 2011 In Japan, he is famous for bringing the first Rinzai Zen monk Gikū and the works of the Chinese poet Bai Juyi to Japan. In China, he is renowned for his role in establishing a developed pilgrimage site in Putuoshan, one of the four major Buddhist pilgrimage sites in China.Wang 2009
In 841 CE, Egaku went to Tang China on a pilgrimage to Mount Wutai, the bodhimanda of Manjushri. From there, he traveled to Hangzhou where he visited and offered gifts from the Empress Dowager to Yanguan Qi'an, a renowned 9th generation Chan Buddhist master descended from Mazu Daoyi. Egaku then returned to Japan.
In 844 CE, Egaku went again to Tang China. He visited and made religious offerings at Mount Wutai and Linchi Monastery; the Empress Dowager personally made embroidered monastic robes and religious banners for this purpose.Groner 1997 On this trip, Egaku witnessed and personally experienced the effect of Emperor Wuzong's Huichang persecution, which delayed his return to Japan. With the ascension of Emperor Xuanzong in 846 CE, the abuse ended, and Egaku returned with Yanguan Qi'an's chief disciple Gikū who became the first Zen master in Japan.
Aristocratic Heian period society enthusiastically received Gikū's arrival in Japan as he was the first Zen monk from China who exclusively taught Zen Buddhism in Japan. Tachibana Kachiko first housed him in the western wing of Tō-ji Temple; then moved him to Danrin-ji once it became completed. Gikū taught Zen Buddhism for several years there and then returned to Tang China.Hibino 1972
Also in 846/847 CE, Egaku brought his hand-copied manuscript of the "Collected Works of Bai Juyi" to Japan. The poems of the famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi were already introduced earlier into Japan. However, Egaku's copy was a complete early copy and had a significant influence on subsequent Japanese Sinitic poetry and native literature such as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book.
The Kanazawa edition is a copy of Egaku's original document. Kept initially at the Kanazawa Bunko founded in the Kamakura period, the Kanazawa edition is no longer a complete copy. The Kanazawa edition preserves the original form of the "Collected Works of Bai Juyi" as revised by Bai Juyi himself. This edition also has Egaku's annotated notes, which describe the historical circumstances facing Egaku when he was copying the text.
On possibly his last trip to Tang China (863 CE), Egaku accompanied the ex-crown prince turned Buddhist monk Takaoka Shinnō (高丘親王]]) into Tang China. Takaoka Shinnō later was reputed to have attempted travel to India by ship from Guangzhou in 865 CE, in pursuit of answers to his questions related to Buddhism. Unfortunately, he reportedly died in Singapore.
Egaku also had an "agate-colored stele" made on his behalf in Suzhou's Kaiyuan Monastery by the Chinese Zen monk Qieyuan, entitled "Record of the Nation of Japan’s First Zen School." This agate stele once stood in Heian-kyō's Rashōmon, and Tōdai-ji once preserved four large fragments of this stele. The significance of this agate stele is that it was one of the few contemporaneous records describing Egaku's recruitment of Gikū as the first Zen monk to Japan. It was one of the sources used by Kokan Shiren to write the Egaku article found in Japan's earliest Buddhist history, the Genkō Shakusho.
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