Ekai Kawaguchi : The enigmatic trespasser

By D B Gurung

What are we to make of Ekai Kawaguchi? A Meiji-sponsored spy? A poet-monk? An illegal trespasser? A spiritual drifter? These questions are already an answer in themselves, for as Heidegger put it, "The essence of man has the form of a question." But one fact is far above all the speculations surrounding the mystery of his identity, that he was an enigmatic adventurous Japanese. It is difficult to believe that he was not a spy from the point of view of his command of several languages, including Sanskrit which he mastered like any Vedic pundit; he was successful in masquerading himself with a false identification as Serai Amchi, a Chinese monk when he sneaked into Tibet at a period when foreigners were not allowed in; he created a healthy rapport with poet Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Das, a British-sponsored Tibetan scholar/spy, who taught Ekai Tibetan, and met with Nepali King Prithvi Bikram Shah and Premier Chandra Shamsher Rana. Of all the Kawaguchi scholars, Prof. Musashi Tachikawa uncompromisingly believes that Kawaguchi was a spy and had contributed nothing to Buddhist studies in Japan, however, acknowledges his travels. To him Kawaguchi’s clandestine dispatch to China and Tibet was the euphoria of the Meiji government, and a symbolic expression of modernization, revelation and expansion of Japan. Prof Tachikawa further makes this standpoint:

I would have revered him as a true monk if he had revealed his identity in Lhasa and died to save the lives of all those people who had helped and protected him. But he did not do so. Instead he escaped.

Almost throughout the book, Prof Abhi Subedi passionately and undauntedly argues that Kawaguchi was neither a spy nor a state-sponsored traveller, but only a lay Buddhist Zen monk, a spiritual seeker and a poet, who trespassed several foreign states illegally. He epitomizes the travels of this subaltern monk in a melange of two poles of consciousness: love of pristine nature and spirituality. But this assumption always cannot be taken in favourably due to sundry reasons as discussed. Kawaguchi left Japan at an era when Imperial Japan had fallen into a mad wolf-race for modernization with a seen-through ambition of extending its empire with guns and canons in the Asian continent, starting from China, in the early and the later thirties and forties of the twentieth century, which eventually ended up in a nightmare of disaster. But the sad irony is that "many Japanese of the present generation (still) strongly believe that their fathers and grandfathers came to China to do good", write Bartholet and Esaki-Smith in the Newsweek, July 20,’98. It was a disconcerting form of psychological agility that had made it possible for Ekai Kawaguchi to trespass alien territories without possessing a travel document, which could be either brought about by spiritual urges, or instigated for a specific secret mission under state sponsorship. To a modern eye, Kawaguchi’s visit in the Asian states including Nepal more than a century back is significant, and Prof Subedi’s assertion that this monk is "a strong metaphor of peace and diplomacy for Japan today" is equally noteworthy. Although Ekai returned home in 1915 carrying loads of scriptures and samples of flora and fauna of the states he visited, he was not welcomed very kindly by many. Why? The inference is clear that his was not a holy mission as presumed by many, including the writer of Ekai Kawaguchi : The Trespassing Insider, who wilfully or ignorantly barked a wrong tree.

Yes, a spy can also be a poet and a diary keeper.

Despite his profound love and admiration for Tibet where he was experiencing a solitary life, full of pains and uncharted satori as well, Kawaguchi remained a Japanese, a nostalgic patriot with a great attachment to his native Japan with its unique poetic tradition as one appended below:

When rising slow among the mountain heights,
The moon I see in those Tibetan wilds,
My fancy views that orb as Sovereign Lord
Of that Celestial Land, my country dear,
Those islands smiling in the far-off East.

This abrupt out-burst of nostalgia nevertheless enriches the verse with a sense of aestheticism. The following uta depicts a level of satori, the jnyana he acquires, the moment which defines its own raison d’être:

How beautiful
It is to see grass dead, but blooming yet
With frost, upon a high plateau.

Ekai was a monk representing both holy and poetic nomadism according to the author of the book. His poetry equals the rank of other monk-poets like Ryokan, Basho, Gusai or Shutaku, which records the moments of epiphany, temporal crisis and aesthetics saturated in the Zen phenomenon, the sound of silence. Prof. Subedi, a poet himself, whose poetry, in fact, far outweighs his prose in style and potential, digs into the poetic tradition of Zen monks, together with a comprehensive survey of Kawaguchi’s works in a series of systematic analysis, combining keen insight and scholarship.

The monk-poets combine individualism, the original moments of creativity with the boarder spiritual and communal harmony, a mode of unique communication, a literary partnership, a unique brotherhood not seen in any other poetic spiritual tradition. It is the sharing of the poetry – sharing of the moments of satori, or that of the flash of the jnyana with fellow monks or poets....

Apart from the readability of this work, though a stack of unpleasant cookie-cutter repetitions frequently assails one, the probing accounts of the self-imposed exile of the monk and moments of satori, are interestingly laid down. Given the overall perspective of this publication, the author should have cast this handsome book into a genre of hagiography rather than these extended essays on this mysterious nomadic monk. Nevertheless, this doesn’t diminish the scholarly merits and ingenuity in the author. The quality of analysis and presentation makes one anticipate a delicacy of high-level erudition at least by Nepali standards. Here, he concludes his sweeping views on this monk and the distinction of his excursion:

Kawaguchi’s history is the history of an individual. He had weaknesses and strengths like any other human being. He lived and searched for meaning and references like the character in a modern Japanese novel. His dream was to awaken in the realm of divine and scripture. But being too pragmatic a person, he failed in that, and he did not regret it. In short, he was a round character in the grand narrative that he wrote himself in a very Japanese style leaving a message that modern Japan has no choice but to follow – that is the message of peace, love and light.

In a sheer contrast, Mishima’s Mizoguchi, the young priest (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) whose mind is obsessed and tormented by the unsurpassable beauty of Kinkokuji (The Golden Temple, Kyoto), finally devastates it by setting it on fire. But in Kawaguchi’s case his devastation on the Tibetan’s sense of hygiene is far more civilized in nature by levelling them as the "filthiest things" inhabiting the highest plateau of the world. Sadly, he failed to appreciate the immunity of the tough Tibetans and the peerless beauty of their unique culture, during his spiritual quest for satori in his much-cherished Shangri-La, Tibet. Or was it the outcome of a sense of alienation that blossomed into something close to full-scale culture shock? Ekai’s virtues were richly Japanese virtues; his flaws were deeply Japanese flaws.

Prof Subedi’s elaborate report on Kawaguchi’s visit to China, Tibet, Nepal and India, in which this celibate monk springs out from the elegant pages of the book, is unforgettable. This is the evidence of his one-year long research in the country of the monk’s birth. But, here arises a mounting perturbation that are we really short of local heroes as who do not seem to deserve to go into print, because the author has arbitrarily settled on a foreign hero who himself has a skin-deep "name" in his own country, let alone the outside world? Prof Subedi should have gone for a bigger fish to fry, and reasonably a native species would have been far better. Or should one say it is a harvest of sleepwalk under the influence of sake, sushi or yen?

Still, it wasn’t a gross waste of time. Nippon or Nihon, which means, "source of the sun" and samurai is worth visiting for any one.

Revelations in my life

By Dr Pushpa R Sharma

Nearly 52 years ago, millions of unicellular cells containing X or Y chromosomes were moving ahead with the speed of 1 to 4 mm per minute to meet a single cell containing X chromosome because they were programmed to do so by the messenger RNA in my mother’s womb. It was by chance, that one cell containing Y chromosome succeeded in penetrating the ovum which invariably contains the X chromosome and it was decided that I should be a male. It was merely a chance, I could have become a female. From that moment, I began to divide continuously just to replicate myself; having the same number of chromosomes, same type of nucleus and similar cytoplasm.

I was lucky that the sequence of DNA was the same, as before during my continuous division; otherwise I could have become a collection of abnormal cells and my mother’s womb could have expelled it. After few days of divisions, the number of cells became so much that there was need to develop different types of cells for my survival. It was just the division of labour. One group of cells could look after the respiration the other could look after nutrition, and so on. Thus I became a huge mass of cells with different systems having different functions, just to mention a few - respiratory system, cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal system, musculoskeletal system, nervous system and so on. All these systems were functioning so harmoniously with a single motto: survival. I got a new name "Foetus". Every thing was going so well and so organised, as programmed by uncountable DNA through the messenger RNA. I was very lucky, otherwise a single minute defect could have led to the formation of an abnormal system. I was increasing my cell mass by sucking the nutrients from my mother and excreting all my waste into her blood. I was very selfish now. I began to use her only for my survival. I was programmed to do so. Suddenly one day I was so large that I could not stay inside that small womb and I came out in this world. The path I traversed was smelly, full of bacterial colonies. In my body there were plenty of antibodies, which I took from my mother to protect myself. There was only instinct with me. Nurtured by oxygen, minerals, carbohydrate, protein and fat for 9 months in the uterus, "I" a primeval cell was born again as a "Neonate".

I had again only instincts that were necessary for my survival. Rooting and sucking reflex for breast milk and cry for shelter, I grew gradually with food and shelter provided adequately by my parents. In my milestones of development my sense organs began to react with the external environment (nature). I began to experience a new feeling never naive before. I could differentiate pain, sorrow and enjoyment. First time in my life the instinctive desire to have that enjoyment developed but incapable to reason it. I began to show instinctive signs of dissatisfaction by crying and my parent pacified me. I now began to memorise every event, all the experiences and the means to execute desires. Slowly understanding developed in my mind and began to distinguish between the bad and good, ugly and beautiful, pain and sorrow, sour and sweet, hot and cold. Now a character began to develop based on the observations and experiences with my immediate surroundings: parents, family members and home environment. I moved out of this environment to the neighbours, school and society to gather more information, which was unconsciously or consciously stored in my brain - a stage of behavioural development.

I wanted this world to go in my own way. I became very selfish. Desire began to grow in my mind. Because of this desire ostentation, arrogance, pride, anger as also harshness and ignorance began to dominate my mind. I had developed the quality of imagination because of my exposure to this world. I could imagine fantasies and impossible things I could make possible, only by imagination. The huge collection of cells formed by a single programmed primitive cell was all doing this. As I grew older and older I mastered the technique of imagination and began to do things that would satisfy me. I tried to modify this outer world to suit my desire by speech and deeds. Whenever this did not happen, anger and dissatisfaction arose inside me. Often I became very frustrated. I never thought why this world should follow me! Time and space bound me and I had to flow with this. It was only my mind that was taking me to the wrong path.

Now, I am beginning to realise that every human mind has three features: the feature of goodness, passion and dullness. Of these goodness being pure causes illumination and health. It binds by attachment to happiness and knowledge. Passion is of the nature of attraction, springing from craving and attachment. Dullness is born of ignorance and deludes all embodied beings. It binds by negligence, indolence and sleep. Goodness attaches one to happiness, passion to action and dullness veiling wisdom, attaches to negligence. When goodness prevails, overpowering passion and dullness in our mind, we move towards God. We all should aim at this. If we move by dullness then we will have insatiable desires and be full of hypocrisy, excessive pride and arrogance, holding wrong views through delusion. This path leads towards destruction. The gateway of this hell leading to ruin is threefold: anger, greed and dullness. Therefore these three, one should abandon. This is what I have realised now.

ELT in 21st century in Nepalese context

By Lal Rapacha Sunuwar

The English Language Teaching (ELT) will be much more challenging in the 21st century in Nepal than it was in the past since English is emerging as a global language. Besides thousands of local and hundreds of national languages of the linguistic world, English has become the necessity of our day for almost all people of the world. English is necessary not only for educational institutions from primary to university levels but also it is necessary for a common factory worker or a household. Another desperate need of English is while clicking the computer mouse. Whether our children want to enjoy in the Disney Land with Mickey Mouse or we want our articles and books get printed, we have to enter through the lucrative gate of English. Most interestingly, the Nepalese job-hunters are required to have a better command of English to be employed at the international job markets.

There are several other areas where English is used immensely. Because of these reasons why the Nepalese parents and guardians are willing to pay for the expensive English education of their children whether abroad or at home. The Ministry of Education in Nepal has not still realised this fact. But at the same time the teachers and educationists who understood the parents’ psychology opened up private boarding schools for imparting education in the country through the medium of English. Within a decade or so the private schools and colleges have become the centres of academic excellence. The only key to their success is their Herculian attempt of educating students through the medium of English.

In this context, Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA) has become the only sole agent for imparting the ELT situation in Nepal. Even in the 90s, the standard of ELT in Nepal is floundering as I mentioned in my article "English Medium : The Standard of English" (The Kathmandu Post, 20 June 1999). In the article I have quoted Rosemery Kerr’s finding of our English teachers’ standard of spoken and written English which is extremely shameful and disgusting. On the one hand, the NELTA has to face this situation and on the other the English teachers have to face the advancement of science and technology.

Christin Stone in one of the NELTA conferences had declared that there would be Listening Comprehension in the School Leaving Certificate Examinations after the year 2000. Her declaration came to be true. There is an overall change in curriculum and text books of English with Work Book and cassettes for listening comprehension but the situation is very bizarre amongst the English teachers because non-English medium school teachers have blamed the text book writers for only aiming at English Medium Schools. The use of cassettes as teaching materials at higher secondary and college levels is almost obsolete so far as I have experienced. This situation does not improve unless the traditional way of examination is revised.

Along with these problems, the use of computer in ELT is another big challenge of the ELT in the 21st century’s Nepalese classrooms. The English Language Teachers have to decrease the rate 41% SLC failures (only of the valley as I quoted in my article mentioned earlier). In order to improve this shameful condition of the past, the 21st century’s ELT in Nepal should adopt holistic approach having based on creativity.

Since the beginning of Durbar High School, English Language Teaching in one way or the other has remained fragmentary. So it is ineffective in many respects if not fiasco. All four skills of learning a natural language (LSRW) must be essential and inseparable part of ELT in Nepal at least up to higher secondary level of education. The so-called maane lekhne (meaning writing) tendency and rote learning cannot meet the need of the future generation. The only system of monthly, half-yearly and yearly paper and pencil test cannot recover the Nepalese students’ traumatic failure in English. Accordingly, ELT in the 21st century Nepal must be:

- technically innovative,

- technologically advanced,

- linguistically,

- necessarily competent,

- methodologically effective,

- hopefully participatory rather than the teacher as a mere narrator,

- basically creative rather than parroting and

- academically sound

When the English Language Teachers take these measures into account, ELT in the 21st century in Nepal will be more demanding and challenging than in the bygone days.

‘A Kuire’s query on grovelling’

Two years ago Pratyoush Onta published a "review" in this page ("Against Kuire worship", June 12, 1997) of my book, Living Martyrs : Individuals and Revolution in Nepal (Oxford University Press, 1997). I place the word review in quotation marks since Onta’s article was technically an ‘Op-ed’ piece which said relatively little about the book itself, but commented at some length on its favourable reception by then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba (who officially released it) and other high-ranking Nepalese politicians.

I understand Onta’s review generated a continuing discussion of such issues as use of the word Kuire (Ghimire, June 17, 1997, The Kathmandu Post, and Tamang’s " ‘Kuires’, Nepalis and the grovelling factor", Face to Face, 33, #14, which reached me only recently). I didn’t join in because I thought anyone interested could read the book and decide on its merits for themselves. But because my book has perversely become the foil of choice for those promoting arguments precisely opposite those I was trying to make - and since I have been unwittingly cast as the primordial Kuire - a response clarifying the original content and intent is in order.

Perhaps the increased use of racial and ethnic slurs is only a by-product of the "Westernisation" that has accompanied increased Nepalese contact with the US. One can only hope that American efforts to combat the problem will be exported as successfully as the problem itself, although on balance I think the US has more to learn from Nepal in these matters than vice versa. If Onta’s larger project is to equalize the attention paid foreign vs Nepalese scholars, using a word village urchins commonly hurl after white-skinned trekkers seems an odd way to promote indigenous scholarly discourse.

Onta takes the politicians to task for behaving as if Living Martyrs was "the first piece of writing on Tanka Prasad." Of course, as Onta knows better than most, there is an immense literature on Rana and post-Rana politics- one has to read my reference to "legion political scientists" to find this out. Surely, any Nepali who is both literate and a politician would be aware of this, how could one write anything on this period without mentioning Tanka Prasad?

Onta goes on more specifically to accuse me of "ignorance regarding the state of Nepali historiography" because I did not "engage with its Rajesh Gautam’s monograph, Nepalko Prajatantrik Andolanma Nepal Praja Parishadko Bhumika contents academically". Although I am not an historian, I am aware enough of Nepali historiography to have felt compelled to issue the disclaimer, as clearly as I knew how, that my book "is emphatically not about Tanka Prasad’s politics qua politics" (page 4). For my purposes, the occasional and cursory backward historical glance was sufficient. I felt then, and feel now, that it is valuable to go beyond discussions of the in-fighting minutiae of Nepalese politics.

I cited Gautam’s excellent, groundbreaking study (Tanka Prasad had introduced us) without "engaging" it because I was attempting to do something rather different. I wanted to show how, in a specific case, politics emerges from and is woven into the fabric of everyday life, and how politics is perceived by Nepalese political actors themselves, as opposed to omniscient outside observers, such as ethnographers and historians.

Onta objects to the lack of recognition accorded Gautam by Nepalese (compared to that accorded me), while simultaneously observing that his book was given the prestigious Madan Puraskar for 2046 BS This is a curious, if not downright spurious, complaint in view of the fact that it was Gautam’s book that got the prize, not mine! As for privileging one group over another (racial or otherwise), it is common knowledge that these prizes are almost always given to Nepalese. This is as it should be, but perhaps this is as good a place as any to mention that if someone - the Prime Minister, Onta, anyone! - wants to give me a prize, I would be only too happy to accept it, regardless of the colour of my skin.

Why, then, did the Prime Minister and others generously praise my book? Since the Prime Minister officially released the book, which arrived in Kathmandu only hours before the occasion (frankly, I didn’t think they were going to make it), of course he and the others had not read it! No one pretended to have read it. Onta misunderstands the symbolic nature of such an occasion - celebrating Tanka Prasad’s 85th birthday - for which my modest little volume was merely a handy prop. A book by any scholar, bideshi or Nepali, would have served the purpose - mine just happened to appear in the right place at the right time.

Furthermore, the assembled commentators made no pretense of performing an academic review of the book, let alone of the scholarly literature on the period. Rather, they were simply giving their blessings to an effort devoted to increasing our understanding of a Nepali whose life and character (if not necessarily his politics) had been relatively ignored, as had those of his remarkable wife (from Onta’s review you would hardly know that half of the narrative chapters are Mrs Acharya’s ) in previous work by Nepalese and foreign scholars alike. It is a sad commentary and minor irony that in recognizing Nepalese integrity, bravery, and honesty, the politicians seem to be ahead of the scholarly elite.

Following Onta, Tamang is outraged that Nepali scholars lack "enough self-respect to stop lying prostrate before our western counterparts". How accurate this perception is today I don’t know, but it differs sharply from my own from previous times. I recall coming to Nepal as a wet-behind-the-ears researcher, eagerly sitting at the feet of scholars such as Dor Bahadur Bista, Harka Gurung, Prayag Raj Sharma, and Chaitanya Misra - men whose knowledge, experience, commitment, brilliance, and courage I was, and still am, quite in awe of. Did I grovel before them? I would like to think not (even Kuires want self-respect), but in fact I probably did, so great was my admiration for them. These scholars thought and still think (with the tragic exception of Dor Bahadur Bista) profoundly, unconventionally, and bravely about the major issues facing Nepal and what could be done about them. They were also brutally honest in their assessments of other scholars - whether they were foreign or Nepalese was never an issue. Our collective emphasis was on the hard questions of how to help Nepal and each other, rather than the easy cheap shot of how to polarize across colour lines.

If Tamang’s major concern is preferential treatment given foreigners in restaurants, shops, NGOs, etc, I can readily and vigorously agree. I’m happy to say that while similar discrimination also goes on in the US, people are sued and even jailed for it. Rather than "whine" (her term) or engage in xenophobic sniping (my term) about, why not do something, like push for regulations abolishing such outrageous discrimination? The educated elite should exert agency in such matters. I tried to present Tanka Prasad not just as the subject of still another scholarly book about Nepal, but as a model for rebellion against injustice we could all profitable follow, Nepalis and bideshis alike.

Why, then, are Onta and Tamang taking these positions? Could it be the notion that Nepalis somehow have this inside track to following Tamang’s counsel? If so, this is woefully misconceived. We all have custom-designed blinders not only of nationality, but also of gender, jat, class, religion, education, etc, which prevent any one of us from achieving complete understanding. Easier access, language competencies, and intuition for not automatically privilege native in this regard. After all, no book about American society is more profound and insightful, even after 150 years, than Democracy in America, by Tocqueville - a Frenchmen. In short, we need multiple accounts from multiple perspectives.

I conclude by emphatically concurring with Tamang’s laudable goal for "Nepali people to be seen, heard and understood as people who think, feel and reconstitute the flows of information which surround them". No scholarly agenda should be more fundamental, but is easier said than done. This makes working together in an atmosphere of mutual trust and support all the more critical to accomplishing it. Living Martyrs is not without its shortcomings, but anyone who bothers to read it will see that I wrote it in the spirit of portraying Nepalis as people who think, feel, and reconstitute the flows of information surrounding them.

James F Fisher, Kathmandu