Vermilion World 2

Untold History of Kukai's Rise

At the age of eighteen, in 791, Kukai enrolled in the only national university in the country. This was an extraordinary admission for the time and is often cited as evidence of his precocious genius. But his entry into the university is understood to have been made possible through the determined efforts of his maternal uncle, Ato no Otari. Kukai had left his home province of Shikoku in 788 and traveled to the capital at Heijo-kyo to place himself under the guidance of Ato no Otari, a man known as a scholar. For the next four years or so he devoted himself to study under his uncle’s tutelage. Because the image of Kukai as Japan’s most illustrious monk is so overpowering, a crucial detail tends to go unnoticed. What Ato no Otari was actually teaching him was not Buddhism. It was Confucianism.

During this period Kukai studied the Chinese classics that would later become standard education for samurai in the Edo period. His studies encompassed the Analerta of Confucius, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Zuo Zhuan, and extended to the techniques of literary composition. Whether Ato no Otari recognized genuine talent in his nephew or whether the uncle’s motives were tied to advancing his own career as a scholar in Heijo-kyo is impossible to say. What we know for certain is that Kukai’s admission to the university did happen. The university of that era was not designed for provincial gentry of Kukai’s standing. It existed for the aristocratic and clerical elite of Heijo-kyo. His enrollment was therefore exceptional, and the circumstances behind it remain obscure. Yet it is precisely by pressing into this obscurity that we begin to see the forces that would later propel Kukai’s rise.

What we can discern at a minimum is that his uncle Ato no Otari invested extraordinary effort in advancing Kukai’s prospects. He poured himself into the young man’s private education as though staking his own future on his nephew’s success, and it is reasonable to infer that behind the scenes he was also distributing bribes to secure Kukai’s university admission. No matter how brilliant the young man may have been, the prevailing values of Heijo-kyo would not have permitted such an exceptional arrangement on merit alone. As a member of the aristocracy himself, Ato no Otari would have been thoroughly familiar with such practices. So while we cannot determine what Ato no Otari’s ultimate purpose was, we can grasp that he held what may be the only key to understanding Kukai’s otherwise enigmatic youth. Unfortunately, the details of Ato no Otari’s own life are almost entirely unknown. It is generally assumed that as a scholar he had managed to position himself in proximity to the imperial family, though some have suggested he may have fallen from grace in connection with a political upheaval in 807.

It is commonly held that Ato no Otari provided Kukai with financial and material support during his time in Heijo-kyo, largely because no other patron appears in the historical record. Ato no Otari was certainly an aristocrat and a scholar, but exactly what rank he held and what kind of life he led remains unclear. The aristocratic world of that era was one in which a single clan, the Fujiwara, had achieved spectacular dominance and was laying the foundations of the entire noble class system. I personally suspect that the dynamics of the ancient clans exerted a powerful influence on these events, and that by tracing those dynamics we can find clues that lead us back to Kukai. The place to look is at the surname [阿刀] (Ato) itself.