Rudimentary Studies of Tang Priest Giku: The Letters Addressed to Tang Priest Giku from a Tang Merchant Jokoyu

摘要

At the end of the last volume of Kukai’s Koya Zappitsu-shu (高野雑筆集) collection of correspondences, there are letters addressed to the Tang Dynasty monk Giku in Japan and to the boy Koba, etc., who served at his side. Amongst those, I took up the 3 letters sent by Tang Dynasty merchant Jokoyu, who was engaged in trade between Japan and Tang Dynasty China in the middle of the ninth century and who stayed at the Dazaifu Korokan guesthouse for foreign embassies in Japan. I have attempted to offer a basic explanation in regard to the content of those letters and have traced the negotiations and footsteps of the Tang Dynasty merchants and monks who were involved in exchange between Kyoto and Dazaifu, in Fukuoka Japan.