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Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 7.1 (2024): 311–330; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.07.01.09
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhism and Science, Transmission of Buddhism: Locality and Globality)
Yiwen Li. Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges between China and Japan, 839–1403 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 245 pp.
Jeffrey KOTYK
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
jkotyk@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges between China and Japan, 839–1403 CE by Yiwen Li argues that monks and merchants in China and Japan cooperated in organising trade and networks of exchange during the centuries when official diplomatic relations between the two countries were suspended. This interaction is understood as a ‘monk-merchant network’ (22) that Li argues emerged from around the mid-ninth century. The book suggests that ‘merchant–monk networks like this became indispensable to sustaining the exchanges between China and Japan’ following the end of formal diplomatic ties between the two countries (35). These informal systems of social and commercial interactions carried on in later centuries, a point that highlights the significance of Buddhist monks in Sino-Japanese relations in the premodern period. Li argues that this network was responsible for the transmission of messages and material objects (58). Later, ‘the smooth functioning of this network led to a mutual understanding between China and Japan, so that by the 1070s the unofficial network had become the primary channel connecting the continent and the archipelago’ (61). Later, Chan/Zen institutions were important in facilitating exchanges between China and Japan, and ‘by the fourteenth century, when almost all the trade expeditions were supported by religious institutions, the religio-commercial network clearly predominated the Sino-Japanese exchanges’ (182).
This is a readable and interesting monograph with coverage of several centuries of history. This study makes an interesting proposal—and provides sufficient evidence—that monks and merchants collaborated for both commercial and religious purposes in ways that modern scholarship has not necessarily recognised or appreciated when writing about premodern Sino-Japanese relations. For example, rather than focusing on hagiographies and doctrinal works to describe Sino-Japanese Buddhist relations, we get a more realistic view ‘from the ground’ by studying trade and transport as it involved monks. The impetus for certain developments in Japanese Buddhism, such as the rise of Zen, for instance, might be explained—at least in part—with reference to commercial relationships. Networks of Faith and Profit demonstrates the value of considering merchants in the histories of Japanese and Chinese traditions of Buddhism. Li utilises a diverse array of primary sources, from archaeological evidence to letters, among other items, to create a chronological history. I appreciated the use of letters and other documents that might not otherwise receive so much attention.
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About the Author: Jeffrey Kotyk (Ph.D., Leiden University, 2017) has researched the relationship between China and the wider world in late antiquity with a particular focus on the eastward transmission of sciences (astronomy, astrology, medicine, and metallurgy) to East Asia. His research has also covered Buddhist Studies and Japanese history. His recent survey, ‘Astrology and Astral Magic in Tantric Japan’ appears in The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies (2024). He is presently participating in the Dept. III Working Group ‘Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE)’, where he is contributing to the database and authoring a book on cosmology in premodern East Asia. He is the author of Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium (Brill, 2024), a comprehensive study on the historical relations between West and East Asia. He has published studies in journals such as T’oung Pao, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and Asia Major. He has held grants and scholarships from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Sheng Yen Education Foundation, Robert H. N. Ho Foundation, and Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai. In the past, he has translated academic publications from Chinese and Japanese into English. He also has translated Classical Buddhist Chinese texts.
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