Keisei (1189–1268) was a

Japanese Buddhist Buddhism was first established in Japan in the 6th century CE. Most of the Japanese Buddhists belong to new schools of Buddhism which were established in the Kamakura period (1185－1333). During the Edo period (1603–1868), Buddhism was cont ...

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...

of the

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Dharma Flower School (天台法華宗, ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just ''Hokkeshū''), is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition with significant esoteric elements that was officially established in Japan in 806 by t ...

sect. He was a son of the regent Kujō Yoshitsune of the

Fujiwara clan The was a powerful family of imperial regents in Japan, descending from the Nakatomi clan and, as legend held, through them their ancestral god Ame-no-Koyane. The Fujiwara prospered since ancient times and dominated the imperial court until th ...

. His spine was permanently injured in infancy when he was dropped by his

wet nurse A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeding, breastfeeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known a ...

, which probably influenced his decision to become a priest. He studied under the monk

Myōe (February 21, 1173 – February 11, 1232) was a Japanese bhikkhu, Buddhist monk active during the Kamakura period who also went by the name Kōben (, Chinese: 高辨, Gāo Biàn). He was a contemporary of Jōkei (monk), Jōkei and Hōnen. Bio ...

and then established a hermitage west of Kyōto. In 1217, he travelled to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, where he stayed about a year before returning to Japan. In China, he commissioned a '' nanban'' ("southern barbarian", i.e., a Persian) to write an inscription in Persian for Myōe.

Donald Keene Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japane ...

, ''Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century'' (Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 768–770. In 1222, Keisei composed a collection of '' setsuwa'' entitled ''Kankyo no Tomo'' (Companion of a Quiet Life, or Companion in Solitude).Rajyashree Pandey, "Women, Sexuality, and Enlightenment: ''Kankyo no Tomo''", ''Monumenta Nipponica'' 50.3 (1995), pp. 325–356. It was formerly attributed to Jien. To Keisei has also been attributed the '' Hyōtō Ryūkyū no kuni no ki'', an account of a voyage to the

Ryūkyū Kingdom The Ryukyu Kingdom was a kingdom in the Ryukyu Islands from 1429 to 1879. It was ruled as a Tributary system of China, tributary state of Ming dynasty, imperial Ming China by the King of Ryukyu, Ryukyuan monarchy, who unified Okinawa Island t ...

in 1244.Herbert Plutschow, "Medieval Travel Diaries", in Steven D. Carter (ed.)
''Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 203: Medieval Japanese Writers''
(Gale Group, 1999), p. 177.

References

{{reflist 1189 births 1268 deaths 13th-century Japanese writers 13th-century Buddhist monks Buddhist clergy of the Kamakura period Japanese Buddhist clergy Tendai Buddhist monks Japanese travel writers Japanese male short story writers