In 1810, a Japanese Buddhist monk, Fumon Entsu wrote his main work, Bukkoku rekishohen, and established a system of Buddhist astronomy and Buddhist geography based on the idea of a flat and motionless earth. In opposition to the modern scientific worldview, especially the idea of a spherical earth and the heliocentrism, that was getting popular in his period, he tried to prove the existence of the flat world system of Buddhism. In order to verify this theory, Entsu calculated the movement of the heavenly bodies and predicted astronomical phenomena. He also visually demonstrated the plausibility of his Buddhist astronomy by making an annual calendar and the miniature mechanical model of the Buddhist worldview. Moreover, Entsu propagated his theory by conducting a public observation of astronomical phenomena, lecture tours, and publication of his works.
The people influenced by Entsu's theory through these activities constituted a school and developed a unique thought movement in the early modern and modern Japanese intellectual history. One of the main purposes of this dissertation is to fully examine this thought movement which has been neglected by intellectual historians and to provide the study of early modern and modern Japanese intellectual history with a new material.
Entsu and his follower's thought movement has simply been interpreted as a reaction of the traditional religious worldview against the modern scientific worldview. In this dissertation, however, I would like to reexamine this thought movement in its discursive relation with the contemporaneous intellectual activities and rethink the meaning of this unique thought movement. Reconsidering the stereotyped image of Entsu's works, which includes significant topics of modern intellectual history, such as the relation between tradition and modernity, is to reevaluate the basic perspective of conventional Japanese intellectual history.
Moreover, Entsu's theory was the first Japanese Buddhist thought that dealt with the relation between modern science and religion. Examining Entsu works as "the first modern Buddhism," I would also like to reveal a discursive foundation of modern Japanese Buddhist thought in its early form.
