Thank you. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 203, The Old Man in the Sea.

This week, we're going to turn the clock back a bit and take a look at one of Japan's most famous religious figures.

His story starts in 7774 in what was then known as Sunuki Province. Today, with its borders more or less

unchanged, it's known as Kagawa Prefecture, the northeastern entry of the four provinces that

give the island of Shikoku, or four provinces, its name.

Japan in 774 was very much a country in transition.

130 years earlier, the nascent imperial government had embarked on the Taika reforms,

a series of governmental programs designed to replace

the old system of loose clan loyalties with a bureaucratic imperial government,

muld on what was then East Asia's greatest superpower, Tang Dynasty China. After 130 years,

that project was well on its way, but not yet complete.

And a good thing for our young protagonist, too, he was a part of a prestigious local aristocratic family called the Saiki,

who in turn were related to one of the most prestigious aristocratic clans in Japan, the Old Tomo.

The fact that this young boy enjoyed the aristocratic connections he did

meant that he was able to get an education,

which in turn opened up some possibilities for him when he turned 15.

And incidentally, I'm just going to start calling this young boy, Ku Kui,

though he is decades off from earning the name that would make him famous.

Anyway, at 15, young Kukai was old enough and educated enough to make his way to Nara, which

was, at least for six more years, the capital from which Japan's emperor theoretically ruled.

I say theoretically because even by this early date, in practice the emperors did very little.

We're still about 100 years off from the birth of the regency system,

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