Nomi Yutaka (能海寛)
Yutaka NOMI (1869 - 1903, date of birth and death unknown) was a priest of the Otani school of the Shinshu sect and a Buddhist scholar who explored Tibet.
Career
He was born as the second son of Hosho NOMI who was a chief priest of Joren-ji Temple in Nagata, Haza village (present-day Kanagi-cho, Hamada City), Naka County, Shimane Prefecture. Yutaka moved to Kyoto where he studied at Nishi Hongan-ji Temple Regular School, then he studied at Keio Gijuku and Tetsugakukan (present-day Toyo University). At Tetsugakukan, he was greatly influenced by Bunyu NANJO.
In 1893, he self-published "Sekai ni okeru Bukkyoto" (Buddhists of the World), in which he expounded the necessity of obtaining the original Tibetan Tripitaka (the three collections of books making up the Buddhist canon of scriptures) as well as the necessity of exploring Tibet.
In 1898, he was married, but sailed out from Kobe port to Shanghai city in the November of that year.
On August 1899, Yutaka tried to cross the Tibetan border from Batang in Sichuan Province with Professor Enga TERAMOTO of Otani University, but they abandoned the plan due to safety concerns.
On August 1900, he tried to enter Tibet from Xinjiang Province (present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), but once again turned back due to the difficulty of the journey and safety concerns.
On April 18, 1901, he sent a letter from Dali Prefecture in Yunnan Province to the effect of, "I'll set out for Tibet now, so we can have no communication after this." and from then he never appeared again.
Following this letter, Chuta ITO and his group launched an exploration in Yunnan Province near the Tibetan border to study the architecture of the Hmong ethnic group. They searched for Yutaka on that occasion and brought back the information that he seemed to have been killed there by a bandit attack in around 1903.
Yutaka only sent back to Japan collections of documents (Tibetan Buddhist scriptures) such as "Kongohannya-kyo" (Diamond Sutra), "Konkomyo-kyo" (Golden Light Sutra), and materials including statues of Buddha. These collections are now owned by Otani University and Kanagi-cho Museum of History.
Also, after 1986, a lot of information and materials including his hand drawn maps, sketches, and diaries were newly found in Joren-ji Temple, where he was born and raised.