Kūkai

Kūkai (空海)
Painting of Kūkai (Kamakura period, i.e. 1185–1333)
School	Vajrayana Buddhism, Shingon
Personal
Born	774 Zentsūji, Sanuki Province, Japan
Died	835 (age 61) Mount Kōya, Japan
Senior posting
Title	Founder of Shingon Buddhism
Religious career
Teacher	Huiguo

Kūkai (空海), also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi (弘法大師, The Grand Master Who Propagated the Buddhist Teaching^?), 774–835, was a Japanese Buddhist monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist who founded the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the honorific title of Odaishisama (お大師様^?) and the religious name of Henjō-Kongō (遍照金剛^?).

Kūkai is famous as a calligrapher and engineer. Among the many achievements attributed to him is the invention of the kana, the syllabary with which, in combination with Chinese characters (kanji), the Japanese language is written to this day. Also according to tradition, the Iroha, which uses every phonetic kana syllable just once and is one of the most famous poems in Japanese, is attributed to him but again, this is a popular belief and nowhere attested to. His religious writings, some fifty works, expound the Esoteric Shingon doctrine. The major ones have been translated into English by Yoshito Hakeda (see references below).