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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Noserider (talk | contribs) at 07:19, 23 May 2008 (Friendship with Myamoto Musashi). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

diacritics

I've been thinking about diacritics for this article. I've included them sometimes - usually the first time, but not consistently. I started thinking it would be better to use them as it is more 'correct', but then I realised that any search engine looking at the page would not index kukai, but only k&#363.kai which isn't going to help anyone find this page.

If anyone has any thought's on this let me know...

  • Mahaabaala, please remember to sign after you write a comment here. The diacritics are correct. Since the article name is simply ʻʻKukaiʻʻ I have no doubts that anyone will have difficulty finding this article on a search engine. Especially now with the size of Wikipedia and its presence on the internet, such a move would not be necessary. Sudachi 12:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have moved the page to Kūkai. A redirect for Kukai->Kūkai exists so there should not be any problem finding the page. I also updated all of the Wikipedia links to point to Kūkai. Bendono 12:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other aspects of Kukai

According to popular tradition, Kukai is the legendary patron of love between men, having introduced what was held to be a Chinese tradition at the same time as the Shingon teachings. Mount Koya has been a by-word for same-sex relations, in particular for the shudo tradition for hundreds of years. I am surprised this information has been deleted from this article. Haiduc 14:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would be open to some mention of the sex stuff as long as it's made clear when and where the traditional association came about and that it cited some sources. After a detailed study of Kukai's works I feel confident in concluding that he would not have sanctioned such a thing - and made no mention of it in his most significant works. Perhaps a separate article explaining the popular (but certainly apocryphal) attribution of introduction of the practice to Kukai, and a note here explaining that there is no evidence what so ever to link Kukai with this practice. He insisted on the vinaya (in fact made his priests study two versions of it!) and that says: no sex with women, no masturbation, no sex with men, with animals, with trees or inanimate objects! mahaabaala 15:23, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Friendship with Myamoto Musashi

was this the monk who was friends with Musashi and hence of influence on the philosphy of Go-rin-no-sho? 07:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC) Noserider (talk)

Article is too wordy, not enough summarization

I've read this article a number of times, and I can't get around the fact that it is just too wordy. It seems that the bulk of the contributions are made by people who are almost quoting verbatim source texts. There's no concerted attempt at summarization and citing references, instead of just writing them out. There's plenty of places in the text that could contain one-line statements, and cite longer references below.

The history section for example contains too much background information regarding Emperor Kammu's moving of the capital. That whole section could be removed and just point readers to the Kammu and Heian-period articles instead.

Can't we trim this down? If we want to introduce people to Kukai, then the article needs to be a lot more concise.

The final section on Kukai's contributions is pretty subjective too and either needs to cite more, or just be outright removed.

Ph0kin 05:52, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough - it was mostly written in the early days before citations were much used, and before Wikipedia got to it's present level of sophistication. I have heavily used Hakeda and Abe in writing it, although I have now found many more sources for Kukai in journal articles. The contributions section is a summary of Abe. I don't have the time or inclination to shorten it - I no longer believe that spending many hours on Wikipedia is a good use of my time. I hope one day to publish the much expanded essay on which this article was based as part of a longer work on Kukai (and keep the copyright and any profits!). Anyway feel free to summarize! mahaabaala 15:17, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Mahaabaala for the background information. Your efforts certainly are appreciated.  :) Ph0kin 19:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]