Event

This paper explores the history of the Kōa Mikkyō Gakuin (Esoteric Buddhist Academy for Asia’s Prosperity) on Mount Kōya in Japan during the 1930s and 1940s, focusing on the colonialist (re)education programs designed for Geluk Buddhist monks from Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. During this period, more than thirty Mongol monks were sent from the Manchukuo and the Mengjiang states to the heart of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, where they engaged in a newly established monastic curriculum aimed at cultivating a new generation of geopolitically aware Inner Asian Geluk Buddhist leaders to serve Japan’s expansionist interests on the Sino-Russian borderlands.

Daigengna Duoer (pronounced “dye-gain-na” “door”) is a historian specializing in religion in modern East and Inner Asia, with a particular focus on transnational Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism in the twentieth century. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University.