The Thai–Japanese Cultural Research Institute (Nippon–Tai Bunka Kenkyusyo) opened in Bangkok on December 21, 1938, with a subsidy from the Cultural Affairs Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and closed on July 31, 1943, was a pioneer of organized Japanese cultural promotion projects in Thailand. The institute’s two main functions were Japanese language education and promotion of Japanese culture.

During four and a half years, Thai–Japanese Cultural Research Institute published 16 publications introducing Japan, focusing on Japanese culture and Japanese Buddhism, for distribution and sale in Thailand.

There are many existing studies on Japanese language education of the Institute. On the other hand, there seems to be a dearth of comprehensive research on its promotion of Japanese culture, which is still underdeveloped.

This article describes the career of Tsusho Byodo (born in February 1903 and died in September 1993), who lived in Thailand for more than two years and seven months from the end of October 1940 to the beginning of June 1943 as the second director of the Institute, and was the first person to implement a full-scale publicity program for Japanese culture in modern Thailand.

Byodo is also the abbot of Zenkyoji Temple of the Nishi Honganji sect of Shinshu Buddhism. Through his experiences in India, the Buddhist Youth Association movement, international Buddhist information exchanges, and civilian employee of Japanese Army during the Sino–Japanese War, Byodo developed the philosophy of ‘Koa-Kobutsu’(Revitalize Asia and Revitalize Buddhism), based on Japanese Buddhism. With this philosophy, he was posted to the Buddhist nation of Thailand in October 1940, where he introduced Japanese Buddhism to the Thai people. Herein lies the distinctive feature of his cultural activities in Thailand.

He criticized ordained Thai Buddhists from the standpoint that Japanese Buddhism was superior to Thai Buddhism, and proposed a plan for reform of Thai Buddhism that expected the role of lay Thai Buddhists.

This paper first details the career of Byodo until he was appointed as the director of The Thai–Japanese Cultural Research Institute in Bangkok in October 1940, and then details his activities during his tenure as the director.

Byodo Tsusho was born in 1903 as the eldest son of the abbot of Zenkyoji in a rural area near Yokohama. Zenkyoji was a wealthy temple that owned rice field with an income of several dozen bales of tenant rice crops every year, which enabled both Tsusho and his younger brother Bunsei to attend Tokyo Imperial University. Near Zenkyoji was the Sanneji Temple of Shaku Kozen (1849–1924), who was ordained in Ceylon in 1890 as a Bhikkhu of Theravada Buddhism and maintained strict precepts for the rest of his life. Tsusho was inspired by Shaku Kozen’s presence and became interested in Southern Buddhism. With a desire to become a scholar of Indology, Tsusho enrolled in the Department of Sanskrit Literature in the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo Imperial University in 1923 and went on to graduate school in 1926. His master’s thesis was published in 1930 as a co-authored work with his advisor, Professor Kimura Taiken (1881–1930). Tsusho was sympathetic to socialism, perhaps due to social circumstance in the 1930s. His younger brother Bunsei joined the communist movement and went to China after his arrest and conversion.

With the recommendation of his former teacher Takakusu Junjiro (1866–1945), Byodo Tsusho was able to obtain a scholarship from Nishi Honganji in 1933. He chose to study at the Visva-Bharati of Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan, India. Since he was treated as a visiting professor at Visva-Bharati, he was able to call himself a professor during his stay in Thailand.

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