－Kobo-Daishi "Twice to China Theory"－ ■　What is the Biggest Question about Kobo-Daishi’s Visit to Tang?　■ 　An explanation as to why Kobo-Daishi did not describe the circumstances during the blank decade will be presented at the end of this paper. In this section, the questions pointed out in the biographical books on Kobo-Daishi published to date will be described. The biggest question in the traces of Kobo-Daishi is the purpose of his visit to Tang. If the purpose of his visit to Tang were to find answers to his questions concerning the passages in the Buddhist scripture "Dainichikyo" ("Scripture of the Enlightenment of Vairocana"), another question in turn emerges: Why was he able to tolerate such a long period before taking action to solve those questions? Indeed, this is the biggest question that arises when reading the conventional biographies of Kobo-Daishi. 　The novelist Ryotaro Shiba stated as follows concerning this point. 　（The purpose of Kukai's visit to Tang was） "very simply --- to find answers to his questions about Dainichikyo. Since the start of the Kentoshi system, there had been no single person attempting to cross the sea with as keen and clear-cut a purpose as Kobo Daishi." The idea behind this statement of the great novelist using an awfully "keen and clear-cut" wording is rather poor, I must say. It would be an obvious fact that a "thirst for knowledge" finely tuned to a fixed subject, "Dainichikyo," would never have allowed Kobo-Daishi to tolerate for as long as ten years without being able to work on the "keen and clear-cut purpose" of elucidating the questions about the Buddhist scripture. All the more for the enthusiasm expressed by the expression "keen and clear-cut," it is highly doubtful how Kobo-Daishi could suppress such "intellectual appetite" for almost ten years in the youth of his twenties. None of the existing biographical books on Kobo-Daishi elucidated this question. First of all, it is hard to understand the belief that one can make out the meanings of what was written with words by roving over hill and dale. When uncertain about the meanings of text, the best method to get them is to visit the author and ask. This would certainly have also been true one thousand years ago, and it would be plainly logical to consider that Kobo-Dishi did so. Histories, in general, are constructed by patching up scattered known facts and supplementing the information retrospectively. 　Until today, the degree of difficulty for Kukai, who was yet an obscure scholar-monk, to be selected as a member of a government-sponsored "Kentoshi" expedition has scarcely been explained. The criteria for selection test included not only academic excellence but also various other factors, such as social standing of family. Therefore, it can be easily imagined that, for a rank-and-file man, the height of the hurdle of passing the test was almost astronomical. An analogous example is a man appearing in Cape Town out of nowhere and asking an official to let him board the rocket standing ready for launch. The conventional biographical books on Kobo-Daishi have left this important problem unsolved: How did Kobo-Daishi clear the hurdle of such despairing height? 　Merely pointing out the fact of Kobo-Daishi's entry into Tang is hardly an explanation of this critical milestone in the life of Kobo-Daishi. 　The theory of "Kobo-Daishi Twice to China" of the author may be conceived as a tentative argument to reveal the mystery of why Kobo-Daishi was so easily able to board a Kentoshi ship. 　 Let us now return to the time when Kobo-Daishi discovered "Dainichikyo." It was, to my belief, a true event that one day in his youth in the capital Nara, Kobo-Daishi discovered "Dainichikyo" and visited well-learned priests one by one in the capital to ask questions about the difficult passages in the scripture. The problem is: When he was not satisfied with the answers provided, how did he attempt to solve his questions? It is just unthinkable that he set out on a journey for ascetic practice in deep mountains to find the meanings of these passages. 　Whether modern times or one millennia ago, the unquenchable in a great man in his youth is impulse for exploration, and thirst for knowledge. Kobo-Daishi would disparately have visited from one priest to another all over Nara to learn the meanings of the cryptic passages in "Dainichikyo." And what would he have done, when he was told that further answers were not in this nation, but across the sea? Kobo-Daishi crossed the sea immediately. 　In those days, Kentoshi or other state-sponsored ships were not the only means of transportation to continental China. Using private vessels, people were able to reach China with much less difficulty than is imagined by modern people. We can easily guess that the time required to reach China should have been a few hours （if the shortest line was taken from Japan to Korea, which are now divided by a white line called a national border）. In fact, according to a common explanation, when the ship carrying the party including Kobo-Daishi drifted ashore in Fujian, China, far away from the intended destination, a government clerk did not permit the passengers to disembark because he mistook the ship for smuggling or pirate ship. This implies, conversely, that many such ships were crossing between Japan and the continent all the time, to the extent that could induce misjudgments of governmental clerks. 　With the young thirst for knowledge, Kobo-Daishi would have had little interest in what kind of ship he could get a ride in. 　It might seem a little irrelevant, but be useful to remind readers of how small are the boats presently used for illegal entry into Japan from China or Southeast Asia. These boats are mostly ten plus tons in size. In present times, illegal immigrants even take the risk of being caught by border patrol ships, which did not exist in Kobo-Daishi's time, in addition to the risk of rough waters. 　As recently as one hundred years ago, from the last days of the Tokugawa government through the Meiji era, many youths crossed the sea to absorb knowledge from more advanced Western civilizations. The source of energy of these youths was their thirst for knowledge, as is demonstrated by the example of Shoin Yoshida, who tried to secretly climb aboard Perry's black ship. 　Contemporary people tend to consider that the way people thought a millennia ago was dramatically different from the way they do now. However, many people live to be over one hundred years old these days; a period of one thousand years equals a sum of lifetimes of ten 100-year-old persons. There cannot be a great gap between the thinking of humans a millennia ago and that of modern humans. A thirst for knowledge suffices to drive a man toward adventure at the risk of his life. 　Compiling a biography on a historical figure takes more than just patching up bits of known facts regarding the figure. It requires reasoning and inferences to fill in numerous gaps existing among historical facts.What would I do if I were a hot-blooded young academic genius like Kobo-Daishi, feeling the supreme truth of "Dainichikyo" close at hand? Would I have patience to wait ten years? Absolutely not. I would seek any chance to cross the sea because it is only once that I have to risk my life. It does not matter whether or not I would be able to come back to Japan with the long-sought interpretations. 　If I were Kobo-Daishi, I would not hesitate but jump in a pirate boat, squid-fishing boat or whatever available means and cross the sea. Those who end up in palliatively defining the blank decade as a ten-year period of blankness are people who failed to have the madness of youth when they were young.