Why read Ennin's Travels in T'ang China?

Book cover of Ennin's Travels in T'ang China

Book description

This book, a reconstruction of daily life and ways of thought in China during the ninth century, is based on an extensive travel diary of that time. The diarist Ennin was a Japanese Buddhist monk who went to China in AD 838 in search of new Buddhist texts and further…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Ennin's Travels in T'ang China as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Bruce L. Batten

Author

This book is also old but I have always loved it. It’s the best thing ever written by Edwin Reischauer, the pioneer historian of Japan and also US Ambassador to that country during the Kennedy administration. It follows Ennin, a ninth-century Japanese Buddhist monk, on his visit to the glorious and cosmopolitan Tang empire in China together with a group of Japanese diplomats. Travel then was very different from travel now; to go by ship across the East China Sea was to take your very life into your hands. What an adventure!

From Bruce's list on The best books on early Japan in world history.