My name is Nobumi Iyanaga.I was born on January 22, 1948. I am a writer by profession: I write critical essays in some journals, on various subjects, mainly related to the history of religions and the history of ideas. I don't belong to any academic institution or university.
I am the author of two books in Japanese, one named "Gensoo no Tooyoo" (Imaginary Orient) , which deals with the "pre-history" of the Occidental Orientalism, from the time of the classical Greek writers, up to the 16th century, when Japan has been "discovered" for the first time by Jesuit missionaries.
Another book's title is "Rekishi to-iu roogoku" (History as a Prison) , which is a collection of critical essays, dealing with various subjects, such as the history of the idea of "monster" in Western Middle Ages and the 16th century, or the idea of the "poverty" in the history, etc. These two books have been published by Seido-sha, in Tokyo, in 1987 and 1988. The first one has been reprinted in 1996, but the latter is out of print.
Please see also my various articles page and my Personal Bibliography page.
However, my main speciality is the study of Buddhism, and especially the study of Buddhist mythology in relation with different mythological traditions of Far Eastern World. I am writing a book dealing mainly with the mythology of Mahaakaala (Jap. Daikoku-ten), the "Great Black One", one of many names of the Hindu god Shiva, who is worshipped in Japanese Buddhism as a god of fortune. This book must deal with many other deities and myths of Buddhism, e.g. the problem of the feminization of Avalokiteshvara in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. I hope that this book will be published this year...!
You will find the Table of Contents of this book hereI am also the author of some articles in French, dealing with the mythology of these deities:
"Daijizaiten" ("Siva/Mahe"svara), in Hobogirin, fasc. VI (Tokyo, Paris, 1983)
and
"Daikokuten" (Mahaakaala), in Hobogirin, fasc. VII (Tokyo, Paris, 1994).I wrote also another article in French, "Récits de la soumission de Mahe"svara par Trailokyavijaya -- d'après les sources chinoises et japonaises", in Michel Strickmann, éd., Tantric and Taoist Studies in honour of R. A. Stein, III [Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques, vol. XXII], Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Bruxelles, 1985: it deals with a famous Tantric myth in which the Hindu god Mahe"svara is tamed by a form of the Buddhist vidyaaraaja Vajrapaa.ni.
An article in French appeared in september 1997 in the Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, IX, 1996-1997, the "Bilingual Journal of the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient, Kyoto Section". Its title is "Le Roi Maara du Sixième Ciel et le mythe médiéval de la création du Japon".
On the other hand, I am a user of Macintosh for more than 8 years, and I am very interested in the use of computer for the humanity studies, especially the humanity studies in the Asian and Buddhist studies. I have created, and am moderating an electronic discussion group dealing with these issues in the Japanese commercial BBS named "NiftyServe" (GO command "FJAMEA MES 11"). I myself am not at all an expert in the computer technology, but there are specialists of many fields in this discussion group, Indologists, Tibetologists, Sinologists, specialists in Japanese history, or specialists of computer technology, etc.
If you have any interest or question related to these issues, please write me (in English, French or Japanese) -- if I can answer myself, I will do it, and if it is beyond my knowledge, I can forward to our discussion group your mail, and forward the responses to you.
I myself use Nisus Writer for my writing, and I have written some Nisus macros, that I would like to share with other users.
I use also a program named UserLand Frontier, which is a system scripting environment for Macintosh. I have written some scripts in that program, that could be useful also for other people.
Lastly, I am a member of the "Association des Amis de la Bibliothèque de la Maison Fronco-japonaise". Maison Franco-japonaise is an institution created in Tokyo in 1924, to activate the cultural and scientific exchanges between Japan and France. The library in this institution is one of its main activities. The "Association des Amis" is a free group of users of this library, willing to its better development from the point of view of the users. I would like to use my web site as one of the means for the activities of this Association.
Nobumi Iyanaga
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