Some suspected him of being a spy, but there is really no reason for this, although he might well have been exploited by British intelligence in India. He was a Zen priest of the Obaku school, which is much less well known than are the Rinzai and Soto. He brought back to Japan with him a manuscript of the Tibetan Kanjur from Gyantse (Rgyal rtse) which was kept at the Tôyô Bunko Library in Tokyo. See Saito Kojun, A Study of the Hand-written Copy of Tibetan Kanjur from rGyal-rtse, Memoirs of Taisho University (Taisho Daigaku Kenkyukiyo), vol. 63 (1977) pp. 1-62, which is to say pp. 406-345.
A German translation of a Tibetan work set down in Darjeeling in 1915. Apparently Kawaguchi composed it in Tibetan as a report about his second travel to Tibet in 1913-1915. The Tibetan was published by Sarat Chandra Das in an appendix to his Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language (Darjeeling 1915). Johannes Schubert, Der Bericht über die Tibetreise des japanischen Priesters Yekai Kawaguchi (Aus dem Tibetischen übersetzt und erklärt), Artibus Asiae, vol. 6, nos. 1-2 (1936), pp. 91-110.
Scott Berry, A Stranger in Tibet: The Adventures of a Wandering Zen Monk, Kodansha International (Tokyo 1990).
Kamal Mani Dixit, About Kawaguchi Ekai's Letter to Chandra Shumsher, Nepali (February-March 1992), pp. 2-19.
Ernst Herbert Cooper Walsh, A List of Tibetan Books Brought from Lhasa by the Japanese Monk, Mr. Ekai Kawaguchi, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 73 (1904), pp. 118-177.
Kawaguchi — Journeys in Tibet, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 31 (March 1904), pp. 27-36.
Joseph M. Kitagawa, Kawaguchi Ekai: A Pious Adventurer and Tibet, contained in: Lawrence Epstein & Richard F. Sherburne, eds., Reflections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston 1990), pp. 279-294.
Sh. Kitamura & G. Murata, Tibetan Plants Collected by E. Kawaguchi, Acta Phytotax (October 1953, December 1953, May 1955).
Abhi Subed, Ekai Kawaguchi: The Trespassing Insider, Mandala Book Point (Kathmandu 1999).
Bibliography:
The Latest News from Lhasa: A Narrative of Personal Adventure by the Rev. Ekai Kawaguchi, Century Magazine (January 1904), pp. 383-393. Introduction by Eliza R. Scidmore.
