THIS VOLUME CONTAINS a miscellaneous selection of the papers I have written and the lectures I have delivered during the last forty-five years. The earliest in time is a lecture I gave to the Japan Society shortly after returning from Japan in 1953. It describes my adventures as a student in Keiō University, and as a lay aspirant in the Zen temple of Engakuji in Kamakura. The most recent is a lecture I gave in 1998, in Ueno Gakuen University in Tokyo, on the subject of the three great early Japanologists: Chamberlain, Aston and Satow. The lecture was part of the programme to celebrate British Year, and in it I tned to show how all students of Japanese during the past century, not least myself, owed an incomparable debt of gratitude to these three remarkable Englishmen.

The other papers are loosely divided into categones of ‘Religion, Myth and Folklore’ and ‘Portraits and Recollections’. Those in the first group reflect my interest in Buddhism, which was roused dunng my first visit to Japan in the early 1950s, and which has remained a guiding inspiration ever since. From Buddhism there arose the need to understand the older religions in Japan, many of them hidden behind a perplexing nomenclature, and to undertake the travels, observations and chōsa (fieldwork) which eventually went to form my book The Catalpa Bow, published in 1975, and most recently (1999) republished in thejapan Library Classic Paperbacks senes. Here I tned to assemble and descnbe the ntuals and practices in Japan which would not be improperly called shamanistic.

Behind all these disciplines and initiations, however, I realized that there lay folklore and myth which are all part of that subtle web which constitutes ‘religion’ in Japan; which often dives underground, but surfaces again, and can best be understood by the Buddhist symbol of Indra's Net. At each knot in the fine mesh is a jewel, which reflects simultaneously all the other jewels in its many faces.

The reader will accordingly find papers on myth and folklore in this section, as well as on Buddhist practice and aspiration. I should perhaps remind readers today that in 1953, when I gave my first paper to the Japan Society, little was known about Buddhism in England, least of all about Zen.