Zuda Rokashi Hotan

Priest, or Saint Hotan, completed his woodcut map of the world, Nansenbusha Bankoku Shuka no Zu, in January, 1709. It was the first printed Oriental map to introduce detailed Western cartographic information into this traditional Buddhist cosmological view, and to attempt to merge the two together into a comprehensible form.

In 1723, Hotan founded the Kegonji temple in Kyoto, to reaffirm the Kegon philosophy that holds as its ideal a self-creating universe, in which no element is separate or independent, but is part of a harmonious singularity, in which everything is interrelated and interdependent, with the buddha Vairocana at its centre, permeating everything. An ethos reflected in his world map.

The temple is also referred to as the Suzumushi-dera temple, because of the sound that the extraordinary number of Bell crickets that live there make.