Kobayashi Masayoshi小林正美

Style & Daoist names

Kobayashi Masayoshi

Period

Contemporary

Dates

1943 — ?

Role

Daoist ScholarsProfessor, Waseda University

Birthplace

Japan

Life

Kobayashi Masayoshi is a Japanese scholar of Daoism, professor emeritus at Waseda University. His representative work Studies on the History of Six Dynasties Daoism (1990; Chinese translation 2001) systematically examines the formation of the Lingbao scriptures, the emergence of the doctrine of the Three Caverns, and the relationship between the Way of the Celestial Masters and Southern Dynasties Daoism, putting forward many influential views on dating and classification. His Daoism and the Way of the Celestial Masters in the Tang Dynasty (2003) argues that the mainstream of Tang Daoism was the Way of the Celestial Masters and that the scriptures of the "Three Caverns" were all subsumed under it, a claim that has sparked scholarly debate; he has also written general surveys such as Chinese Daoism (1998). His views are often disputed by Ōfuchi Ninji, Kristofer Schipper, and others, and he is one of the most controversial as well as most influential scholars of Daoist history in contemporary Japan. The above is publicly available academic information.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote Studies on the History of Six Dynasties Daoism, examining the Lingbao scriptures and the doctrine of the Three Caverns
• Proposed that Tang Daoism was essentially the Way of the Celestial Masters
• Wrote Chinese Daoism, a general survey of Daoist history

Works

• Liuchao Daojiao Shi Yanjiu (Studies on the History of Six Dynasties Daoism)
• Tōdai no Dōkyō to Tenshidō (Tang-Dynasty Daoism and the Way of the Celestial Masters)
• Chūgoku no Dōkyō (Daoism in China)