FUMON, Entsu.

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Bukkoku Rekisho hen. (Astronomy and Calendar System in the Land of Buddha.) A later edition of this work of Buddhist astronomy by "one of the most important thinkers in the Buddhist astronomy movement" (Josephson, p. 107), published only five years after the first edition. The text would spawn a short-lived, but important, intellectual movement in Japan. Trained in Tendai Buddhism, Fumon Entsu (1754-1834) spearheaded a school of thinking which tied Japanese astronomy to notions of a flat and motionless planet contained in the Buddhist scriptures. In the work, Entsu calculates celestial movements and makes astronomical predictions, arguing that a lack of systematic study of the Buddhist scriptures had left Buddhism's teachings on astronomy under-appreciated. In contrast to the system of Copernicus, Fumon proposes that the Earth is flat and centred on a gigantic mountain, while also disavowing contemporary European models of the continents and their positioning. According to the work, Buddhism can grant a superior way of looking that allows one to see things not visible through even the most powerful telescope, and only Buddhism can fully reveal the functioning and order of the celestial cosmos. WorldCat records only four institutional copies of this fascinating rejection of 18th-century Western cosmological theory in favour of a worldview rooted in Japanese religiosity.

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