60 People, 60 Stories

Preserving culture beyond borders

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-30 10:05

Many ask me if my constant support (raising and donating more than 30 million yuan) for the preservation of the Kuqa Buddhist grottoes and research on historical relics of Niya and Dandanwulik over the past three decades has anything to do with my being a Buddhist monk.

In fact, my first donation to Xinjiang was in 1985 and I became a monk two years later.

Growing up in Japan, where preservation of cultural relics is regarded as a norm, I offered to help because I know that it is a thing worthy of doing, and because I have loved Xinjiang ever since my first visit to the region in 1982.

But it is interesting to see that in 1985, when I made the first donation of 100,000 yuan to Xinjiang for the preservation of the Kuqa Buddhist grottoes, I had to wait for three months to wire the money. As I was later told, the local government had several rounds of discussions before they decided that it was appropriate to receive a donation from a foreigner, which was unprecedented.

I was also happy to see that my donation reminded them it is important and imperative to preserve those cultural relics. They have since allocated special funds to take good care of the grottoes. This put me much at ease when I resigned from business in 1997 to devote my time to cultural exchanges between Xinjiang and Japan.

After my retirement, I knew I could no longer offer much monetary support for relic preservation and archaeological exploration in Xinjiang any more. But I also know that money will not be a main problem for that purpose, as China is getting stronger and its people are more willing than ever to spend money on cultural reservation and relic preservation.

Yasutaka Kojima is a jewelry merchant-turned-Japanese Buddhist monk dedicated to the preservation and communication of the various cultures along the Silk Road since the 1980s.