The Great Bodhisattva Pass, Book 28: Ocean

Komai Jinzaburō and Tayama Hakuun ride along the broad, quiet Pacific shore, arguing about religious greatness. A bottle washed ashore brings them a maxim about government, obedience, and liberty, opening another spirited dispute. Meanwhile, diving, salvage work, and the prospect of a steam-powered ship draw other characters into the life of the coast.

Children wander amid sailors, cattle, songs, strange speeches, and dreams. A mother-and-calf story becomes a vivid whaling vision, while journeys along the shore bring new meetings, unfamiliar local words, inscriptions, and the unresolved pull of earlier relationships.

Ocean translates the complete supplied Book28 of Nakazato Kaizan’s epic. The author’s full preface explains his deliberate English title. All fifteen sections, long conversations, maritime explanations, songs, quotations, and the final coastal encounter are preserved without abridgment. Brief explanatory notes distinguish source readings, provisional names, wordplay, and the narrator’s or speakers’ unverified claims.