This study aims to understand the nature of the restoration of Shingon Buddhism, the Japanese esoteric Buddhist tradition, accomplished by Kakuban (1095-1143). Kakuban is recognized by Shingon tradition as a restorer of the Dharma transmission instituted by Kukai (774-835), founder of the tradition. Although the transmission of Dharma is perhaps the most important theme of Buddhist historiographical literature, modern Buddhology has yet to develop an effective method to study this important phenomenon. This difficulty confronted by modern scholarship is largely attributable to the apparent contradictory nature of the Buddhist Dharma transmission: the diachronical preservation of the ultimate, suprahistorical reality.

The dissertation proposes to initiate an effort to overcome this problem. It first investigates the reason for modern historical scholarship's inability to understand the "sense of history" peculiar to Buddhism. Based on the findings of contemporary phenomenology and hermeneutics, the dissertation proposes an alternative strategy to understand the Buddhist sense of history: a study of the mythopoetic intentionality of Buddhist tradition that generates the "sense" or the "meaning" of historical time in such a way that it resolves the seeming aporia of Dharma transmission.

Upon these premises, the dissertation studies a Shingon Buddhist historiographical text composed by Kukai and elucidates the hermeneutical underpinning through which Kukai both understands and explains the meaning of historical time and that of enlightenment, the grasp of Dharma, in the historical process. Finally, the dissertation analyses Kukai's hermeneutical theories of scriptural texts and Kakuban's interpretation theory of ritual symbols. It illustrates Kakuban's restoration of Shingon Dharma as the rediscovery of Kukai's most essential philosophical principles of understanding. From this follows the recovery of Kukai's ability to figure historical time, the ability to generate the meaning of time, through which the experience of the suprahistorical Dharma becomes not only understandable but communicable.