Kōichi Shinohara is a retired Senior Lecturer of Religious Studies and East Asian Languages & Literatures at Yale University. His career has so far spanned half a century, during which time he has studied many aspects of medieval Chinese and Japanese Buddhist texts and images. Although he primarily taught at McMaster and Yale universities, Dr. Shinohara’s research has inspired or deeply touched nearly everyone working in the broader field of East Asian Buddhist Studies. In addition to the seven edited volumes published with Dr. Phyllis Granoff (spanning from 1988–2012), including Images in Asian Religions: Texts and Contexts (UBC Press, 2004), he published an innovative study of esoteric Buddhism in medieval China and Japan: Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals (Columbia University Press, 2014), and numerous articles and book chapters on topics ranging from so-called apocryphal Buddhist literature to textual and ritual studies, investigations of sacred biography or hagiography, particularly from the genre of Biographies of Eminent Monks (gaoseng zhuan 高僧傳) in China, and much more. Prof. Shinohara’s most recent academic venture, the daunting translation in multiple volumes of a seventh-century Buddhist encyclopedia, the A Forest of Pearls from the Dharma Garden (Fayuan zhulin 法苑珠林), for the Bukkyō Dendōkyōkai (BDK) English Tripiṭaka Series (volumes 1-3; 2019, 2019, 2020).
His publications with WSP are:
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Narratives of Buddhist Practice: Studies on Chinese-Language Canonical Compilations and Translations (Selected Essays by Koichi Shinohara). Hualin Series on Buddhist Studies III. Edited by Jinhua Chen, with assistance of Mingli Sun and Weiyu Lin, 2021.
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Shinohara, Koichi (trans. Liu Xuejun 劉學軍). Zhouyu Shengxiang he Mantuluo: Mijiao yishi yanbian yanjiu 咒語、聖像和曼荼羅——密教儀式衍變研究 [Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals]. Hualin Foxue Yicong 華林佛學譯叢 [Hualin Translation Series on Buddhist Studies] I, 2021.
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Shinohara, Kōichi (trans. Li Wei 李巍, Liu Xuejun 劉學軍, Chen Zhiyuan 陳志遠, Deng Yuqu 鄧育渠, Wang Kang 汪康, Yang Feng 楊鳳, and Jin Rusha 金如沙; collated by Ji Yun 紀贇). Fojiao xiuxing de xushu: Hanchuan Fodian de bianji yu fanyi yanjiu 佛教修行的敘述：漢傳佛典的編輯與翻譯研究 [Narratives of Buddhist Practice: Studies on Chinese-Language Canonical Compilations and Translations] (Selected Essays by Koichi Shinohara)]. Hualin Foxue Yicong 華林佛學譯叢 [Hualin Translation Series on Buddhist Studies] II, 2021.