Introduction: locating Tenjiku -- South Asian encounters: Kitabatake Doryo, Shaku Kozen, Shaku Soen, and the first generation of Japanese Buddhists in South Asia -- Kawaguchi Ekai, globalization, and the promotion of lay Buddhism in Japan -- Following the cotton road: Japanese corporate pilgrimage to India, 1926-1927 -- Buddhist material culture, "Indianism," and the construction of Pan-Asian Buddhism in twentieth-century Japan -- Global waves on Omura bay: the English translation of the Gedatsu doron (the path of freedom) -- Deploying South Asian Buddhism.