Above all, Professor Forte endeavored to boldly break down boundaries he perceived might prevent the enhancement of scholarship or hinder communication among different cultures and peoples. I believe this barrier-shattering desire must have underlain his heroic effort to establish and maintain for so many years the ISEAS in Kyoto, a heaven and haven for so many international students of East Asian Studies and Buddhology working in Kyoto. It is therefore meaningful that this journal, a scholarly enterprise jointly sponsored by a leading research institution in China (the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and one of the foremost scholarly presses in Europe (the Routledge) includes in its inaugural issue a manuscript left by one of the greatest Sinologists of our day, a man who devoted his life to bridging the scholarly worlds in the West and East. (Jinhua Chen, on February 24, 2015, in Vancouver, Canada)