One Village, One Mind? Eto Tekirei, Tolstoy, and the Structure of Agrarian-Buddhist Utopianism in Taishō Japan

Presented at the Numata Conference in Buddhist Studies / “Violence, Nonviolence, and Japanese Religions: Past, Present, and Future,” held in Honolulu, Hawaii, March 20–21, 2014Modern Japan provides numerous examples of experiments in mixing Buddhist teachings with progressive and radical socio-political ideals. The final two decades of the Meiji period witnessed the incursion of various forms of radicalism from the West—and from Russia in particular. The writings of novelist, religious writer and social critic Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), especially, had a significant impact among both liberals and those radicals inclined towards religious and agrarian visions of a transformed society. Progressivism in Japan was severely curtailed, however, by the High Treason Incident of 1910–11, leading to nearly a decade-long “winter,” ending only in the wake of the First World War. The following decade, 1919–31, which might be considered a “spring” for progressive thought and practice, witnessed the growth of several utopian communities that fused Buddhist and Tolstoyan principles, such as Itō Shōshin's Muga-en, Nishida Tenkō's Ittōen and Mushanokōji Saneatsu’s Atarashikimura. Somewhat less well known is the Hyakushō Aidōjō (Farmer’s Training Ground of Love) of Eto Tekirei (1880–1944), one of the so-called narodniki of the late Meiji and Taisho Taishō period, who developed a comprehensive agrarian utopian vision rooted in Tolstoyan, anarchist and (Zen) Buddhist ideals. This paper analyzes the work of Tekirei as an example of “progressive” agrarian-Buddhist utopianism, concluding with some remarks on the legacy of such movements for Buddhism today and in the future

A Century of Critical Buddhism in Japan

This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, but that the inspiration and central insights of Critical Buddhism and its progressive precedents remain relevant in the twenty-first century

ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―

In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu further developed these connections between pantheism, Buddhism and Marxism, but Sano himself got caught in the “Hegelian trap” of attempting to dissolve contradictions and distinctions in the name of harmony, rendering his Marxist-infused Buddhist pantheism ineffective as a basis for critical resistance against the status quo. In early works such as A New Interpretation of Religion (Shin shūkyōron 新宗教論, 1896), New Buddhist Suzuki Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870–1962) developed a particular interpretation of “post-pantheism” as an ideal form of or approach to religion. However, while Suzuki’s post-pantheism, which can be interpreted as a phenomenological approach to religion, struggles to avoid the danger of a static, and potentially nihilistic “materialism,” it ultimately falls prey to Hegelian and Spencerian assumptions about change and “evolution.” This chapter employs Suzuki’s early work as a portal through which to dig further into the problems and possibilities of pantheism as an archetypal catchword—but frustratingly vague principle—of Japanese Buddhist modernism

Skeptical Buddhism as Provenance and Project

The past century and a half has seen various attempts in both Asia and the West to reform or re-conceptualize Buddhism by adding a simple, often provocative, qualifier. This paper examines some of the links between “secular,” “critical,” “sceptical,” and “radical” Buddhism in order to ascertain possibilities in thinking Buddhism anew as a 21st-century “project” with philosophical, ethical, and political resonance. In particular, I am motivated by the question of whether “sceptical” Buddhism can coexist with Buddhist praxis, conceived as an engaged response to the suffering of sentient beings in a globalized and neoliberal industrial capitalist world order. Let me state from the start that my attempt to make sense of these terms and to draw connections between them is very much in nuce; that is, a work in progress that might serve as a kind of meta-analysis of the research I have undertaken over the past decade and continue to pursue in my various projects. As a result, this chapter is also autobiographical in the sense that it is rooted in my own ways of thinking, including my biases, about the ideas, movements, and persons I have chosen to study

Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō and the Crisis of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity in Late Meiji Japan

In addition to the birth and development of “Imperial Way Zen,” late Meiji Japan witnessed the emergence of a number of young lay Buddhist scholars, priests and activists who attempted, with varying success, to reframe Buddhism along progressive and occasionally radical political lines. While it is true that groups such as the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai, 1899–1915) were made up mainly of young men associated with the two branches of the Shin (True Pure Land) sect, several of its members did affiliate themselves with Zen, such as Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966) and Inoue Shūten (1880–1945). While the former’s work has been roundly appraised (and recently subject to criticism), the latter, an avowed pacifist and internationalist, has been relatively understudied in both Japanese and Western scholarship. A more radical contemporary figure, Sōtō sect priest Uchiyama Gudō (1874–1911), has received more attention, due in no small part to his being executed as one of the 24 conspirators of the High Treason Incident of 1910–11. This chapter will compare and contrast the “radical” ideas of Inoue and Uchiyama, focusing on their use of Chan and Zen precedents to justify and explain their progressive positions, while setting their arguments in the broader context of Meiji intellectual debates, both within and outside of Japanese Buddhism. It will also explore the reasons why Zen was more often than not a “conservative” force in modern Japan

Oklahoma Public Comprehensive Universities: The President\u27s Role in Financial Management and Fundraising

Oklahoma public comprehensive university presidents face many challenges. Among the top challenges is the quest for adequate funding of their institutions, including adequate levels of support from state resources. For Oklahoma’s public comprehensive universities and their leaders, the low levels of public support by the state have become a pattern, rather than an anomaly. The statewide reductions in appropriations for higher education funding have had a disproportionate effect on Oklahoma’s public comprehensive universities because they have fewer diversified revenue sources. As a result, Oklahoma public comprehensive university presidents have been forced to become more adept at budgeting, financial management, fundraising, and finding the resources necessary for their institutions to not only be successful, but to simply survive. The study utilized a transcendental phenomenological research approach. A qualitative research methodology was used to explore the phenomena in a systematic manner. There were seven interview participants who were presidents of public comprehensive universities in the mid-western state of Oklahoma. A structured interview protocol that included open-ended interview questions was used to collect relevant data from interview participants regarding their roles in budgeting, financial management, and fundraising. Study findings identified eight themes that described the roles of Oklahoma public comprehensive university presidents in budgeting, financial management, and fundraising. The findings illustrated that Oklahoma public comprehensive university presidents spend most of their time on budgeting and financial management, followed closely by fundraising. The study concluded that while they spend most of their time on these areas, few have a background in financial management and fundraising, and most of their experience in these areas was acquired in their previous role prior to becoming president or while on the job

Zen and the Art of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes

In the Western and oftentimes Asian imagination, Buddhism generally—and Zen more specifically—is understood as being resolutely disengaged, attaching itself to a form of awakening that is not only, as the classical phrase has it “beyond words and letters,” but in the modern summation by D. T. Suzuki, perfectly compatible with any and all forms of political and economic “dogmatism,” whether capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist. Of course, as numerous scholars have shown over the past century, on the level of historical actuality, Buddhist and Zen teachers and institutions have long participated in (usually hegemonic) economic and political structures. The scholarship on Buddhist and Zen “social history” is large and growing. And yet, much less attention has been paid to the philosophical and doctrinal sources for political activism and, in particular, resistance to prevailing economic and political structures. With the possible exception of Buddhist-inspired peasant revolts of medieval and early modern periods China and Japan, the first sustained efforts to develop an “alternative” form of Buddhist engagement arose in early 20th century Japan, with a number of groups associated with New Buddhism. While most of the New Buddhist were doctrinally influenced by Shin (Pure Land) and Nichiren teachings, several currents of New Buddhism correlate with classical Zen teachings, and thus provide possible foundations for a theory of “Zen resistance” —one that, I argue, complements the more recent Zen-inspired movement known as Critical Buddhism

内在的枠組み : 明治の新仏教、汎神論、「世俗信仰」

The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai) of the Meiji period (1868–1912) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that collapses—or preempts—the conceptual and practical boundaries between religion and the secular. In short, the New Buddhists sought a lived Buddhism rooted in a decidedly “immanent frame” (Taylor), even while rejecting the “vulgar materialism” of secular radicalism

Oklahoma Public Comprehensive Universities: The President’s Role in Financial Management and Fundraising

Among the top challenges facing Oklahoma public comprehensive university presidents is the quest for adequate funding of their institutions, including adequate levels of support from state resources. Low levels of public support by the state have become a pattern, rather than an anomaly and statewide reductions in appropriations for higher education funding have had a disproportionate effect on Oklahoma’s public comprehensive universities because they have fewer diversified revenue sources. This pattern has forced presidents to become more adept at budgeting, financial management, fundraising, and finding the resources necessary for their institutions to not only be successful, but to simply survive. Study findings indicated that Oklahoma public comprehensive university presidents spend most of their time on budgeting andfinancial management, followed closely by fundraising. The study concluded that few presidents have a background in financial management and fundraising, and most of their experience in these areas was acquired in their previous role prior to becoming president or while on the job