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Japanese Buddhist Women In Hawai‘I: Waves Of Change, Karma Lekshe Tsomo

Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, successive waves of Japanese Buddhist immigrants settled in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i, bringing with them a variety of Japanese Buddhist schools and traditions. Overcoming many hardships, Japanese immigrant women worked with great devotion to help establish numerous temples in the Hawai‘i through Buddhist women’s associations known as Fujinkai. These dedicated women not only maintained ancestral Buddhist practices but also integrated Japanese Buddhist, native Hawaiian, and other cultural elements in ways that were entirely new. Persevering through the war years and through successive waves of cultural adaptation, they transmitted and protected Buddhist …