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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Japanese Studies
A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields
A Buddhist Critique Of Harmony, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
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, …
Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
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 …
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
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 …
Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields
Zen And The Art Of Resistance: Some Preliminary Notes, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
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 …
Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields
Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields
ポスト汎神論から超物質主義へ―鈴木大拙と新仏教―, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
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 …
Skeptical Buddhism As Provenance And Project, James Mark Shields
Skeptical Buddhism As Provenance And Project, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
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 …
Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Carrying Buddha Into The Streets: Buddhist Socialist Thought In Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Mark Shields
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Although New Buddhism is a term sometimes employed to refer to the broad sweep of reform and modernization movements in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice beginning in the 1870s, the term shin bukkyō refers more specifically to a broadly influential movement of some two dozen young scholars and lay Buddhists active in the last decade of the Meiji period (1868–1912). Founded in February 1899 as Bukkyō Seito Dōshikai (Buddhist Pure Believers Fellowship or Buddhist Puritan Association), the group changed its name to Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai (New Buddhist Fellowship) in 1903. Notto Thelle refers to the NBF as “the most consistent …
Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Mark Shields
Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
There is no one, single answer to the question: What is or are ‘Buddhist politics’? Rather than seek general historical trends or broad tendencies, in this chapter I explore the meaning and implications of the modern, Western conception of ‘politics’ as understood in relation to key features of Buddhist doctrine. In particular, I pose the question of whether we might fruitfully conceive at least certain interpretations of Buddhism—or perhaps, of Dharma—as politics, rather than ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy.’ I argue that twentieth century progressive Buddhists Seno’o Girō (1889–1961) and B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) were not so much in conflict with …
From Topos To Utopia: Critical Buddhism, Globalization, And Ideology Criticism, James Mark Shields
From Topos To Utopia: Critical Buddhism, Globalization, And Ideology Criticism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields
Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Political Interpretations Of The Lotus Sutra, James Mark Shields
Political Interpretations Of The Lotus Sutra, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The Sutra on the White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma (Sk., Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra; Ch., Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng; Jp., Myōhō renge kyō), commonly known as the Lotus Sutra, is arguably the most influential sutra of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and certainly one of the most revered sacred texts in East Asia. Via parables and short stories, the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra indirectly present a number of core doctrines of the early Mahāyāna, the form of Buddhism that first emerged in India and West Asia roughly five centuries after the death of the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–486 …
Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Mark Shields
Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The concept of Sorge, as developed in Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) classic work, Sein und Zeit (1927), describes an existential-ontological state characterized by “anxiety” about the future and the desire to “attend to” the world based on our awareness of temporality. In Japan, this concept was borrowed and critically developed by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960). In Rinrigaku (1937–49), Watsuji argued that Heidegger’s Sorge remains overly reliant on the philosophical structures of Western individualism and subjectivism, and thus neglects the social dimension of human being. In turn, Watsuji’s contemporary, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), developed an alternative theory of “concern” in his reflections on …
'Land Of Kami, Land Of The Dead': Paligenesis And The Aesthetics Of Religious Revisionism In Kobayashi Yoshinori's 'On Yasukuni', James Mark Shields
'Land Of Kami, Land Of The Dead': Paligenesis And The Aesthetics Of Religious Revisionism In Kobayashi Yoshinori's 'On Yasukuni', James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In 2005, Japanese manga artist and conservative provocateur Kobayashi Yoshinori published a graphic work entitled Shin gōmanizumu sengen special: Yasukuniron (Neo-Gōmanism Manifesto Special: On Yasukuni), which tackles the much-debated ‘problem’ of Yasukuni Shrine, the militaristic religious complex that has become a lightning-rod for debates regarding Japanese historical memory – especially with regard to the military expansionism in East Asia that led to the Asia-Pacific War (1931–45). Frequently overlooked in discussions of Yasukuni, however, are a number of complex issues related to its religious doctrines – in particular, the interpretation of Shinto presented at Yasukuni and the dominant ideology of Japan’s …
Awakening Between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations On Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945, James Mark Shields
Awakening Between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations On Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The half-century between the publication of the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 教育勅語, 1890) and the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941) was one of tremendous institutional and intellectual tumult in the world of Japanese Buddhism. Buddhist sects and scholars were not immune to the changing political and cultural winds. While it is true that by the late 1930s, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions had capitulated to the status quo, preaching, in the words of Joseph Kitagawa “the virtues of peace, harmony, and loyalty to the throne,” the previous decades show anything but a continuous progression towards …