Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-19T17:43:37.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Varieties of Religious Freedom in Japanese Buddhist Responses to the 1899 Religions Bill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Jolyon Baraka THOMAS
Jolyon Baraka THOMAS*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Historians have often described early-twentieth-century Japanese Buddhists as ignorant of the importance of religious freedom, myopically focused on their parochial agendas, and sycophantically aligned with the state. Such depictions assume that the attitudes of a minority of elite Buddhist clerics represent majority Buddhist opinion; they also problematically treat religious freedom as a universal principle rather than a historically contingent concept subject to the conflicting claims of competing interest groups. This article highlights the contingency of religious freedom law and the diversity of its interpretation by introducing three discrete attitudes that surfaced in Buddhist responses to a controversial Bill advanced by the Japanese government in December 1899. Tracing differences between statist, corporatist, and latitudinarian interpretations of religious freedom, it shows that religious freedom is never unitary or uniform in any time or place.

Keywords

JapanBuddhismreligious freedomlegislationactivism
Type
Buddhism and Law
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 49 - 70
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. This article is based on a chapter of my book manuscript with the working title Japan, the Allied Occupation, and the Problem of Religious Freedom. I thank Hoshino Seiji, Iwata Fumiaki, Ōmi Toshihiro, Ōsawa Kōji, Ōtani Eiichi, and Yoshinaga Shin’ichi for their help in securing primary sources cited in this article. Cameron Penwell kindly shared an informative unpublished paper on the Sugamo Prison Chaplain Incident. Thanks to Tom Ginsburg and Ben Schonthal for including me in this special issue. Correspondence to Jolyon Baraka Thomas, 847 Williams Hall, 255 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. E-mail address: [email protected].

References

REFERENCES

Abe, Yoshiya (1968) “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution: Part I.” 9 Contemporary Religions in Japan 268–338.Google Scholar
Abe, Yoshiya (1969a) “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution: Part II.” 10 Contemporary Religions in Japan 57–97.Google Scholar
Abe, Yoshiya (1969b) “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution: Part III.” 10 Contemporary Religions in Japan 181–203.Google Scholar
Abe, Yoshiya (1970a) “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution: Appendixes and Bibliography.” 11 Contemporary Religions in Japan 267–296.Google Scholar
Abe, Yoshiya (1970b) “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution: Part VI.” 11 Contemporary Religions in Japan 223–266.Google Scholar
Abe, Yoshiya (1970c) “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution: Parts IV and V.” 11 Contemporary Religions in Japan 27–79.Google Scholar
Ashihara, Ringen (1899) Kakkoku kōninkyō yōryaku, Tokyo: Shūeisha.Google Scholar
Chikazumi, Jōkan (1929) Shūkyō hōan hantai raireki, Tokyo: Kyūdō Kaikan/Yamato Insatsu Kabushiki Kaisha.Google Scholar
Chikazumi, Shin’ichi (2009) “Kyūdō Kaikan/Kyūdō Gakusha no kiten o tomo ni shita Bukkyō seinentachi,” in Kindaika no naka no dentō shūkyō to seishin undō: kijunten to shite no Chikazumi Jōkan kenkyū, Heisei 20 nendo ~ Heisei 21 nendo kagaku kenkyūhi hojokin (kiban kenkyū [C]) kenkyū seika chūkan hōkokusho (Iwata Fumiaki, primary investigator), 1–4.Google Scholar
Dai Nippon Bukkyōto Dōmei Kai (1900) Shūkyō hōan hantai iken, publisher unknown.Google Scholar
Davis, Winston (1992) Japanese Religion and Society: Paradigms of Structure and Change, Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Dorman, Benjamin (2012) Celebrity Gods: New Religions, Media, and Authority in Occupied Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Dressler, Markus, & Mandair, Arvind-Pal S., eds. (2011) Secularism and Religion-Making, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gyōsei Gakkai, ed. (1899) Naichi zakkyo kaisetsu, Tokyo: Hokurikukan Shuppanbu.Google Scholar
Hardacre, Helen (1989a) Shintō and the State, 1868–1988, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hardacre, Helen (1989b) “The Lotus Sutra in Modern Japan,” in G. J. Tanabe, Jr. & W. Tanabe, eds., The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 209–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayashi, Makoto (2009) “Kindai Bukkyō no jiki kubun,” in H. Makoto & E. Ōtani, eds. “Tokushū: Kindai Bukkyō,” Kikan Nihon shisō shi 75, 3–13.Google Scholar
Hoshino, Seiji (2009) “Reconfiguring Buddhism as a Religion: Nakanishi Ushirō and His Shin Bukkyō.” in S. Yoshinaga, ed., “Special Issue: The New Buddhism of the Meiji Period: Modernization through Internationalization.” 34 Japanese Religions 133–154.Google Scholar
Hoshino, Seiji (2012) Kindai Nihon no shūkyō gainen: shūkyōsha no kotoba to kindai, Tokyo: Yūshisha.Google Scholar
Howell, David L. (2005) Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ikeda, Eishun (1976) Meiji no shin Bukkyō undo, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan.Google Scholar
Inoue, Enryō (1897) Kyōikuka shūkyōka no naichi zakkyo junbi ni taisuru kokoroe, Nagoya: Publisher Unclear.Google Scholar
Inoue, Tetsujirō (1893) Kyōiku to shūkyō no shōtotsu, Tokyo: Keigyōsha.Google Scholar
Isomae, Jun’ichi (2014) Religious Discourse in Modern Japan: Religion, State, and Shintō, Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iwata, Fumiaki (2014) Kindai Bukkyō to seinen: Chikazumi Jōkan to sono jidai, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar
Josephson, Jason Ānanda (2012) The Invention of Religion in Japan, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Katō, Totsudō (1899) Bukkyō kokumin zakkyo go no kokore, Tokyo: Kōmeisha.Google Scholar
Ketelaar, James Edward (1990) Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution, Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxey, Trent (2014) “The Greatest Problem”: Religion and State Formation in Meiji Japan, Cambridge: Harvard University East Asia Center.Google Scholar
Moriya, Tomoe (2005) “Social Ethics of ‘New Buddhists’ at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study of Suzuki Daisetsu and Inoue Shūten.” 32 Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 283–304.Google Scholar
Nakamura, Motosuke (1897) Naichi zakkyo junbi no shiori, Nagoya: Nōninsha.Google Scholar
Ōmi, Toshihiro (2009) “Chikazumi Jōkan ryaku nenpu,” in Kindaika no naka no dentō shūkyō to seishin undō: kijunten to shite no Chikazumi Jōkan kenkyū, Heisei 20 nendo ~ Heisei 21 nendo kagaku kenkyūhi hojokin (kiban kenkyū [C]) kenkyū seika chūkan hōkokusho (Iwata Fumiaki, primary investigator), 11–12.Google Scholar
Ōmi, Toshihiro (2014) Kindai Bukkyō no naka no Shinshū: Chikazumi Jōkan to kyūdōshatachi, Kyoto: Hōzōkan.Google Scholar
Ōsawa, Kōji (2009) “Seikyō jihō kaidai,” in Kindaika no naka no dentō shūkyō to seishin undō: kijunten to shite no Chikazumi Jōkan kenkyū, Heisei 20 nendo ~ Heisei 21 nendo kagaku kenkyūhi hojokin (kiban kenkyū [C]) kenkyū seika chūkan hōkokusho (Iwata Fumiaki, primary investigator), 13–21.Google Scholar
Ōtani, Eiichi (2012) Kindai Bukkyō to iu shiza: sensō, Ajia, shakai shugi, Tokyo: Perikansha.Google Scholar
Sakaino, Kōyō (1910) Shin Bukkyō jūnen shi, Tokyo: Shin Bukkyōto Dōshikai Shuppan.Google Scholar
Sawada, Janine Tasca (2004) Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Self-Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Jacqueline I. (1990) “A Vast and Grave Task: Interwar Buddhist Studies as an Expression of Japan’s Envisioned Global Role,” in T. J. Rimer, ed., Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals during the Interwar Years, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 217–233.Google Scholar
Sueki, Fumihiko (2004) Kindai nihon no shisō, saikō I: Meiji shisōkaron, Tokyo: Transview Press.Google Scholar
Tan, Reigen (1897) Bukkyō enzetsu shū: naichi zakkyo no junbi, Tokyo: Kōbunsha.Google Scholar
Thelle, Notto (1987) Buddhism and Christianity in Japan: From Conflict to Dialogue, 1854–1899, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jolyon Baraka (2014a) “Free Inquiry and Japanese Buddhist Studies: The Case of Katō Totsudō.” 39 Japanese Religions 31–51.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jolyon Baraka (2014b) “Japan’s Preoccupation with Religious Freedom,” PhD dissertation, Princeton University.Google Scholar
Tōgō, Ryōchō (1899) Sugamo kangoku kyōkai mondai enzetu yōryō, Hyōgō: Takahashi Kappan Sho.Google Scholar
Yoshinaga, Shin’ichi, ed. (2012a) “Kindai Nihon ni okeru chishikijin shūkyō undō no gensetsu kūkan: “Shin Bukkyō” no shisōshi/bunkashi teki kenkyū. Kagaku kenkyūhi hojokin (kiban kenkyū B), kenkyū kadai bangō 20320016 (Yoshinaga Shin’ichi, primary investigator).Google Scholar
Yoshinaga, Shin’ichi (2012b) “Shin Bukkyō to wa nani mono ka? ‘jiyū tōkyū’ to ‘kenzen naru shinkō’,” in S. Yoshinaga, ed., Kindai Nihon ni okeru chishikijin shūkyō undō no gensetsu kūkan: “Shin Bukkyō” no shisōshi/bunkashi teki kenkyū. Kagaku kenkyūhi hojokin (kiban kenkyū B), kenkyū kadai bangō 20320016 (Yoshinaga Shin’ichi, primary investigator), 27–43.Google Scholar

Archives and Collections

Bukkyō (B)Google Scholar
Kizokuin giji sokki roku (KGSR)Google Scholar
Kyōgaku hōchi (KH)Google Scholar
Meikyō shinshi (MS)Google Scholar
Seikyō jihō (SJ)Google Scholar
Shin Bukkyō (SB)Google Scholar
Shin Bukkyō ronsetsu shū (SBRS)Google Scholar