Shin Buddhism and Protestant Analogies with Christianity in the West

Extract

Was bedeutet die Bewegung? What does this movement mean?

Bringt die Ost mir frohe Kunde? Goethe, cited from “West-östlicher Divan,” on title page of George B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan: A Study in the Interaction of European and Asiatic Cultures (New York: Knopf, 1968). Sansom, of course, was certain that the West did not need to learn anything from the East. Does the East bring me glad tidings?

An analogy comparing Shin Buddhism—the largest, most active, and most liberal of Japan's traditional Buddhist institutions—to Protestant Christianity has existed for a long time, beginning with the sixteenth century Jesuit encounter with Japan. See Galen Amstutz, Interpreting Amida: Orientalism and History in the Study of Pure Land Buddhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). The analogy has always been distinctly limited in scope and in important respects has also always—in the context of all world history—remained primarily confined to the Shin-Christian encounter. Apparently, the kind of evolution of consciousness it indicates is historically rare. Notably, the notion of protestant has never developed into a systematic comparative term even in religious studies. See Amstutz, Interpreting Amida, 180–1.