Engaged Buddhism in 1920s Japan : the Young East mission for social reform, global Buddhism and world peace

The new Buddhism of Meiji Japan, shin bukkyo, was a typically modern manifestation of the tradition aimed at providing the ideological basis for the new state. It was a rational, philosophic, trans-sectarian, and non-institutional interpretation of Japanese Buddhism, molded by both domestic and international forces. Its social engagement was a result of the need to make it relevant and to define a domestic role for Buddhism in the new society. Buddhist revival took on a political edge in the late 1880s when reaction against the excessive Westernization of the previous decade instigated a movement to create a distinctive modern, Japanese national identity, and with the related international imperative of negotiating the nation’s place in the world, defined at that time by Japan’s treaties with Western nations. Nation is intrinsic to modernity, and modern Buddhism in Japan, as elsewhere, was caught up in nationalism in both these modes. As we will see, there was a direct continuity of people and purpose between Meiji initiatives of the 1880s and the engagement evident in the 1920s. My plan is to begin by examining the conference as an encapsulation of early twentieth-century Buddhist social and political engagement. The proposals that emerged from the conference aimed at extending activities already established in Japan throughout its Asian colonies, giving substance to the vision of Japan as the leader of Asia enabled at this time by colonial expansion, and also to continue the negotiation of Japan’s place in the comity of nations. Both projects are more specifically detailed in the Young East. I will then return to the Meiji period to trace the antecedents of the ‘engaged Buddhism’ we see in the 1920s.