India-Japan dialogue in the 1920s : Buddhism and world peace in The Young East

The Young East of this chapter’s title was a Japanese journal published in English for international distribution. From the time of its founding in June 1925 until its temporary demise in March 1930, it provided a forum for the exchange of ideas among Buddhists and socially concerned others around the world. India was strongly represented. Though its masthead declared it to be a ‘Journal of Buddhist Life and Thought’, what The Young East offered was not Buddhist philosophy but a socially and politically engaged Buddhism, one that aimed to address the problems of the modern world so evident in the catastrophic Great War and the failure in the years since to resolve international tensions. The ’Buddhist life’ of the Young East was an active ‘Buddhism in the world and for the world’; ‘Buddhist thought’ was the perspective of Buddhists on current world problems. The Young East was, in its aims, personnel, and networks, a continuation of the Meiji Buddhist revival that had sent the delegation to the World’s Parliament of Religions – including the extended contacts between Japan and India that had been established – but it was also very much a reflection of the historical context of the mid-1920s.