Against the Ghosts of Recent Past: Meiji Scholarship and the Discourse on Edo-Period Buddhist Decadence

Abstract

This article examines process by which academic discourse on of early modern Buddhism developed, especially in context of Meiji Japan (1868-1912). The predominant framework in which much of modern research on Edo Buddhism took place informed, grosso modo, by assumption that early modern Japanese Buddhism very distant from what it should essentially have been. The origins of this discourse are usually traced back to Tsuji Zennosuke, but by time he published his works on subject, such an image of Edo Buddhism already norm among both scholars and clergy. Keeping these aspects in mind, after brief considerations on role of precept restoration during late Edo Period, this article will focus in particular on from Meiji Restoration (1868) to establishment of Japanese Buddhist history as a specific field of study during early years of twentieth century. It will also deal to a certain extent with Tsuji's ideas on subject. KEYWORDS: Edo Buddhism - Meiji Buddhism - Tsuji Zennosuke - Kinsei bukkyo darakuron - Buddhist (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) The Pathos of this work: there are no periods of decline... (N1, 6). Overcoming concept of progress and overcoming concept of period of decline are two sides of one and same thing (N2, 5). Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project FOR MORE than thirty years now, studies on earlymodern Japanese Buddhism have struggled to show how lively life of people during this period. Works in several languages have appeared showing dynamics of Buddhism at time.1 There is no doubt that students of Japanese Buddhist who first studied Tokugawa Buddhism through, for example, Duncan Williams's The Other Side of Zen (2005), would be given a different impression than students who first studied it through Joseph Kitagawa's Religion in Japanese History, published over forty years ago (1966). While Williams intends to demonstrate that Buddhism was as full of vitality during Tokugawa as in any previous era, if not more so (2005, 6), in his seminal introduction to history of Japanese religion Kitagawa emphasizes the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of Tokugawa Buddhism (1966, 166). Again, as any scholar of early modern Japanese religion would know, this view of Tokugawa Buddhism did not begin nor end with Kitagawa. The idea that early modern Japanese Buddhism more than that of other historical periods, which for a long time predominant discourse within field, is usually traced back to Tsuji Zennosuke ... (1877-1955).2 Having developed his research in institutional framework not of Buddhist studies (bukkyogaku ...) nor of religious studies (shukyogaku ...), but of field that then called National History (kokushigaku ...), Tsuji left us very important works on foreign relations, as well as on Japanese political history during Edo period.3 Still, we can say that work for which he is most remembered is his monumental of Japanese Buddhism (Nihon bukkyo shi ...), in ten volumes. The first volume on Buddhism in ancient Japan published during World War II, in 1944, and final volume, which covered last part of Edo period, published in year of Tsuji's death, in 1955. In four volumes regarding Edo period, Tsuji presents critical image of a decadent Buddhist clergy, introducing documents that depicted priests leading lives more secular than lay people. Even though of Japanese Buddhism is sometimes regarded as work that first introduced such an image of Tokugawa Buddhism, decadence discourse had already been put forward by Tsuji in a systematic format 1930s. His articles focusing specifically on decadence of early modern Buddhist priests were first published in different journals in October and November of 1930, and republished a year later in second installment of his Studies on of Japanese Buddhism (Nihon bukkyoshi no kenkyu zokuhen . …