“Beyond This World of Transiency and Impermanence”: Japanese Americans, Dharma Bums, and the Making of American Buddhism during the Early Cold War Years

Abstract

This article examines the growing interest in Buddhism in the United States during the Cold War, analyzing discussions and debates around the authenticity of various Buddhist teachings and practices that emerged in an interracial Buddhist study group and its related publications. Japanese American Buddhists had developed a modified form of Jōdo Shinshū devotional practice as a strategy for building ethnic community and countering racialization as religious and racial Others. The authenticity of these practices was challenged by European and European American scholars and artists, especially the Beats, who drew upon Orientalist representations of Buddhism as ancient, exotic, and mysterious. In response, Japanese American Buddhists crafted their own definition of “tradition” by drawing from institutional and devotional developments dating back to fourteenth-century Japan as well as more recent Japanese American history. The article contextualizes these debates within the broader discussion of cultural pluralism and race relations during the Cold War.