Buddhism and the Twenty-One Demands: The Politics Behind the International Movement of Japanese Buddhists

Abstract

This chapter deals with attempts in the early 20th century to spread Buddhism abroad, an endeavor in which Buddhist leaders and government officials were sometimes in agreement, but sometimes found themselves at odds in advancing Japan's international reputation as a modern state. It focuses on two Buddhist movements connected with diplomatic relations between Japan, China and the United States in 1915 when the Japanese government presented the Twenty-One Demands to China. On the one hand, in 1915, Japanese Buddhist missionaries hosted an international conference in San Francisco to cope with the anti-Japanese sentiments in the West Coast and to make an appeal for world peace. On the other hand, in Japan, Buddhists lobbied to acquire the legal right to propagate Buddhism in China. Japanese attempts to propagate Buddhism in China were justified by an imperialist logic that increasingly dominated the relationship between the two countries in the early 20th century. Keywords: China; Japanese Buddhists; Twenty-One Demands