Meiji religious policy, Sōtō Zen, and the clerical marriage problem

Abstract

One of the most signi≥cant legal changes for the Buddhist clergy in the wake of the Meiji Restoration was the decriminalization of clerical meat eating and marriage (nikujiki saitai). The end to state enforcement of the prohibition against marriage by the Buddhist clergy sparked a prolonged debate over that practice within the Buddhist world. This article examines the range of responses to the decriminalization measure by the Soto clergy and traces the spread of clerical marriage within the Soto denomination. Despite ongoing resistance to clerical marriage from the denomination’s leadership, the majority of Soto clerics eventually married, forcing many institutional adaptations. The de facto acceptance of clerical marriage, however, failed to resolve the fundamental doctrinal issues concerning that practice, which remains problematic for some Soto clerics today. IN THE WAKE OF THE Meiji Restoration the leaders of the new government, together with a mixed group of Nativists, Shinto clerics, and even a few Buddhists, embarked on an ambitious program of restructuring state religious policy. While the early Meiji anti-Buddhist violence known as haibutsu kishaku /[8ˆ had higher visibility, the effects of the quieter institutional changes and the rede≥nition of the relationship between religious institutions and the Japanese state proved to be an even more signi≥cant, persistent challenge to the leaders of the established Buddhist denominations. From the beginning of the Meiji era in 1868 until the promulgation of the constitution in 1889, government of≥cials in charge of religious affairs ended many of the policies that had been put into effect by the Tokugawa regime, in short order eliminating all status privileges for the clergy, abolishing state enforcement of religious precepts, and dissolving * I am grateful to the faculty at Komazawa University, in particular Kumamoto Einin and the late Ishikawa Rikizan, for their generous assistance with my research on clerical marriage.