The Case of Hirose Akira: The Ethical Predicament of a Japanese Buddhist Youth during World War II

Kunihiko Terasawa

doi:10.3390/rel9060185

Abstract

The Japanese Buddhist clergy’s collaboration with the Japanese war machine during the Fifteen Year War (1931–1945) is notorious. Yet the struggles of ordinary lay Buddhist youths during World War II remain less publicized. This article examines the case of a young Shinshū Buddhist soldier, Hirose Akira, 廣瀬明 (1919–1947), and scrutinizes the diary he kept between 1939 and 1946. Mobilized between February 1942 and January 1945, Hirose became increasingly disillusioned, especially when he witnessed injustices and the officers’ thoughtlessness in ordering junior soldiers to make sacrifices while enjoying their privileges. His diary reveals an early skepticism toward the Japanese embrace of expansionism and the hypocrisy of its justifications for the war of aggression waged against China and Asia as a whole. Independently from the battle’s fate, by 1944 Hirose considered that Japan was already defeated because of what he saw as “her own people’s ego and selfishness.”

Highlights

He was not happy that True Pure Land Buddhism was following a nationalistic trend and that it was even apologetic to the ultranationalists, who accused Shinshuof being anti-kokutai7 and irresponsibly escapist
For Shinran, the Pure Land functioned as a means by which the individual subject becomes independent from this-worldly values and affairs and transcends them
Hirose’s understanding of Pure Land faith returned to Shinran’s faith, which goes beyond the dichotomy called shinzoku-nitai, the traditional modern Shinshudistinction between ultimate truth and conventional truth, considered to be the manifestations of the

Summary

Introduction

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Hirose Akira’s Vitalism

Hirose Akira’s Struggle against Militarism

The Transformation of Hirose’s Faith

Conclusions