The Japanese enlightenment: a re-examination of its alleged secular character

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 1872, in the wake of the diplomatic Iwakura Embassy, five Japanese True Pure Land priests undertook a mission with the purpose of observing the religious situation in Europe. The insights that Japanese diplomats and intellectuals gained abroad in the 1870s were taken back to Japan and became the object of domestic debate. This was no less the case with the knowledge that the Buddhist mission had acquired during its journey. The Japanese engagement with Western thought and the investigation of how it could serve Japan is usually referred to as ‘the Japanese Enlightenment.’ Based on scholarship that treats the Enlightenment as a broader movement than what happened in Europe and America and that calls for an investigation of the role of religion in this intellectual movement, this paper reflects on the use of the term ‘Enlightenment’ to refer to Japan’s bunmei kaika movement. Furthermore, it examines the view that Buddhist reformers aimed at rebuilding Buddhism in accord with the government’s agenda by aligning it with secularists’ ideas of the proper sort of religion for a modern Japan. Instead, it focuses on the agency of Buddhist intellectuals and the role they played in the creation of a modern, ‘civilized’ Japan.