Buddhism In Japan Research Articles

Shinnyo-En and the Formulation of a New Esoteric Iconography

In 1936, Itō Shinjō established the modern lay esoteric Buddhist group known today as Shinnyo-en, The Garden of Truth. This article surveys the ways in which Itō used image and text to reimagine Japanese esoteric Buddhism throughout the twentieth century. It examines not only Itō’s iconographic innovations, but also his own autobiographical account called The Path to Oneness (Inchinyo no michi) in order to chart the major institutional, ritual, and doctrinal developments of Shinnyo-en. Specifically, this article argues that Itō’s veneration of the King of Immovable Wisdom, Fudō Myōō, from 1935–1936 onwards, as well as Fudō’s two acolytes (ryōdōji), helped him to make doctrinal sense and personal meaning out of the tragic death of his own two sons. It also argues that his addition of gendered dharma protectors and the Diamond and Womb World mandalas further expanded Itō’s personalized worldview, and that his addition of the Buddha in Nirvana in 1957 and the Eleven-Headed Kannon Bodhisattva of Compassion in 1979 further filled out the so-called three wheel bodies of esoteric Buddhism. These images, and the institutional and ritual developments associated with them, reinforced Itō’s remarkable doctrinal claim that Shinnyo-en represents the third culminating sect of esoteric Buddhism in Japan. This case study thus provides rare insight into the use of image and text to imagine, illustrate, and shape the major contours of a “new” religious movement in the modern period.

An Introduction to the Historical and Philosophical Study about the Relationship of Modern Education and Modern Buddhism in Japan

An Introduction to the Historical and Philosophical Study about the Relationship of Modern Education and Modern Buddhism in Japan

Образ Рахулы в японских ритуальных текстах косики

The main field of this study is the image of Rahula (Jp. Raun or Ragora), the son and disciple of Buddha Shakyamuni in the Japanese ritual Buddhist text “Raun koshiki” (XIII century), compiled by the Buddhist priest Yuixin. The main purpose of the koshiki texts was to strengthen the karmic connection between the adepts and the object of worship to whom this koshiki was dedicated – Buddha, bodhisattva, arhat or Buddhist patriarch. Therefore, the main content of the koshiki was: the history of the main character, the significance of his role to the Buddhist devotees, praise to his virtues and merit, and, most importantly, mention of those benefits which would gain the believers, taking part in the koshiki ritual. In this context, the creation of “Raun koshiki” and its identification as a special ritual text, which has the same sacred potential, shows the new movement in medieval Japanese Buddhism. It is characterized by the desire to return to the precepts of the original Indian Buddhism, formed in the circles of Nara Buddhism. This movement was a kind of response to the formation of the Japanese Amidaism and the spreading of Chinese Chan Buddhism in Japan

Empreintes du tantrisme en Chine et en Asie orientale: Imaginaires, rituels, influences by Vincent Durand-Dastès

Reviewed by: Empreintes du tantrisme en Chine et en Asie orientale: Imaginaires, rituels, influences by Vincent Durand-Dastès Martin Lehnert Vincent Durand-Dastès, ed., Empreintes du tantrisme en Chine et en Asie orientale: Imaginaires, rituels, influences. Institut Belge de Hautes Études Chinoises, Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques, vol. 32. Leuven, Paris, and Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2016. vi, 380 pp. €80 (pb). ISBN 978-90-429-3034-6 As a follow up to a symposium held at the Centre d’études chinoises of INALCO, Paris, on May 15, 2009, this volume traces Tantric practices and beliefs in China and East Asia by focusing on the related imaginations, rituals, and influences in the wider religious contexts both in pre-modern and (to a lesser extent) modern society. The variety of contexts requires a heuristic, subject-related approach that would allow one not to get lost in the diversity of particular phenomena. In his “Introduction,” Vincent Durand-Dastès defines a set of criteria that help to delimit the subject: (1) the importance of sophisticated rituals, in particular rituals of consecration and for the evocation of deities; (2) a particular pantheon related to such rituals; (3) the importance of thaumaturgical practices; (4) the purported immediate “magical” efficacy of ritual actions and objects; (5) affirmation of “passions” and practices in soteriological terms which Buddhist doctrine would not [End Page 73] otherwise consider; (6) implementation of such means for individual as well as governmental ends, the latter often based on notions of sacral kingship. As none of these criteria exclusively apply to Buddhist formations, the editor and authors prefer the concept of “Tantrism” (instead of, e.g., esoteric Buddhism, although this terminological decision is not adhered to in a strictly programmatic manner), which also allows for more flexibility in tracing the variety of relations to Daoism, Shintō, and vernacular religion. Such an approach, on the one hand, keeps up the tradition of Michel Strickmann’s groundbreaking studies (to the memory of whom the volume is also dedicated), and, on the other hand, further differentiates scholarly conceptions of “Tantrism” in the context of East Asian religion. The volume is divided into three sections. The first section, “Imaginaires,” comprises three chapters dealing with Tantric influences on the iconography, literature, and mythology of pre-modern China: Caroline Gyss examines liturgical furnishings and paintings (largely from Baoningsi 寶寧寺) pertaining to the “purificatory ritual of water and land” (shuiluzhai 水陸齋) and highlights local dynamics that helped to define the status of Tantric and/or Daoist deities during the Ming period. Vincent Durand-Dastès gives a detailed analysis of the perceived moral ambiguity of Tantric practices as they are described in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Chinese novels. Finally, Meir Shahar maps out the background, sources, and developments which nourished the Chinese imagination about the Nezha 那吒 deity with particular regard to Kṛṣṇa and Indian mythology. The second section, “Rituels,” deals with the socio-historical aspects of ritual practice: With special focus on the “Records of Yijian” (Yijian zhi 夷堅志), a famous collection of stories about things divine and supernatural compiled around 1198, Liu Hong examines lay Buddhist uses of the still popular “Dhāraṇī of Great Compassion” (Dabei zhou 大悲咒) and highlights its therapeutic and apotropaic significance in the context of medical practice vis-à-vis shamanism. In the only chapter written in English, Ester Bianchi discusses pre-modern as well as modern Chinese versions of the “Chanting of the Names of Mañjuśrī” (Mañjuśrī-nāma-saṃgīti) and their reception in twentieth-century China, which was also motivated by the growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Addressing contemporary Daoist ritual and the influence of Tantric mūdra-practice, Brigitte Baptandier gives an account of the various thaumaturgic and therapeutic competences maintained by the ritual experts of the Lüshan pai 閭山派 tradition located in Fujian and Taiwan. The third section, “Contrepoints: Japon et Corée,” comprises two chapters addressing Tantric practices in Japan and Korea, respectively: François Macé outlines certain synthetic aspects of Tantric Buddhism in Japan which reflect the ambiguity of tutelary deities venerated for their protective as well as transgressive assistance to the clergy and the lay people. With a length of 86...

桜井徳太郎, 神仏交渉史研究 : 民俗における文化接触の問題, 東京, 吉川弘文館, 1968, 518pp., 定価4000円

桜井徳太郎, 神仏交渉史研究 : 民俗における文化接触の問題, 東京, 吉川弘文館, 1968, 518pp., 定価4000円

ОСТРОВ СРЕДИ ГОР: КУКАЙ О ГОРЕ ФУДАРАКУ В ЯПОНИИ

The article precedes the translation of the Stone Inscription (Jp. Shamon Shōdō reki sansui ei genju hi ), No 11 of the Shōryōshū - a collection of works by Kūkai (774-835) written in Chinese and reflecting various aspects of Buddhism in Japan in the early 9th century. The verses in the Inscription contain the glorification of the sacred mountain; in the prosaic preface Kūkai describes how the monk-ascetic Shōdō wandered in the mountains in the eastern provinces of Japan and found there the sacred Potalaka (Jp. Fudaraku) - the mountain-island, the abode of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Jp. Kannon). Climbing the mountain is conceived here as a path of Buddhist asceticism, but it can not be fulfilled without the help of local kami deities. Passing this way together with his hero and the reader, Kūkai brings together the Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist approaches to understanding the mountains as a special landscape where a person can strengthen his capacies to be turned to benefit people...

A Storied Sage: Canon and Creation in the Making of a Japanese Buddha by Micah L. Auerback

Reviewed by: A Storied Sage: Canon and Creation in the Making of a Japanese Buddha by Micah L. Auerback Margaret H. Childs (bio) A Storied Sage: Canon and Creation in the Making of a Japanese Buddha. By Micah L. Auerback, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2017. xii, 358 pages. $40.00, cloth; $40.00, E-book. This study of the many various biographies of the historical Buddha written in Japan over the course of fifteen hundred years focuses primarily on what [End Page 403] sources and motivations were behind various visual and written texts that convey biographical information about Śākyamuni. The premodern biographies are dealt with in just one chapter because there was not much interest in the historical Buddha, insofar as he was just a provisional manifestation of a "much greater cosmic reality" (p. 23). Bodhisattvas and the founders of the various denominations of Buddhism in Japan attracted more attention than did Śākyamuni. The point where this study blossoms with voluminous detail is when developments in historiography made biographies of the Buddha controversial in the early modern era. Eventually European studies based on Sanskrit texts came to dominate the discourse in Japan and the supernatural elements of early biographies were dropped in favor of credible stories of Śākyamuni as a historical personage. Auerback's coverage of these debates is exceedingly thorough. The following remarks are what struck this reader as highlights. The earliest Japanese biographies of the Buddha seem designed as teaching tools in which the Buddha himself is the teacher. Thus, the first chapter is titled "The Buddha as Preceptor." The oldest extant biography in handscroll format is the Kako genzai einga kyō (Illustrated sutra of past and present cause and effect) and the narrator is the Buddha himself. He tells of a former life and identifies personages from that prior life as people with whom he associated during his present life as Siddhartha (p. 40). This kind of handscroll copied its Chinese sources so closely that later scholars struggled to determine if they had been produced in China or Japan (p. 40). That conservatism continued to the extent that the format of eighth-century versions of this scroll, wherein illustration was presented parallel to and above the text, was still being followed in the sixteenth century. Biographical sculpture and paintings of this period were likewise produced in monastic environments and cited orthodox scripture (p. 60). Chapter 2, "The Buddha as Local Hero," describes how, in the first half of the Edo period, storytellers took up the topic of the Buddha's biography for wider audiences than the ones clerical authors of prior centuries had addressed. In otogizōshi tales and puppet plays, the focus shifted to how the Buddha suffered rather than his salvific teachings. New subplots, such as conflict between the Buddha's mother and her sister, were invented. Important scenes, such as that of the demon Māra trying to tempt Śākyamuni to abandon his religious quest, were eliminated. Most interesting is the development in these versions of the idea that Śākyamuni gained enlightenment not through his own strenuous efforts but due to the power of the Lotus Sutra or simply because he was "in the right place and sitting still" (p. 71). In reaction to the Edo-period vernacularization of the Buddha's biography in popular literature, a few reformist clerics wrote new, influential biographies using orthodox scripture. One of these, the nun Kōgetsu (1756–1833), wrote her biography of the Buddha in "elegant neoclassical Japanese prose" (p. 96) as part of her effort to reinvigorate clerical discipline, thus [End Page 404] the title of chapter 3, "Buddha as Exemplar." Her biography of the Buddha is notable for including a chapter on the founding of the first order of nuns, which had been neglected in Japanese biographies of the Buddha for several hundred years (pp. 109–11), and a chapter on the slaughter of the Śākya clan, probably for the sake of the lesson about karmic causality it presents (pp. 111–12). Chapter 4, "Buddha as Fraud," delves deeply into the work of Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), who demythologized the Buddha through critical analysis of classical Buddhist texts. Atsutane called Buddhist scripture lies...

Techniques for nothingness: Debate over the comparability of hypnosis and Zen in early-twentieth-century Japan.

This paper explores a debate that took place in Japan in the early twentieth century over the comparability of hypnosis and Zen. The debate was among the first exchanges between psychology and Buddhism in Japan, and it cast doubt on previous assumptions that a clear boundary existed between the two fields. In the debate, we find that contemporaries readily incorporated ideas from psychology and Buddhism to reconstruct the experiences and concepts of hypnosis and Buddhist nothingness. The resulting new theories and techniques of nothingness were fruits of a fairly fluid boundary between the two fields. The debate, moreover, reveals that psychology tried to address the challenges and possibilities posed by religious introspective meditation and intuitive experiences in a positive way. In the end, however, psychology no longer regarded them as viable experimental or psychotherapeutic tools but merely as particular subjective experiences to be investigated and explained.

일본의 기념비적 불상과 불교전래연도와의 관계

일본의 기념비적 불상과 불교전래연도와의 관계

Trend of Buddhist Students in Japan from the Colonial Joseon: Focused on Joseon Students Who Studied and Propagated Buddhism in Japan from ‘Joseon Buddhist Association’

Trend of Buddhist Students in Japan from the Colonial Joseon: Focused on Joseon Students Who Studied and Propagated Buddhism in Japan from ‘Joseon Buddhist Association’

古代・中世の神社組織における神仏関係(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

古代・中世の神社組織における神仏関係(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

パネルの主旨とまとめ(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

パネルの主旨とまとめ(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

賀茂別雷神社における神仏関係の構造 : 神主・供僧相論を中心に(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

賀茂別雷神社における神仏関係の構造 : 神主・供僧相論を中心に(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

日本の仏教教育(アジアの宗教と教育,パネル,研究報告,第七十一回学術大会)

日本の仏教教育(アジアの宗教と教育,パネル,研究報告,第七十一回学術大会)

HAYASHI Makoto, OTANI Eiichi, Paul L. SWANSON, eds., Modern Buddhism in Japan, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2014, 224pp., 一〇〇〇円

HAYASHI Makoto, OTANI Eiichi, Paul L. SWANSON, eds., Modern Buddhism in Japan, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2014, 224pp., 一〇〇〇円

伊勢の神葬祭から見る神仏関係(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

伊勢の神葬祭から見る神仏関係(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

ランジャナ・ムコパディヤーヤ著, 『日本の社会参加仏教-法音寺と立正佼成会の社会活動と社会倫理-』, 東信堂, 二〇〇五年五月三〇日刊, A5判, ix+四六六頁, 四七六二円+税

ランジャナ・ムコパディヤーヤ著, 『日本の社会参加仏教-法音寺と立正佼成会の社会活動と社会倫理-』, 東信堂, 二〇〇五年五月三〇日刊, A5判, ix+四六六頁, 四七六二円+税

石川県内における神仏分離(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

石川県内における神仏分離(神仏習合・神仏分離における神職・僧侶の諸相-神仏関係史再考-,パネル, 第六十八回学術大会紀要)

The Importance of Kōden in the Establishment of Identity : The Title of the Dainichikyō in the Opening Sequence of the Hizōki

The various lineages of Esoteric Buddhism in Japan all have their identity based on tradition, history, and selected preferences in doctrine and ritual. This article describes how identity-definition may take place in the instrcution courses of the priests called koden. As example, the mention of the title of the Dainichikyo as the first line of the influential Hizoki is presented with a number of possible explanations. The range of the subjects that are touched upon warrants further research into the actual training of the priests and into the way they shape their ritual work which is supportive of set notions in Japanese society.

Many Tongues, Many Buddhisms in a Pluralistic World: A Christian Interpretation at the Interreligious Crossroads

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)PERRY SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, even if limited to only his English-language publications,1 has done more than anyone else to document the range of Buddhist responses to religions.2 His own pluralist theology of not only accommodates such facets of pluralistic world but perhaps also motivates his efforts to record and understand them. I would like to suggest an alternative pneumatological approach to the theology of that may accomplish much of what the pluralist model achieves but yet bypasses what for some critics remain formidable challenges. Simultaneously, my pneumatological perspective, when focused on the variety of Buddhist views of and engagements with religious others, also invites adjustment in Christian attitudes and approaches to people of faiths. I begin with Buddhist diversity vis-a-vis religious pluralism, and then-in the longest section of this article-I present my pneumatological response (in dialogue with Schmidt-Leukel), and end with implications for Christian practice in pluralist world.3Buddhism and the Religions: A Plurality of ResponsesTo be clear, the four volumes and over 1,400 pages of Schmidt-Leukel's recent publication (2013) barely begin to catalogue the diversity of Buddhist responses to pluralism. Even essays depicting six Buddhist attitudes toward religions and then explicating five types of Buddhist only introduce the plurality of Buddhist attitudes to, assessments of, and interactions with religious others (Chappell 1990, in brd 4.10-24; Kiblinger 2003, in brd 4.25-45; and see, for example, Kiblinger 2005). what follows, I selectively highlight some historical-political perspectives and then unfold mostly what might be called Buddhist exclusivisms and inclusivisms regarding religions.4 The discussion of course cannot pretend to be exhaustive, but will merely give an overview of some of the major issues at the interreligious crossroads, at least as refracted through my own biases and interests.5To adopt, at least initially, more historical approach is to be introduced, from the beginning, to many Buddhist approaches to religious otherness. Obviously, this includes not only the fact that the of the Buddha emerged in the pluralistic field of sixth century Vedic and Brahmanic India, but also that variety of interpretations and understandings can be observed as lodged at the very heart of this primordial sequence of events from its inception so that other religions discourse in the early literature include as much intra-Buddhist disputes and contestations as those directed outward to others (Freiberger 2011, in brd 4.46-56)/ Then, if we shift to the next millennium and onto the East Asian space where Buddhism flourished (as opposed to the South Asian land of its origins where it was subsumed if not almost swallowed up by Indic traditions), we find it is better described in terms of waxing and waning according to its integration into or marginalization from the political centers of civilization.7 From this perspective, we can appreciate how the more mature expressions of the tradition feature efforts to integrate religious, philosophical, and cultural aspects of the Chinese context within predominantly Buddhist framework.8Yet of course Buddhist dominance has not always persisted, and the periods in which its practitioners have found themselves in threatened situations, for various reasons, have triggered their most vigorous, even exclusivistic, responses. The four selections focused on Buddhism in Japan highlight some of the precipitating factors. Thus the well-known exclusivism of the Kamakura (1185-1333) monk Nichiren (1222-1282) emerges as a unifying force and strategy of legitimation in the context of the Mongol invasion so that, In Nichiren's eyes, it had been slander of the Dharma-rejection of the Lotus Sutra-that had brought Japan to the brink of destruction by the Mongols (Stone 1994, in brd 4. …