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Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the interplay between religious and social aspects of jinzai ikusei through the analysis of social welfare training in Risshō Kōseikai. While invested with religious significance, training activities also fulfil practical social functions relying on secular concepts and methods.

Paper long abstract:

Emphasis on self-cultivation is regarded as a distinctive feature of Japanese New Religions, stemming from a common worldview where the domains of the world and the self are inextricably interrelated (Hardacre 1986). As practices primarily aimed at personal development, training activities can be included in broader notions of self-perfection or "creating the person" (hitotsukuri). However, when training is projected outside the individual sphere to address more practical concerns, the boundary between religious and social aspects becomes blurred.

The paper aims to explore the complex interplay between religion and the secular unfolding in the notion of "training" or human resources development (jinzai ikusei) in Japanese new religious movements, using social welfare training activities promoted by the lay-Buddhist movement Risshō Kōseikai as a case-study. On one side, welfare training can be said to carry religious significance both as preliminary to social service, seen as implementation of the "bodhisattva way" (bosatsugyō) and as means of "perfection of the character" (jinkaku kansei), a key component of Kōseikai's practice. More broadly, training plays a key role in the construction of doctrinal foundations for social activism, by inscribing social care activities with religious meanings. On the other hand, it fulfils practical social functions as providing members with the knowledge and skills to contribute to their community and forming the next generation of local "leaders". The analysis of social welfare training, by looking at whether and how mainstream concepts and methods from the field of social care are invested with religious significance, may also shed a light on how religious organisations and practitioners articulate the "distinctiveness" of faith-based social care vis-à-vis services offered by non-religious providers.

Finally, jinzai ikusei could provide new insights on organisational responses to demographical dynamics. While tackling ageing by equipping elderly members with the tools to carve a role for themselves in local churches and surrounding society, training activities may also address the issue of generational turnover within the organisation. Through doctrinal study and practices of socialisation, ikusei could serve as a response to the challenge of keeping alive the commitment of young members.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims at clarifying some of the hermeneutical strategies that the Tendai Monk Kōshū employs in his work Keiranshūyōshū to conflate the meanings of the imperial regalia and key Buddhist concepts in order to locate imperial authority into a larger ritualistic and cosmological framework.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper aims at contributing to a general discussion of the problems pertaining to the relationship between the Buddhist clergy and the court in medieval Japan.

Specifically, it addresses ideas concerning the origin and nature of imperial authority that have been disseminated from one of the most significant Buddhist monastic institutions throughout the Japanese history: the Hieizan.

A closer look at the hermeneutical strategies employed by the Tendai monk and erudite Kōshū (1276-1350) to conflate the meanings of the imperial regalia and key Buddhist concepts helps to understand how the Tendai clergy sought to situate imperial authority within a larger cosmological and ritual framework that would both legitimate the court and secure the significant role of their religious institution at a time, in which such assertions were increasingly difficult to sustain.

This reassertion of the apparently insoluble ties between the royal law (ōbō) and the Buddhist law (buppō) is one of the main purposes of Kōshū's magnum opus: the Keiranshūyōshū (traditionally assumed to be written in the years between 1311 and 1348), a highly fragmentary and disparate text that has - with few exceptions - not yet been adequately studied even by Japanese scholars.

An examination of the interpretative strategies that Kōshū exerts to this end, does not only shed light on the way the so called chroniclers (kike) of the Hieizan understood imperial authority, but also offers insights as to what degree their understanding was grounded in ideas that have been labelled as a "syncretism" of Buddhist and Shintō elements, such as the notion of origin and trace (honji suijaku).

Finally, the paper outlined above may also contribute to the question of methodological difficulties that occur when the seemingly clearly divided fields of religion and politics are merged in a distinctly premodern setting. How fruitful are attempts to apply a modern understanding back onto texts that clearly defy such categorizations?

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Paper short abstract:

Honda Nisshō (1867-1931) was the leader of Nichiren denomination Kempon Hokkeshū, deeply influenced by the religious studies of a Dutch theologian C. P. Tiele (1830-1902). The paper offers a few reflections on Honda's understanding of this modern discipline and its application to Nichiren Buddhism.

Paper long abstract:

Honda Nisshō (1867-1931) was the leader of the small Nichiren denomination Kempon Hokkeshū. He is also well known as one the most important and influential advocates of the modern Buddhist movement of Nichirenism. He devoted his life to reforming Nichiren Buddhism from within the priestly hierarchy, even though some of his radical reform policies, based on his own theory of the honzon (the principal object of worship), led to his being disrobed and deprived of his Buddhist name for three years (1892-95). For example, he banned the enshrinement of deities other than the Mandala of Nichiren, including Yakushi Nyorai, Kishimojin and Daikokuten, which were a big part of the management of many temples, especially in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo.

Honda started to formulate his theory of the honzon when he was a student of private academy of philosophy (Tetsugakkan), where he learned about Western theories. He was also deeply influenced by the religious studies of a Dutch theologian Cornelis Petrus Tiele (1830-1902), but reversed Tiele's religious developmental schema and its hierarchy of universal religions. While Tiele expounded a religious typology that explained the history of religions as the evolutional progress from naturalism to universal religion, and positioned universal religion, especially monotheism (Christianity) as the apex of evolutional development, Honda created his own honzon-based typology of Japanese religions with the "one-God-centric pantheism," being the most highly developed religion. Honda's classification included eleven types of religions: animal worship, animism, fetishism, hero-worship, kathenotheism, polytheism, henotheism, monotheism, pantheism, universalism, and finally, "one-God-centric pantheism," represented by the Lotus Sutra and doctrine of Nichiren Buddhism. In this paper, I will offer a few reflections on Honda's understanding of 'religious studies' and his application of this modern discipline to Nichiren Buddhism, and discuss his unique theory of the honzon and its characteristics. The findings of this study reveal the encounter between Buddhism and Western science (religious studies) as part of an attempt by Japanese Buddhists to position their religion in the discourse of modernity.