Paper short abstract:

Looking beyond the often-quoted front-line figures of the Japanese Enlightenment, this talk focuses on the legacy of Buddhist intellectuals. Based on a media-driven concept of the Enlightenment, it discusses their memorials to the government and the establishment of Buddhist societies in the 1870s.

Paper long abstract:

In his article "Enlightenment in Global History: a Historiographical Critique" (2012), Sebastian Conrad looks at the Enlightenment as a global and century-long movement. While pointing out that the Enlightenment came to be embraced by a wide variety of actors, when using the case of Japan in support of his propositions, Conrad limits himself to ideas and quotes by traditional Japanese Enlightenment thinkers, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi or statesman Tsuda Mamichi, both members of the Meirokusha. The repeated reference to the same authors and their writings in historical narratives on the Enlightenment in Japan may have engendered its image as a short-lived, limited and rather monolithic movement. This paper aims at looking beyond front-line figures such as Fukuzawa Yukichi and other often-quoted Meirokusha members, and at restoring to center-stage those that historical narratives have, whether or not inadvertently, pushed into the stage wings. Indeed, the pursuits of permanent members of the Meirokusha triggered activities in other intellectual circles, not least in the Buddhist world.

The immediate response to the publication of "Meiroku zasshi" (the journal of the Meirokusha) in the form of "Hōshi sōdan", the first dedicated Buddhist journal, which exemplifies Buddhist intellectuals' wish to engage in the intellectual debates of the time and in the education of the people, has already received some scholarly attention. Moving beyond journal publication, this paper will look at a number of memorials that Buddhist intellectuals addressed to the Meiji government in the 1870s, as well as at the establishment of Buddhist societies, both instances of what Jonathan Sheehan (2003) terms "media of the Enlightenment". In following Sheehan's proposition to put religion into dialogue with the Enlightenment, this paper seeks to reassess the intellectual movement's alleged secular character. It will look at how, for Meirokusha thinkers and for religious intellectuals alike, it was the "anxiety to reform the morale or spirit of the Japanese people [that] became the basis of the movement during the early eighteen-seventies known as keimō or Enlightenment" (Carmen Blacker 1969).