Paper short abstract:

This presentation shows how a faith healing group embedded in a Shintō-Buddhist worldview developed its self-image as the 'revealed' 'world religion' Tenrikyō in 19th ct. Imperial Japan, negotiated through novel imported Christian-occidental ideas of religion and superstition.

Paper long abstract:

The Tenrikyō is a Japanese new religion, founded in 1839 by the peasant woman Nakayama Miki. Its formative phase has mainly been presented as the struggle of a 'revealed religion' against the Shinto-establishment of the modern Japanese Empire in the Meiji-period (1868-1912). New studies, however, question Eurocentric presumptions of the concept 'religion'. In this presentation, I ask how Christian-occidental conceptualizations of 'religion' and its constructed opposite 'superstition' shaped the discourse on what was to constitute the modern religious in Imperial Japan. I focus on how this negotiation affected the self-image of a small faith healing group embedded in a Shintō-Buddhist worldview to present itself as the 'revealed' 'world religion' Tenrikyō.

The Tenrikyō joined Denominational Shinto in 1888. Despite being attacked by intellectuals since the 1890s as a premodern, heretical teaching for its faith healing and unorthodox teachings, the group gained independence in 1908. In this presentation, I will contrast critical publications against the group with early Tenrikyō sources. I show how, despite of their contrary claims, both sides operated within the same discursive field. Both sought to adapt to a rapidly changing world view by relating their resp. arguments to Western concepts of religion and the new dominant paradigm of science, yet centering them on the specific Japanese configuration that was the non-religious Shinto ideology. Both resorted to the concept of 'revealed religion' in relation to the "natural order" of the cosmos in order to delegitimize or legitimize the Tenrikyō as a Shinto religion, respectively. This proves the intrinsic discursive nature of concepts such as 'religion' or 'superstition', and sheds new light on the formation of new religions. I trace acculturation processes of knowledge transfer in the 19th century and review the construction of global religious history by exposing how Western orientalist and ethno(euro)centric views were absorbed and instrumentalized by proponents of Japanese religions themselves.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the theological reflections of Uchimura Kanzō 内村鑑三 (1861-1930) on the Ashio Copper Mine Incident. It will seek to suggest that the theology that Uchimura developed was grounded in the concept that pollution was a human problem - created by and detrimental to humanity.

Paper long abstract:

The Ashio Copper Mine Incident (J. Ashio Kōdoku Jiken 足尾鉱毒事件) was the first large-scale, industrial disaster in Japanese history. The long unprofitable copper mine became a beacon of Japan’s Meiji Period (1868-1912) industrialization following its acquisition by Furukawa Ichibei 古河市兵衛 (1832-1903) and subsequent transformation into one of Japan’s most profitable mining facilities, however, as the mine was developed issues of pollution in the Watarase 渡良瀬 and Tone 利根 Rivers and deforestation near the mine began to affect local, and eventually regional, populations. The pollution led to the decimation of plant and animal life north of the mines, widespread flooding and resultant soil infertility downstream, and the abandonment of several villages. Scholars exploring religious and theological responses to the Ashio Copper Mine Incident have tended to focus on the work of Kinoshita Naoe 木下尚江 (1869-1937), Kōtoku Shūsui 幸徳秋水 (1871-1911), and the Christians and Buddhists who kept the company of Tanaka Shōzō 田中正造 (1841-1913). This historiographical paper will explore the theological reflections of Uchimura Kanzō 内村鑑三 (1861-1930), whose work on the Ashio Copper Mine Incident has yet to receive widespread attention. It will seek to show that Uchimura’s theological explorations of the incident, which depicted the pollution as a human problem both in terms of its genesis and its impacts, hinged on four primary and interrelated ideas:

1. Environmental damage and pollution are the result of social and political sin and inequity.

2. Environmental damage affects the commoners, who are loved by God.

3. God will bring about punishment for societal sin using Nature or the commoners as his vehicle for change.

4. The adoption of a Western moral system will quell societal ills and lead to reforms that will stay the negative influence of environmental damage on the peasants.

Paper short abstract:

Beginning in the Bakumatsu era and going well into the postwar period, this paper examines the reception, by Japanese intellectuals, of the European concept of "Reformation" (shūkyō kaikaku), as well as its comparative application to the Japanese case, especially in reference to Buddhism.

Paper long abstract:

Although resemblances between Luther's movement and certain Japanese Buddhist sects were pointed out by important European missionaries far back in the sixteenth century, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that Japanese priests would appropriate this idea in order to progress their own agendas. From the Bakumatsu days with Higuchi Ryūon (1800-1888) to the early Meiji period with Shimaji Mokurai (1838-1911), several Buddhist priests of Jōdo Shin persuasion, emphasized the similarities between their sectarian teachings and the protestant faith; it was not, however, until the late Meiji period that references to "religious reformation" from a more academic perspective would arise. Scholars usually mention "Tōzai no shūkyō kaikaku" (Reformations East and West), a short 1911 essay by Hara Katsurō (1871-1924), as the article which set the basis for historical comparisons between German Protestantism and Japanese Buddhism. This, however, is not quite true: for instance, in his Gakumon no susume, published in 1876, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) refers to Luther as the "Shinran of the West," and in October 1899 literary critic Yamaji Aizan (1865-1917) gives, in Nagano, a lecture on the "History of Japanese Reformation" (Nihon no shūkyō kaikaku shi). A few months before Hara publishes his piece, socialist activist Kinoshita Naoe (1869-1937) also extolls the "reformist" virtue of the Japanese Pure Land masters in his Hōnen and Shinran (1911). With that in mind, this paper argues that Hara's essay did not have as much impact in the context of Taisho Japan as current scholarship has considered it to have had. Currently scholarship emphasizes that it was in Hara's essay that the term "Kamakura Shinbukkyō" becomes established as an analogy for the transcendental character of the western concept of religion; scholars have further claimed that Hara's attempt was followed by Naitō Kanji (1916-2010) who, heavily influenced by Weberian theory emphasized, in a 1941 work, the influence of Pure Land faith in the formation of a proto-capitalist work ethic among Edo-period merchants. As I point out, however, these are rather problematic assertions. After clarifying said issues, I consider more carefully the genealogies of these different ideas and their impact on postwar historiography.