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.