Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper reconsiders narratives of "modern Buddhism" in Japanese scholarship, focusing on the historiography of the field. By examining earlier foundational works, the paper aims to review how the modernization perspective is applied and to explore moments that complicate it from within.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines and problematizes the narrative of "modern Buddhism" in recent studies of Buddhism in modern Japan.

Since the 2000s, "modern Buddhism" studies in Japan have made significant progress in terms of both research objects and scope, and continue to develop in various directions, with some critical reflection on the very idea of "modern Buddhism" itself.

Considering what has been assumed to be "modern," some have already pointed out a modernization perspective characterized by that presupposes an evolutionary, progressive model of religion in the field, sometimes prioritizing the inner ethics or spirituality of the individual over the social and institutional activities of religious organizations. While this emphasis is understandable given the history of relations between the state and religious organizations—especially during the wartime period—it is notable that no major alternative perspectives have been presented.

To seek possible alternatives for writing the history of Buddhism in modern Japan, this paper will revisit some foundational works on "modern Buddhism," such as those by Ikeda Eishun, who pioneered research on the interaction between Buddhists and Christians in modern Japan, to reconsider their narrative frameworks and also to identify latent possibilities that complicate the modernization perspective.

These reflections must be made in light of the modernization perspective in the historiography of religion in general in the postwar period, which, to some extent, was established as a standard by historians of Christianity in modern Japan. This paper will consider the uniqueness of writing the history of Buddhism in modern Japan compared with writing the history of other religious traditions, such as Christianity and new religions in the same period.

Additionally, as Yoshinaga Shin'ichi and others already pointed out, one of the important developments in the field is to situate Buddhism in modern Japan within the dynamics of global Buddhism in the same period. This paper will examine the continuity and discontinuity between the narratives of "modern Buddhism" in Japanese scholarship and those of "Buddhist modernism" in anglophone works, aiming to offer a comparative examination of the historiographies and to seek better alternative(s) for writing the history of religions in modern Japan.