GLIMPSES OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF

NEW JAPAN

KENNETH SAUNDERS

Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California.

ABSTRACT

The currents of new life, as Japan has become a conscious part of the larger world, are finding expression in new forces and ideals in religion.

1. There is a remarkable liberalizing of Buddhism. Some men of unquestioned scholarship regard Buddhism as superior to any other religion. The unrest due to the war and new industrial conditions has intensified the reforming spirit, and in some quarters Buddhism is urged as the inspiration of a Pan-Asiatic program which shall preserve Oriental culture from the destructive influences of Western influence.

2. Shintoism, the religion of Japanese patriotism, is undergoing a marked revival; and a religious call to Japan to be the inspired power in the reconstruction of the world is being widely propagated.

3. If Christianity is to extend its due influence, it must relate itself positively to the dominant ideals of Japan. In literary and artistic expression, as well as in liberal theology, much remains to be accomplished.

"We are hungry and have cried for bread, but they merely teach us the theory of making it"-this cry of the Japanese scholar Takayama met with a very wide response in the early years of the twentieth century. Japan was passing through a spiritual ferment and everywhere the younger men and women were seeking, dissatisfied with the official teachings. "There was discord," says the Buddhist scholar, Dr. Anesaki, "but audible therein was an adagio of sincerity and earnestness.' This was seen in the wistful and restless turning to the study of great Buddhist prophets such as Hōnen, the pietist, and Nichiren, the reformer, in the eager reading of Tolstoy, Ibsen, and other idealistic and individualistic writers, in the starting of a Tolstoian colony, in the appearance of men and women claiming prophetic gifts, in the staging of religious plays, and in similar ways. And twenty years ago Captain Brinkley wrote in his History of Japan of "a sort of Buddhist revival" which he attributed to the advent of Christianity. Undoubtedly in Japan, as in India, this has had a great deal to do with reform movements in the old religions, and with the stimulating of a spiritual unrest. But there is in addition the

obvious fact that Japan has entered into the stream of the world's life, and that the currents which are flowing through the world affect her as never before. It is therefore of peculiar interest to study these currents, first as they are affecting the Buddhists of Japan, and then as they have stirred up strange activities in the old Shinto faith.

I

In the first place Buddhism, like Christianity, is in a stage of transition from a conservative and dogmatic spirit to one of progress and liberalism; there are intelligent and learned men, Scots, Germans, and Americans, who have become Buddhists and indeed have been ordained as Buddhist monks, though forty years ago Dr. Rhys Davids said in his Hibbert lectures, "There is not the slightest danger of any European ever entering the Buddhist order!"

Amongst its own people Buddhism in this liberalized form is offering itself as more scientific than Christianity, and in the two Buddhist universities at Kyōto, where nearly a thousand young men are being trained for the priesthood, training in the Christian religion is a part of the regular curriculum, and comparison is being encouraged. We have to note, too, that each of the Buddhist sects can boast great scholars trained in our western universities such as Dr. B. Nanjio, who was thirty years ago a colleague of Max Müller at Oxford; Dr. M. Anesaki, well known in this country, especially at Harvard; and many others, and that these men, having made a lifelong study of both religions, remain active Buddhists, and would be a great credit to either religion. They would be the first to disown some of the quacks and charlatans who, under the name of "Esoteric Buddhism," are palming off a hotchpotch of spiritualism, theosophy, and strange superstitions amongst sentimental and gullible people in the West. There is a unique example in San Francisco.

A second sign of the Buddhist revival is in the active promotion of Buddhist Sunday-schools. The Western Hong

wanji sect, for example, which believes in salvation through faith, claims to have 150,000 children in its Sunday-schools, and has a well-organized educational bureau, while nearly three-quarters of a million children are in Buddhist Sundayschools. A booklet recently published as a gift for the delegates to the World's Sunday-School Convention in Tokyo sets forth in attractive form the facts of this movement and of Buddhist work for young people in general. In all this Christians can sincerely rejoice, and the organizers of the Christian Sunday-school movement are to be congratulated upon this by-product of their activities; for materialism, and not Buddhism, is the chief foe of Christianity, and it is a cause for rejoicing that these attractive and brilliant children of Japan are growing up to believe in an Unseen Order controlling their destinies, and in salvation by faith in a compassionate Savior.

For the adolescent, the Young Men's Buddhist Association is beginning to do "something of the splendid work accomplished in the West by the Y.M.C.A." So says The Mahāyānist, a journal now defunct, but founded to investigate and interpret Mahāyāna Buddhism. It was very interesting to me to find in the Hawaiian Islands a headquarters of the Y.M.B.A., with numerous branches on the plantations; and it is working in Japan also. Here again, we can wish God-speed to this movement for building up moral manhood in the Buddhist world.

Of the activity of the Buddhist press much might be written; but I must content myself with just a few examples. Biographies of Gautama Buddha in Japanese and of the chief Buddhist patriarchs have all recently appeared, and one anthology of the scriptures has passed through over fifty editions in ten years, while a committee has been formed to translate Chinese and Sanskrit books into Japanese. All the leading sects have their monthly magazines, and some have quite a formidable list.

More obvious than these significant symptoms of the Buddhist revival are the building and repairing of temples;

Buddhist temples are steadily increasing, and there are said to be over 70,000 of them and no less than 123,000 priests, monks, and teachers apart from the large numbers devoted to the Shinto faith.

Amongst the more recent temple buildings, is one in Kyōto which cost nearly five million dollars, and for the transport of whose timbers hundreds of thousands of women sacrificed their hair, and even the ancient shrines of Hieizan are being vigorously repaired. Amongst the giant cryptomerias which sentinel them resound the blows of hammer and chisel as I write. One is being moved bodily à l'américain. Even the ancient and complex Tendai sect, like the others seems to be awakening to new life, and is in process of transition.

Again, there is an undoubted attempt at moral reform about which let The Mahāyānist speak: "Whilst formerly the moral sickness was allowed to go on unchecked, now the coverings are cast aside, and the disease laid bare, which is the first thing to do if the patient is to be cured." One hears a good deal about misappropriation of temple funds, and moral laxity in matters of sex. It is not for a visitor to comment on these things; they are not peculiar to Japan. Personally I believe that Buddhism is on the whole a real power for good; and I am inclined to think that the beautiful courtesy and kindliness one meets everywhere largely spring from it, and are one of its many noble fruits. We in the West have made more of commercial honesty and less of courtesy and forbearance than Jesus was wont to do, and there is no more odious type than the self-righteous visitor from Western lands who comes to the East armed with a narrow and negative moral code and a critical spirit.

Certainly Buddhism is teaching "morals" to its children, and in a thousand ways its influence is felt in that very attractive character so truly described by Lafcadio Hearn as peculiar to the Japanese, of which the essence is a genuine kindness of heart that is essentially Buddhist.

Another proof that the chief sects are now filled with vigorous life is evidenced by their missionary activities: the "Faith" sects claim that they have 540 foreign missionaries outside Japan proper. The first Buddhist missionary from Japan to China was sent out by the Eastern branch of the Hongwanji in 1876; and since then missions have been established in Honolulu, in 1897, and in North America, some eighty on the Pacific Coast. Nor is missionary work neglected in Japan; owing largely to the influence of a layman Kiyozawa Manshi, the Shin sect has begun to work in jails, and to arouse a sense of sin in the inmates. Nearly a million yen is spent annually by Buddhists in social service, and as an example of it I may instance a training-school in Tokyo, where I found sixty students being trained in charity organization; and a lodging-house for the poor, where homeless people are given shelter. These two belong respectively to the Western and Eastern branches of the Hongwanji sect, and this is the most active in such ways, though unfortunately the members of the two branches fight "like brothers," as one of their chief men told me with a chuckle. And so far I have not been able to discover any movement toward reunion, such as those which are filling the Christian church with a new life. On the contrary a very popular play is that depicting the debates and mutual recriminations of Nichiren and the priests of the Jodo sect, whose pietism he called "a way to hell." It looks, however, as if social service and the spirit of liberalism which inspires such lay leaders as Ito Shoshin, the editor of a weekly paper devoted to these causes, might stimulate the ecclesiastical mind in the Far East as it has in the West to work for reunion.

II

How has the Great War affected all this? It has in the first place intensified the spiritual unrest, and in the second it has given an impetus to the demand for reconstruction at home and abroad. Very significant is the letter sent by the