The Search for Socially
Engaged Buddhism in
Japan
Jonathan
Watts
This
perennial notion of civil society is naturally connected to religious
organizations that throughout history, for better and worse, have
sought to
establish communities of faith based on the ethical teachings of their
founders.[1]
Although modern civil society appears to be
different because of its secular nature, it still emphasizes ethical
kinds of
behavior that support such modern, secular notions as democracy and
human
rights. Historically, the roots of modern civil society in the West
seem to
have begun with the Protestant Reformation and subsequent attempts by
various
new Christian denominations to create their own religious and highly
ethical
commonwealths of citizens. The struggle to create modern civil society
in the
West was an attempt to recreate the ethical bonds of community which
were
disintegrating under the rapid changes brought about by modern
technology and science,
the development of mass urban communities, and the collapse of the all
encompassing theology of the Catholic Church. (LOY 2002)
Various
scholars, such as Toshimaro Ama of Meiji Gakuin University, have
questioned
whether modern Japan has ever had a civil society like those in Europe
or North
America. While the Japanese may indeed lack a strong sense for the
modern
concept of civil society as a social sphere autonomous from state and
market, I
would contend that they do have a sense for the perennial concept of
civil
society. Certainly, the radical Pure Land and Nichiren communities of
the
Kamakura Era (1192-1333) exhibited a type of civil society movement in
creating
communities based on religious norms that stood above larger social
ones. In
the succeeding Muromachi Era (1333-1573), these religious communities
formed
the basis for outright citizen revolts in the Pure Land (Ikko-ikki) and Nichiren peasant rebellions (Hokke-ikki).
The
Japanese
term for civil society is shimin-shakai (市民社会). The characters for shimin mean literally “city” (市) and “people” (民). This suggests that the Japanese concept of
civil society is an outgrowth of modern urban culture. Yet Ama notes
that this
concept is still not fully understood by most Japanese who tend to
regard
society in terms of the term seken
(世間), which
literally means “the world” or “the public”. Unlike the understanding
of civil
society which refers to a public sphere autonomous from state and
market, seken
for Japanese is more inclusive and implies
something that one does not attempt to change but tries to get fit into
(personal
correspondence, June 22, 2004). The development of modern civil society
in
Japan has been greatly stunted by the bureaucratic control of the state
and its
power to recreate social containers for the urban populace (Hardcare,
p.394-395) However, the steady influx of new worldviews since
modernization
began in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) has slowly broken down traditional
conceptions of Japanese community. This can be seen directly in the
religious
sphere, especially in the new religious movements (shin-shukyo) of the 1920s and the second wave of new, new
religions (shin shin-shukyo)
of the
1980s. These groups have sought to address the increasing alienation of
urban
Japanese afloat in a new world of uncertain community and unclear
ethical
values.
The
centrality of ethical and moral norms, which are commonly grounded in
religion
and provide the basis for the creation of civil society, can help us to
understand the social activities of Buddhist groups in contemporary
Japanese
society and to evaluate the extent of an authentic socially engaged
Buddhist
movement. In this way, the questions to be asked at each turn in this
paper
are: how much is a movement or a group of individuals contributing to
the
ethical well-being of Japanese society? And perhaps an even more
important
question: is the intention
of the
groups or individuals focused on contributing to the welfare of civil
society -
that is to the general public at large - or are there other agendas
involved in
these actions? A final question to keep in mind is: how successful have
these
Buddhist groups been in articulating and demonstrating a truly
indigenous form
of civil society which derives from the religious and ethical norms of
their
own Buddhist tradition, rather than from the Christian influenced
humanism of
western civil society?
With
the above questions in mind, I would like to make a very broad
assessment of
the types of social activities in which Japanese Buddhists typically
engage. I
think we should be on guard here not to attempt to label an entire
organization
as solely fitting into one type or another, but rather to see these
different
types as modes of action
of which a single organization may manifest
all, some, or none. In this way, we can use this typology to more
deeply
understand the complexity of a group’s actions, rather than using it as
a
device to pigeon-hole them.
1) Relief
These
are the traditional activities of established religious organizations
in their
natural roles as centers of traditional civil society. For example, in
pre-modern Japan, especially during the Edo or Tokugawa Period
(1600-1868), a
Buddhist temple could be found in every village, and the monks would
usually be
engaged in various types of community support activities such as
running
schools (terakoya
寺子屋)
or supporting community infrastructure
projects. During the period of modernization beginning with the Meiji
Era, the
influx of western ideas and the development of secular and modern
bureaucratic
institutions presented a threat to the traditional social roles of the
priest
and the temple. To confront this crisis, Buddhist priests also began to
look
abroad, not only in the West but in other parts of Buddhist Asia, and
developed
newer, modern forms of social welfare activities, like day centers and
kindergartens,
during the Taisho Era (1912-26).
One
prominent example is
the work of the Jodo-shu priest Shiio Benkyo (1876-1971). He created
within
Jodo-shu the Kyosei Movement (kyosei-kai 共生会).
Kyosei
is roughly translatable
as “mutual co-existence”, and Benkyo based this idea on the fundamental
Buddhist
doctrine of pratitya-samutpada,
the dependent co-origination and inter
relatedness of all things. He interpreted pratitya-samutpada
in terms of
the matrix of human society and insisted that one should realize the
salvation
of Amida Buddha in social and daily life. This movement inspired many
priests in
Jodo-shu to establish day-care centers and kindergartens within or near
their
temple grounds or to engage in other forms of social service. In this
example, it
would appear that some important initial steps were being taken in the
development of a civil society based on indigenous Buddhist concepts.
The
development of such universalistic themes tied into the practice of
Buddhism in
daily life as a means towards inner and social transformation was
common also
to the new Buddhist schools emerging in this era as well as Shinto
organizations (STONE 2003). However, movements such as this did not
become
official activities promoted by the sects as “social welfare” (shakai
fukushi
社会福祉)
activities
until after the war, and thus were largely confined to the individual
initiatives of priests. Furthermore, there appears to have been some
limit to
the ethical and ideological nature of these activities since they never
developed into a movement which challenged the growing nationalism of
the
government and society. Although Benkyo appears to have been opposed to
the war
at first, he remained as a Diet member and a religious leader who
supported the
war until the end (EISAWA 2002).
In
this way, I have
labeled this first category “relief,” because the nature of social
action is
not to challenge aspects of the existing social structure, especially
politically, but to preserve it by providing aid or relief to citizens
in
either chronic or emergency duress. In a certain way, the activities
could be
seen as part of civil society, because they focus on locating agency
into the
individual to act positively and ethically in the social sphere.
However, on
another level, we may not consider them properly civil society
activities, because
by emphasizing individual agency they often fail to take account of
structural
injustices, thereby becoming open to complicity with oppressive power
(STONE
2003). This is clearly seen in the use of the Buddhist temple by the
Tokugawa
Shogunate to monitor Japanese citizens through the mandatory temple
registration system (danka seido),
and in the modern era,
in the regulation of religious organizations through the creation of
religious
public interest corporations (shukyo koeki hojin
公益法人),
whose legal status can be revoked by the
government (HARDACRE, p.395). The Taisho Era activism of Buddhist
priests was
perhaps partially imbibed with the notion of serving the public good,
but it
was also a survival tactic by traditional Buddhists to maintain their
footing
in the rapidly changing and dangerous world of early modern Japan with
its
secular and Shinto sentiments and the rise of new Buddhist
denominations. In
this way, these modes of activity truly come up short of the civil
society ideal
because they do not offer an alternative to state power. In the worst
cases,
they may warp the true meaning of civil society in perpetuating the
ideology of
the state as the full embodiment of civil society (as in times of
hyper-nationalism) and by cleaning up the manifestations of oppression
and
injustice created by an oppressive state through their relief
activities.
2) Evangelistic
These
activities are the work that any religious group does as part of
building up
the organization as a mass movement. Traditionally, such activities
would have
been sending missionaries to new regions to propagate the teaching and
subsequently building temples around new groups of converts. In modern
times, especially
amongst the new Buddhist groups of Japan, this has been greatly
enlarged to
encompass the virtual building of whole new societies within larger
Japanese
society by constructing schools, universities, hospitals, etc. These
activities
have sought to provide and care for not just the spiritual needs of the
community
but also all the material needs of it. In this way, these current
activities
and the new relief ones cited above exhibit the typical modern tendency
in a focus
on the material welfare of people as much as their spiritual welfare.
I
have labeled these
activities “evangelistic”, because although there may be the ethical
intention
to do good towards others, there is the fundamental “selfish” impetus
behind
the activities to build the scope, power and prestige of the
organization. In
this way, it would be difficult to label these activities truly civil
society
ones since the priority is on the well-being of organization and the
development
of an internal group of believers, rather than on the larger society as
a whole,
especially those who withhold their allegiance. In this way, we can
distinguish
the relief activity of building a kindergarten by a traditional temple
from the
evangelic activity of building a high school by a new Buddhist group as
a basic
difference in energy dynamic; that is the former is more of a defensive
measure
to maintain status in society, while the latter is more of an offensive
measure
to gain status in society. The “offensive” nature of these activities
may also
manifest itself as a challenge to existing society, and in the case of
the new
Buddhist groups, certainly a challenge to the co-dependent power of the
traditional
Buddhist sects and state authority. From an ideological standpoint,
these
groups may appeal to the supramundane truths of their faith as
transcending the
mundane laws of the state. Such an appeal was a conspicuous
characteristic of
the teaching of Nichiren who appealed to the higher law of the Lotus
Sutra
while spending
a good part of his ministry challenging the state and the Buddhist
establishment. It seems not uncoincidental that the most notable new
Buddhist
groups of modern Japan all come out of the Nichiren stream, reflecting
a full
ideological spectrum from right to left as Soka Gakkai, Reiyukai,
Rissho
Koseikai, and Nipponzam Myohoji.
In
terms of civil society,
the new Buddhist groups, most conspicuously Soka Gakkai, have made an
appeal to
a different kind of social order, a kind of social reformism, different
from
both capitalism or communism, and based on the aspiration of the
marginalized
masses during the modernization and high economic growth period. In the
post-war
period of rapid social transformation, the growing urban population
needed some
spiritual pillar and social support, and Soka Gakkai certainly
responded to
their needs, based on Buddhism. This is certainly a kind of civil
society which
is not necessarily controlled by the state, but which rather aimed to
restructure the public arena through the formation of political
representation.
Thus Soka Gakkai created the Komei party in 1964, which advocated
transparency and
welfare, both of which were lacking in this period of high economic
growth. In
this way, the vision of a new social-spiritual order by such new
Buddhist
groups may represent the true spirit of civil society in offering an
alternative power base to entrenched power. However, the evangelistic
and “offensive”
energy of such groups can often create new forms of complicity to other
forms
of non-civic power, such as those of the market – the other pole of
which
civil society is supposed to offer an alternative. In the highly
capitalistic
environment of post-war Japan, the expansion of the funeral industry by
traditional Buddhist groups and the mass marketing and mass
construction
activities of new Buddhist groups have made Buddhism highly complicit
with
financial power. While we can argue over the merits or demerits of a
capitalist
system, it becomes difficult to call these activities civil society
actions
when their core focus is not the ethical development of society but the
financial development of their own organizations.
3) Reform
These
activities correspond to what I would call mature and fully developed
civil
society activities, and also what I would call a full fledged socially
engaged
Buddhist movement. As with the other two types, this is an ideal or
stereotypical type, which is probably realized nowhere in perfection
but which
Buddhist groups may embody to various degrees. There are two key
characteristics of this type of movement.
1.
The
first is
an ideological critique of the topology of power in the existing
society. Such
a critique firmly establishes the group as a part of an authentic civil
society
movement that offers an alternative view of society outside of state
and
business norms. This has been a key element in the socially engaged
Buddhist
movements in other parts of Asia. In Vietnam, Thailand and Sri Lanka,
this
critique has typically addressed the structural violence and ethical
bankruptcy
of modern development, both capitalist and communist, while advocating
a
uniquely Buddhist style of development, such as the “awakening of all”
of the
Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka and the concept of “Dhammic Socialism”
coined
by the Thai monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (QUEEN & KING 1996).
2.
The
second
characteristic is a pairing of this ideological critique with a
progressive
social action movement, seen in Sri Lanka as the massive rural
development
program of Sarvodaya and the work of development monks in Thailand.
The
key point in designating this category as “reform” and as unique from
the other
two categories is that the ideological and social action components
deeply
inform each other and create a dialectical tension which prevents
either one
from going wayward. From a Buddhist doctrinal standpoint, we can
understand
these two characteristics as the dialectal modes of wisdom and
compassion.
Wisdom with no compassion can be cold and instrumental, while
compassion
without wisdom can exhaust itself in unclear application.
For
example, a movement
that is more ideological in focus can lose its grounding in the basic
social
service activities through which it draws its ethical sensibilities. An
ideological critique that loses such grounding can become too involved
with its
critique of power and with its engagement with power, thereby becoming
susceptible
to the same attractions to power which is critiques. In a more benign
way, this
manifests itself in Buddhist organizations which speak of social
service yet because
of their higher priority given to developing organizational power end
up preferentially
serving their own group of believers. In a more harmful way, the
ideological
critique turns into a divisive political movement which may eventually
find
itself in consort with “regime changes” in state and business power.
This is
clearly seen in Sri Lanka where the movement of the monastic Sangha to
redefine
itself against the threats of western modernism has led it to expound a
racist
form of nationalism based on the fusion of state, religion and people.
In terms
of Japan, this trend can be evidenced once again in the Nichiren
movement.
Nichiren himself made a deep ideologically critique of the political
state of
Japan in his well known Treatise for Establishing the Correct and
Safe
Nation
(Rissho Ankoku-ron).
However, in the pre-war era, Nichiren’s
critique of the state was warped into a fusion of his religious ideas
with the
state to advocate Japanese imperialism. This was called Nichiren-shugi
(Nichirenism) and was first articulated by former Nichiren-shu priest
Tanaka
Chigaku (1861-1939) who formed the Rissho Ankoku-kai lay organization
to
promote Nichiren-shugi
(STONE 2003). Today, Soka Gakkai serves as a
great enigma in this area. While advocating world peace in numerous international
activities,
on the domestic front, they form the ideological backbone of the
powerful and
conservative Komei party which presently is part of Japan's support for
US
intervention in the Middle East. This policy is connected to the
movement to
send troops overseas and to alter Japan’s pacifist constitution, a
constitution
which Soka Gakkai leader Daisaku Ikeda has declared makes Japan
“entirely
qualified to be in the vanguard, to mobilize all the peace forces of
the world,
to assume the leadership, and to rouse world opinion through the United
Nations”.
(STONE 2003, p.86) Soka Gakkai’s continued absence in pan-Buddhist and
pan-religious peace and civil society initiatives within Japan
reinforces
these doubts, and appears to conform to their general philosophy of
non-cooperation with other religious groups, Buddhist or not.
On
the other hand, a
movement which lacks ideological critique and focuses on social action
tends to
resemble the relief activities of many Buddhist organizations. This is
conspicuously present in most Buddhist organizations which work for
social action
today in Japan. A major segment of these groups is involved in
“international
cooperation activities”, which include various types of relief aid to
Africa,
the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. There is also a great
amount of
rhetoric about peace. I use the word “rhetoric” since most of the
activities
constitute seminars, publications, and declarations, with very little
if any critique
of Japan’s political and economic complicity with the state of conflict
all
over the world. The Japanese general public is usually taught to blame
the US
for these problems, rather than to examine how their need for oil and
fossil
fuels and their consumer lifestyles play an important role in the
perpetuation
of US hegemony in the world. From a Buddhist perspective, Burma is
probably the
best example of this complicity and lack of meaningful Buddhist social
analysis
in Japan. Myanmar, a fellow predominantly Buddhist country, has been
under a
crushing military dictatorship for over forty years. Yet Buddhist
organizations
in Japan have made no systematic effort to educate the public on this
issue and
to lead a conclusive campaign against the Japanese business activities
and
Japanese foreign aid which props up that government. While certain
Buddhist
magazines advertise Burmese teak for sale to use in rebuilding Buddhist
temples, the Christian West continues to be the leader in the aid and
trade
boycotts of the Burmese military junta. It should be noted that
Buddhists in
South and Southeast Asia have also not been able to change their
government’s
stance on Burma. However, Japan is clearly different from them in the
level of
economic development and democratic accountability which is on par with
the
West.
Conclusion
It
is at this point that
I have come up with the difficult question of why Japanese Buddhists
have yet
to develop their own powerful ideological critique based in Buddhist
teachings which
is harmonized
with a type of social action that supports an authentic
civil society as an ethical public arena autonomous from state and
business
power. One might explain that since Japan did not experience
colonialization
from the West, it never had to seek and develop indigenous values, like
Buddhism, as part of an independence struggle. However, Thailand shares
this
same lack of colonial legacy, yet it has developed one of the richest
socially
engaged Buddhist visions as an alternative to the power of western
modernism.
Another explanation could be Buddhism’s perennial role in nation-making
ideology since its inception in Japan. As we saw in the section on
“relief”
activities, Japanese Buddhism has almost always been tied to the state.
In this
way, Buddhism’s intimate links with the Tokugawa Shogunate played a key
role in
its marginalization during the initial modernization boom of the Meiji
Era.
Prof. Jun Nishikawa of Waseda University offers the explanation that
both this
initial modernization boom and the one which followed the war (which
again
coincided with a reaction against traditional Buddhism as an accomplice
of oppressive
state power) marked a great diversification of people’s value systems
in Japan.
Because of this, Japan has developed a much more secular form of
modernization
with no state religion in comparison to the Buddhist societies of South
and
Southeast Asia (personal correspondence, February 20, 2004). The much
later
entry of these countries into the phase of high modernity has meant
that
Buddhism has survived more strongly as an indigenous ideology to serve
the use
of local reformers. It should also be noted that Japanese Buddhism's
highly
sectarian nature, even without the
advent of all the new Buddhist
schools, offers a much less unified ideological vision of society than
the much
more homogenous Theravadin tradition common to South and Southeast
Asia.
In
this way, Japanese
civil society has tended towards much more secular (humanism) and
materialistic
(socialism/communism) conceptions, highly influenced by the West. Thus,
Buddhism has more often than not been seen as an obstacle rather than
as a
resource. A particular anecdote from an old friend strikes me here. She
has
been active in NGO and civil society activities for many years as well
as being
a devout Buddhist, not surprisingly a Nichiren Buddhist. At one point,
she was
working for one of the better known, very progressive and very activist
Japanese NGOs which has done work on development and peace issues. This
group
like many of the strongest and most active Japanese NGOs has had a
mostly
Marxist basis to its ideology. Eventually, she found she could no
longer work
for them due to the sometimes outright distaste expressed for her
Buddhist
beliefs and practices, like saying a Buddhist grace to herself before
lunch.
Personally, while working for years in Thailand for a major Buddhist
NGO, I
often experienced a great friendliness from people when they found out
about my
work. On the other, I have experienced almost the opposite in Japan
where
people have often been suspicious that I am doing something with a cult
group,
even while representing a major Buddhist sect like Jodo-shu.
These general perceptions of Buddhism
and of the nature of modern Japanese society have had an important
retarding
effect on the development of a robust socially engaged Buddhism. The
overall
secularization and privatization of Buddhist practice in modern Japan
has also stunted
the development of initiatives by socially concerned priests who often
speak of
how difficult it is to persuade their lay followers about actions they
wish to
take for society. Furthermore, as secular culture, especially in
education, has
outpaced traditional Buddhist culture, priests are rarely looked upon
as
intellectual leaders in society. The adoption of a secular lifestyle by
Japanese priests, which is conspicuous to Japanese Buddhism, has also
robbed them
of the moral and ethical authority that a renunciate priest with a
certain
level of religious insight had in the past (Tomatsu, 1995). Buddhist
priests
and devout believers often still do engage in NGO and civil societies
activities, but usually remain “in the closet” about their
Buddhist-ness. This
has created the situation of a sort of underground engaged Buddhist
movement
where numerous individuals go about creating international and domestic
social
activities yet have very little knowledge or awareness of each other.
It was to
remedy this situation that the Buddhist NGO network was in part formed
in 2002.
Steps
Towards an Authentic Buddhist Civil Society Movement: The Development
of
Buddhist NGOs
In
this next section, I would like to give a brief overview of the
development of
Buddhist NGOs in Japan. I think such a task will illuminate the
struggle of
Japanese Buddhists to move beyond the somewhat narrow confines of
“relief” or
“evangelical” engaged Buddhism.
The
movement into a more
robust socially engaged Buddhism, as I have mentioned above, requires
the
dialectical tension of a critical ideology and a progressive social
action.
Concerning the development of a critical ideology, it is paramount that
Japanese Buddhists fully develop the universal ethical implications of
Buddhist
teachings, which doctrinally speak of alleviating the suffering of all
sentient
beings and historically opened up religious practice to women and
social
outcasts at the time of the Buddha. Unfortunately, as we have seen
above,
previous attempts at such universalization have stopped short at the
national
or sectarian level. This universal ethic is what is currently bonding
the
progressive globalization movement. Groups from all over the world have
found
this universal ethic in their own traditions and have endeavored to
synchronize
it with those of others.
The roots of such a true universal
ethic can be found in the development of some of the new Buddhist
schools. As
we have noted above, Soka Gakkai’s record on this issue is somewhat
unclear,
yet the international branches of Soka Gakkai International seem
genuinely
engaged in non-sectarian peace activities. Perhaps a more consistent
image is
portrayed by Rissho Koseikai. Under the leadership of its late
co-founder
Nikkyo Niwano, it has been deeply engaged in international ecumenical
peace
dialogue since the 1950s and has been a long-time integral player in
the World
Council for Religion and Peace (WCRP) headquartered at the United
Nations in
New York. In this way, the new Buddhist schools have been much more
proactive
in engaging in true international ecumenical activities, while the
traditional
sects have had to spend much more time confronting (or in some cases
ignoring)
their deeper complicity with the war as an initial step towards
developing a
genuine international ecumenical ethic.
With
this very basic
background in mind, the first emergence of Japanese Buddhist NGOs was
in the
early 1980s in response to the intensifying crisis in Indo-China with
the boat
people from Vietnam and the mass of Cambodian refuges living on the
border of
Thailand. These groups, like the Buddhist Aid Center (BAC) created in
1982 by
mostly priests from Nichiren-shu, was in part a response to criticism
in the
mainstream media that Buddhism had become irrelevant to modern society
and that
Buddhist priests had no concern for the general well-being of people.
Another
factor was the increasing international exposure that Japanese and
Japanese
priests were getting as the economy prospered. At the inaugural public
symposium of the new Buddhist NGO network in July of 2002, Rev.
Yoshimichi Ito
of BAC expressed the shock and embarrassment that many Japanese
Buddhists
experienced on their first visits to the Cambodian refugee camps.
First, they
found that almost all of the religious-based groups doing aid work were
Christian ones coming from the West. Secondly, they found Cambodian
monks
working with the barest of resources creating educational and others
sorts of
aid and development programs. Rev. Ito commented, "Here I was, a priest
of
the Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) tradition which emphasizes the selfless
path of
the bodhisattva, coming from Japan with nothing much to offer except a
suitcase
of money, and there I found monks of the Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle)
tradition,
who supposedly are only focused on personal enlightenment, working in
the
barest conditions using their heart to pass on whatever wisdom and
abilities
they could to the common people." These sorts of experiences spawned a
great movement of international relief activities by not only Buddhist
NGOs but
various official and unofficial organs of most Buddhist sects, both old
and
new.
It should be noted here that the term
“NGO” as it is adopted by Japanese civil society and these Buddhist
organizations has a specific meaning that differs from the common
conception.
The term “NGO” stands literally for “non-governmental organization”. In
this
way, it is very consciously a civil society organization which sees
itself as
certainly autonomous from state bodies as well as from business bodies
and as typically
concerned with some form of social welfare. Japanese NGOs would
definitely share
this social welfare concern. However, the sense of an NGO being part of
the
creation of civil society is somewhat of a stretch, because in the
Japanese
context, NGO refers specifically to a group engaged in “international
cooperation activities” (kokusai kyoryoku katsudo 国際協力活動)
(Shimizu 1999, p.699). While it could
certainly be seen that NGOs are part of the movement to create a global
civil
society, it is usually seen that a country must develop its own civil
society
movement before
it can fully engage in the international one.
This rather unique understanding of the NGO speaks to not only the
marginal
nature of Buddhist NGOs as actors in domestic Japanese civil society
but to the
struggle of Japanese society in general to develop a public sphere that
exists
autonomously from the state and corporate affiliations, which have been
so all
inclusive for so long.
In this regard, a second seminal moment
for both Japanese NGOs, and specifically Buddhist ones, was the great
Hanshin
Earthquake of 1995. The well-known paralysis of governmental bodies in
responding to this crisis led to a huge and spontaneous outpouring of
relief
work by common Japanese, including many of the “international
cooperation
activity” NGOs. For the first time in a long time, Buddhist priests and
organizations
had a deep experience of their old tradition as civil society actors by
taking
part in these efforts. This experience combined with the increase in
social
disease during the post-bubble depression has made Buddhist NGOs more
sensitive
to domestic issues as they continue their international work. An
example of
such an increasing domestic focus is the Buddhist NGO AYUS (Sanskrit
for
“life”) founded by a group of predominantly Jodo-shu and Jodoshin-shu
priests.
Unlike most other international cooperation NGOs which engage in direct
relief
activities in foreign countries, AYUS engages in the critical but
usually
neglected work of supporting the administrative capacities of NGOs
inside
Japan. Thus instead of retracing or repeating the work of other NGOs,
as many
groups do, they attempt to increase the integrative efficiency of the
NGO
movement but supporting its infrastructure.
An extension of the internal domestic
development of Japanese civil society and a third watershed in the
movement was
the 1998 Non-Profit Organization (NPO) Law, which amongst other things
enabled
NGOs to raise funds by appealing to the tax write-off afforded to
donors.
Anyone coming from the West where such a practice has become standard
would
have been shocked to see such a highly modernized society as Japan be
so late
in developing such a regulation. This is another indication of the slow
development of what would be considered a typical civil society
movement, at
least by western standards. In relation to the term NGO, NPO has
generally a
broader meaning encompassing both international and domestic
activities, but
with a certain stronger sense for the latter. One of the important
effects of
this law is that it has greatly opened up the funding possibilities of
Buddhist
NGOs. Whereas many of these NGOs have had some sort of affiliation or
connection with an official Buddhist denomination in order to maintain
basic
financial support, now they are less dependent on this sort of income.
Take,
for example, the Buddhist NGO now known as the Shanti Volunteer
Association
(SVA). It was established in 1980 by the Soto Zen sect as the Japan
Soto-shu
Relief Committee (JSRC) for the purpose of aiding Cambodian refugees.
As it
continued to develop, it took the name Soto-shu Volunteer Association
(SVA) and
became one of the largest NGOs in Cambodia. In 1999, when it got its
new legal
status as an NPO, it changed its name to the Shanti Volunteer
Association (SVA)
in part to clearly separate it from any religious or sectarian ties
which would
interfere with gaining either government financial aid or other such
non-affiliated financial support.
This development presents the
opportunity for the increased integration of Buddhist NGOs into the
general
civil society movement without the constraints of some of the more
conservative
influences of traditional Buddhist denominations. This integration has
great
potential to further universalize the ethical standpoint of their work.
However, it also carries with it the danger of a deeper dilution of the
already
thin Buddhist identity and ideology that these organizations carry. As
we have
seen, the majority of them are still focused on relief activities which
are
largely confined to the international sphere. For a robust socially
engaged
Buddhist movement to appear which has a progressive effect on the
development
of civil society within Japan,
Japanese Buddhist NGOs need to develop a
unique social critique based on Buddhist principles that socially
engaged
Buddhists in other countries have captured in addition to their growing
integration in both common Japanese civil society and international
civil
society. Although it is still early, the events of 9/11 and the war in
Iraq might
provide another watershed for Buddhist NGO development. There has been
a great
outpouring of peace rhetoric from all sorts of Buddhist groups since
9/11.
However, one senses that Buddhist organizations are not leading
Japanese
society but merely trying to catch up with the general, humanistic
peace
movement that remains strong in Japan. At the same time, it appears
that the
urgency to find some way to respond to this crisis is leading numerous
Buddhist
organizations into a much deeper examination of what peace means, and
in turn,
what are the truly vital aspects of the Buddhist tradition which can
offer some
response to the ideological quagmire of Islamic fundamentalism and
American
religio-nationalism. For the traditional Buddhist sects, this has also
coincided with an attempt to more fully and publicly confront their
complicity
during the Pacific War. This attempt at a deeper examination was
witnessed
recently at a meeting held on March 2, 2004 in Tokyo entitled “The
Pursuit of
Peace Now” [いま平和を求める]
composed of
religious groups which included numerous new and traditional Buddhist
groups
(of which Soka Gakkai was conspicuously absent). This is a positive
sign in
that such a deeper examination is a critical part of developing an
authentic
Buddhist ideological critique and standpoint towards society.
In
this last section, I will examine the challenges and potentials of the
growing
socially engaged Buddhist movement to develop its own Buddhist
ideological
critique and standpoint towards society. To begin, we can posit the
question
that if creating a civil society means developing civil virtues and a
culture
of ethical reciprocity, then what are the existing values and ethical
foundations of contemporary Japanese society? As we have noted, the
modern age
has brought in a wide variety of new viewpoints and values such as
humanism,
socialism/communism, consumerism and so forth. The problem, however,
seems to
be that Japanese society is currently adrift in its value systems,
unclear on
whether to follow the US model of total economic globalization or to
pursue an
alternative path which has yet to be articulated. Meanwhile, its young
generation floats along without direction, seeing little hope in the
job-house-family dream.
Norwegian
sociologist
and peace activist Johan Galtung is one of the few thinkers outside of
religious circles who has taken seriously the need for religion as a
formative
part of rebuilding healthy societies. Galtung has written of the twin
factors
of destructuration and deculturation in the deterioration of life in
regions
strongly affected by economic globalization. In terms of deculturation,
he
speaks of the failures of modern secularism in providing a normative
moral culture
for post-modern society.
Secularism,
in the shape
of humanist ethics, has not been capable of producing binding norms for
human
behavior. Why shall you not commit adultery, kill, steal and lie
when
other humans are mere objects and there is no accountability to higher
forces
as there is no transcendent God anyhow? The final result is the total anomie
of Formation
IV [post-modern society], with human beings left with the only
normative
guidance that always survives: egocentric cost-benefit analysis. The
point is
not normlessness, the point is that they are not binding; that is the
meaning
of culturelessness. (GALTUNG 1995, p.14)
It
is difficult to say that Japanese society has much mooring in Buddhist
ethical
standards. The long historical influence of the Pure Land movement’s
emphasis
away from maintaining the traditional Buddhist ethical norms helped to
develop
the secularized modern priest (Tomatsu, 1995). The continued
anti-clerical
trend in Japanese Buddhism, as witnessed by the new Buddhist groups
complete
abandonment of a monastic order, has meant that faithand
ritual are the predominant features of Japanese Buddhist religiosity,
with a
subsequent de-emphasis on ethical and meditative/practice oriented
religiosity.
It is perhaps this emphasis that allowed Japanese Buddhist priests,
most
ironically characterized in the great Zen meditation teachers, to
propound an
ethic of holy war and spiritually sanctified murder during the war.
This
does not mean of
course that Japan is not an ethical society. Rather, it is my
contention that
Buddhism does not serve Japanese culture as an ethical discipline.
Regarding
the deep respect for authority and the emphasis on reciprocal family
relations
and hierarchical group relations, it seems to me that Confucianism and
the
indigenous communal values associated with Shinto provide that ethical
discipline for Japanese society. Rather than considering the potential
shortcomings
of these systems, I think it would be better to emphasize the enhanced
ethical
potential of Japanese society if it also had a stronger Buddhist ethic.
Galtung's method for promoting culturation is to promote the softer,
unifying
aspects of religion while demoting the harder, intolerant aspects of
religion.
In this way, the first and foremost ethical principal of Buddhism,
non-harming
(ahimsa),
certainly would be a civic virtue that could compliment the already
existing
peace movement in Japan. This would also serve as a universalizing
ethic to
counter balance the tendency towards nationalistic and chauvinistic
articulations of a civil society conflated with state hegemony.
In
this vein, it would
be good to look briefly at three individuals of the present socially
engaged
Buddhist movement, important for their ideological contributions: the
late Rev.
Jitsujo Arima of the Soto Zen sect, Rev. Teruo Maruyama of the Nichiren
sect,
and Prof. Jun Nishikawa of the Department of Economics at Waseda
University.
Jitsujo
Arima was one of
the founders SVA. His work for society actually began years earlier in
his home
temple, where he created special memorial services for the neglected
ashes of
forced Korean immigrants from the war period. He then extended himself
by beginning
some social activities within Soto-shu, which culminated in Soto-shu’s
aforementioned creation of the Japan Soto-shu Relief Committee (JSRC)
for
aiding Cambodian refugees. What is significant about Arima and SVA is
that
after Soto-shu stopped officially supporting this work, they continued
on with
it. Therefore, unlike evangelical activities, this work was clearly
more
focused on serving wider society than on the advancement of the Soto
Zen name
and its organization (Arima, 1993). In this way, Arima had an unusually
high
level of respect from the larger secular NGO community. While many
socially
minded Buddhists in Japan do not integrally use Buddhist ideas in
understanding
society and their own work, Arima’s social ethic sprang from a deep and
sophisticated understanding of Buddhism. For example, he drew on the
teaching
of the four brahmaviharas (shishobo四摂法),
central to both to Theravada and Mahayana
Buddhism, as a basis for social action. He felt if a person develops
friendliness (metta, the
first of the four), and meets people who are
suffering (dukkha),
then it is natural for the second, compassion
(karuna),
to emerge. From this basis, the third, sympathetic joy (mudita)
that is
without jealousy, also arises when encountering those not in suffering.
Finally, it is the basis of these three which compels one to one engage
for the
benefit of others while shedding the egoistic concerns of building or
preserving one’s own organization. Such truly selfless activity creates
a deep
experience of equanimity (upekkha),
which is the last of
the four (Arima, 1993). Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned
secular nature
of Japanese society, Arima only really spoke on this level in largely
scattered, unpublished writings and in conversations with interested
individuals. Therefore, although Arima remains an important influence
to a
small group of ideologically minded socially engaged Buddhists, neither
he nor
SVA ever articulated a powerful social critique of Japanese society. In
the NGO
world, SVA has been considered quite conservative; for example, it did
not join
many other progressive NGOs who criticized the problematic
implementation of
the UN peace-keeping force in Cambodia, called UNTAC, after the end of
the war
there. This conservative character appears to be less likely to change
now with
SVA’s new funding ties to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外務省 gaimusho) and also
Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (郵政省 yuseisho).
In
contrast, Rev. Teruo
Maruyama has always been a very outspoken critic of Buddhism’s role in
society
and Japanese political culture. Maruyama was born into a mainstream
Nichiren-shu
temple located at the foot of the sect’s holy mountain, Mt. Minobu.
However,
the traumas of the war, the early death of his mother, and the
ideological
flip-flopping of Japanese Buddhism from war supporter to progressive
peace
supporter and back to supporter of conservative power, made him
distrustful of
the world and pushed him to seek his own understanding of it. By the
early
1950s, he had joined the Communist Party of Japan and became an
important
regional leader whilst still a student at Rissho University. These
activities
naturally ran him afoul of his university, his denomination, and his
family.
However, this period created the basis for creating his livelihood
outside the
temple – an experience which he thinks is essential for the
conscientization
of Buddhist priests and the reform of Funeral Buddhism in Japan. After
working
on reforming Nichiren-shu in the 1960s, Maruyama began to work more
actively on
social issues in the 1970s, such as the campaign to stop the
construction of
Narita airport in the rural farming areas of Chiba. In the late 1980s,
he
joined Sulak Sivaraksa in creating the International Network of Engaged
Buddhists (INEB). From his long life as a social critic and iconoclast
–
he has always been “the nail that sticks out” while refusing to be
hammered
back – it is natural to see that Maruyama feels that, “Original
Buddhism
in my view is conscientization.” (Maruyama, 1998, p.50) For Maruyama,
this is
conscientization to suffering, to one’s historical roots, and to the
present social
structure. He feels from this first step of conscientization, each
individual
can find their own way of working for the betterment of society. Rather
than
establishing a single blueprint for social action or a single social
ideology,
Maruyama feels it is important for each individual to come to their own
understanding in order to be able to change their own lifestyle and
engage in
social action on a highly conscious level. When each individual is
empowered
from having created their own standpoint, then it is more possible to
create a
harmonious, just society. This “process philosophy” of Maruyama’s comes
from
his understanding that Buddhism does not really teach a single truth or
have a
single essence. Rather, Buddhism offers a way for
deeply seeing into
the process or methodology of any phenomenon. When we can understand
the
process of any phenomenon, then we can act in proper accordance with it
rather
than imposing our own preconceptions on it (Maruyama, 1998). While
Maruyama has
at times been an important ideological leader, his often extreme
positions have
isolated himself and his small circle of associates in the Japan branch
of
INEB. In this way, INEB Japan has not developed a progressive social
action
movement – the essential compliment to an ideological critique - and at
present does not function organizationally.
Prof.
Nishikawa offers us a different figure in that he comes from outside
the
Buddhist community and shows its growing interconnection with the
larger civil
society movement. Prof. Nishikawa is one of the most prominent
development
economists in Japan who in recent years has become more and more
interested in
various models of alternative development. He has translated both of
David
Korten's books (When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World) into Japanese and has hosted a an ongoing
series of international conferences with academics and civil society
leaders
from all over Asia, the most recent one held last November on the theme
“Civil
Society In Asia: Toward New State Governance of The Post−Developmentalist
Era”. In 1994 and 1995, he
organized his graduate seminar in economics on the theme of development
monks
in Thailand. Together with one of his students, Rev. Noda Masato – a
Tendai-shu priest and prominent Buddhist NGO activist and academic, he
edited a
comprehensive book on Buddhist-style alternative development in
Thailand based
on this research (Nishikawa & Noda, 2001). In the opening chapter
of the
book, Prof. Nishikawa introduces and elaborates on the Thai scholar
monk Ven. P.A.
Payutto's distinction between development as a solely material process (patana) and development as a deeper holistic spiritual
process (bavana).
The common
term for economic development in Japan is kai-hatsu 開発
(kai=to open, begin; hatsu=to
emit, arise, awaken). Prof. Nishikawa and
his colleagues have re-read the two Chinese characters for this word in
the
traditional Buddhist way as kai-hotsu. In Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, this
character for hatsu/hotsu is
used in
terms which refer to the resolve to attain enlightenment and develop bodhi-citta (hotsu-bodaishin)
or to the vow to follow the Buddha's way (hotsu-gan). This play on words is significant in that it
presents a way to develop a new kind of language to express a different
orientation
towards development. At the same time, it does not present a new kind
of jargon
(which ancient Buddhist terms may seem like) which is opaque to
economists,
secular activists and other groups involved in social change. In
elaborating
this concept, Prof. Nishikawa has focused on how certain key Buddhist
concepts
like "the middle way" and "interdependence" can help Asia,
with its significant Buddhist population, to develop its own unique
understanding of civil society and the civil virtues on which it is
based.
We
have noted
how Japanese NGOs have become increasingly focused on domestic affairs
amidst
the conditions of economic and social downturn in Japan. In this way,
more and
more NGOs, schools, and other institutions have extended their
international
relief activities to include "work camps" in which Japanese do not
merely go to these poorer countries to "help" these people. Rather,
they
go to engage in activities and gain from the emotional and spiritual
resources
that are so lacking in Japan and other parts of the developed world.
This
change in orientation of not only Buddhist groups, but other Japanese
groups
involved in international activities, marks an important sea-change in
both the
development movement and the civil society movement. When kaihatsu begins to shift to kaihotsu, activities change from the one way movement of
economic resources from North to South to a two way interchange of
material and
spiritual resources. This is the foundation for a rich civil society
movement
which creates a network of solidarity among different countries.
To
conclude, I would like to offer a brief outline of the successes and
challenges
of the Japanese Buddhist civil society movement, what I would call an
authentic
socially engaged Buddhism. In doing so, I would again like to draw on
an
articulation that comes from outside of Japan, from the Thai
development monk Phra
Phaisan Visalo. Phra Phaisan is the leading development monk in
Thailand today
because of the incredible range of his talents and activities. Still in
his
forties, he has been a monk for over twenty-years. However, before
ordaining,
he was a student activist and an NGO worker so that his awareness and
knowledge
of social issues is especially sophisticated for a monk. He was
ordained and
trained under a famous meditation master, so that his spiritual and
moral qualities
are highly respected among Thais. Since his ordination, he has been a
leading
figure in numerous social activist projects ranging from community
development
to environmental protection to non-violence training. Finally, he has
written a
number of important articles and books on the problems with the present
Thai
monastic system and the role of religion in civil society. Along with
Prof.
Nishikawa, he was the keynote speaker at the Buddhist NGO Network’s
inaugural
meeting in July of 2002. In his talk, he outlined four areas where he
felt
Japanese Buddhist activists and NGOs can deepen their cooperation in
the
development of a more empowered civil society. These areas include: 1)
humanitarian relief; 2) peace activities; 3) a structural critique of
present
social and political systems; and 4) the “development” of inner peace
and
spiritual well-being. I think these four areas offer us a good
framework for
making a final evaluation of the socially engaged Buddhist movement in
Japan.
*
humanitarian relief – As we
have
seen, this is a particular strength of Japanese Buddhist organizations.
In the
last twenty years, they have certainly diverted large amounts of
capital from
Japan to the developing world in all sorts of humanitarian aid and
relief. Of
course, some of this aid has not been wisely spent. However, Buddhist
NGOs have
been very conscious in confronting the whole issue of aid and
attempting to
develop alternative means of support, such as right livelihood
initiatives like
supporting vocational training in traditional handicrafts.
*
peace activities – This has also
been a perennial theme of emphasis among Buddhist organization.
However, as I
have noted, there needs to be more substance to the rhetoric of peace
which is
so pervasively spoken of among Buddhist groups. The dedicated work of
the small
group of monks and nuns from the Nipponzam Myohoji stands out in this
respect.
They have put their bodies and lives on the line all over Japan and the
world
in their peace marches and peace witnesses in places like El Salvador,
Cambodia, Sri Lanka and the Middle East. Phra Phaisan felt activities
such becoming
peace workers, witnesses and activists in various parts of the world
could be an
important contribution for Japanese Buddhists.
*
a structural critique of present social
and political systems – As noted, this has been a weak point for
Japanese
Buddhists, who mostly adopt the secular critiques developed by other
civil
society groups. As we saw with Prof. Nishikawa, it has taken a
non-Buddhist
academic to import from another country a Buddhist critique of economic
development and introduce it to Japanese Buddhists. One of the
essential
aspects of this critique, as Phra Phaisan notes, includes developing
new values
and new paradigms for society. This, I would submit, means
reinvigorating
Japanese Buddhist ethical values to speak to modern issues and to
provide a set
of universal norms, as Galtung emphasized, to ground and hold Japanese
society
together. The basis of this reinvigoration of Buddhist ethical values
must
start in the reform of Funeral Buddhism and enlarging Buddhist practice
beyond
just rituals.
*
the “development” of inner peace and
spiritual well-being – This work comes as an extension to that of
reinvigorating ethical norms, and for Phra Phaisan, meant creating a
new
consciousness that goes beyond consumerism. From a Buddhist standpoint,
to
properly critique the ethical nature of a society requires more than
intellectual analysis, but also a psychological and emotional grounding
that a
spiritual discipline offers. This area is perhaps the most unique and
most
essential contribution that Buddhism can offer the civil society
movement.
However, it is also the area at which Japanese Buddhism is presently
the weakest,
as years of secular and material influences have greatly deteriorated
the
spiritual discipline of most Buddhist organizations. Participants in a
civil
society movement who practice a spiritual discipline have at their
disposal
psychological, intellectual and emotional tools that secular humanism
cannot
offer; for example, the power of a meditative practice which helps to
integrate
the emotional content of social work, to disengage from divisive and
harmful
viewpoints and behaviors, and to provide spiritual refreshment from the
long,
arduous social work that often culminates in burn out.
presented at The 19th World Congress of the International Association
for the History of Religions (IAHR), March 29, 2005, Tokyo, Japan.
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[1]
Such communities
especially refer to the great world religions of the axial age, such as
the
Abrahamic faiths, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, all of which sought to ethicize and universalize
pre-existing tribal religions that were based on ritualism and divinely
sanctioned class roles.