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Shields, James Mark
2019.
The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy.
Vol. 8,
Issue. ,
p.
255.
Article contents
Buddhism, Socialism, and Protest in Prewar Japan: The Career of Seno'o Girō
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
The interplay of religion and political protest is a familiar theme in Western studies of Japanese Christians who contributed significantly to the socialist movement in their country from the late Meiji period to World War II. Less well known is the fact that a minority of Japanese Buddhists likewise applied the ideals of their faith to political dissent in the movement. Their defiance of the State and the predominantly conservative Buddhist sects which generally supported Emperor, nation, and Empire in Asia constitutes in effect a modern Japanese Buddhist tradition of protest comparable in kind if not in scale to that found in Japanese Christianity. The purpose of the article in hand is to explore this tradition through a study of the Nichiren priest and Buddhist socialist, Seno'o Girō (1889–1961) whose career provides a striking illustration of the Buddhist dimensions of socialism in prewar Japan.
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References
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