Editing Uchiyama Gudo (section)

== Biography ==

Uchiyama Gudō was born Uchiyama Keikichi on May 17, 1874, in the village of Ojiya, Niigata Prefecture, the eldest of four children of Naokichi, a carpenter who built shrines and later carved wooden molds for confectionery, and who trained his son in the family craft of carving Buddhist images and altar fittings.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2017). ''Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan''. Oxford University Press, p. 154.</ref><ref>Rambelli, Fabio (2013). ''Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō''. Institute of Buddhist Studies & BDK America, p. 3.</ref><ref>Sanada Yoshiaki 眞田芳憲 (2016). 「大逆事件と禅僧内山愚童の「仏教社会主義」とその行動の軌跡――禅僧愚童の抵抗の宗教的倫理と責任――」, ''Chūō Gakujutsu Kenkyūjo kiyō'' 中央学術研究所紀要 45: 22–23.</ref> An able student, he received a commendation from the prefectural governor on completing elementary school in 1885 and lost his father at sixteen, in 1890. He left Ojiya around 1893 and spent roughly four years traveling before his ordination. According to Uchiyama's younger brother, he spent part of this period in the household of the Buddhist reformer Inoue Enryō 井上円了 (1858–1919), who may have been a distant relative of Uchiyama's mother, and studied at Inoue's Philosophy Academy. No independent documentary evidence confirming this account has been located.<ref>Yoshida Kyūichi 吉田久一 (1987). 「明治後期の社会思想と哲学館」, ''Inoue Enryō kenkyū'' 井上円了研究 5: 41–61; compare Sanada (2016), 22.</ref>

In early 1897 Uchiyama visited a relative of his mother, the priest Aoyanagi Kendō, at Seigen'in in Kanagawa Prefecture. Kendō placed him with his disciple Sakazume Kōjū, abbot of Hōzōji, under whom Uchiyama was ordained a Sōtō Zen monk on April 12, 1897.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 3; Sanada (2016), 23–24.</ref> That October he entered further training at the certified monastic hall of Kaizōji under the Zen master Satō Jitsuei, interrupting this for roughly six months of coursework at the Sōtō sect's Second Middle School. He formally qualified to serve as a temple priest in 1900 and on October 10, 1901, became the Dharma heir of Miyagi Jitsumyō 宮城実苗, abbot of Rinsenji 林泉寺, a small temple in the Ōhiradai district near Hakone. The following year he received ''zuise'' 瑞世 at Eiheiji and took the religious name Gudō. After nursing Miyagi and managing the temple during his master's final years, Uchiyama succeeded him following Miyagi's death in April 1903 and was formally installed as abbot on February 9, 1904.<ref>Sanada (2016), 23–24; Victoria, ''Zen at War'', ch. 3.</ref>

Rinsenji's roughly forty parishioner households consisted largely of poor tenant farmers and lacquerware artisans working marginal mountain land in a district that also attracted wealthy vacationers from Tokyo. Uchiyama, who grew vegetables and lived modestly himself, was strongly affected by the disparity.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 3.</ref> He ran informal evening classes for local children and organized local youths into a “youth association” (''seinen kumiai'' 青年組合) whose activities included communal reading of the socialist ''Heimin Shinbun'' 平民新聞 and related pamphlets.<ref>Sanada (2016), 25, 39–40.</ref> In a letter published in the newspaper on January 17, 1904, Uchiyama explained that Buddhist teachings on universal buddha-nature and equality within the Dharma had led him to socialism; see [[UG04HSL-T|the full text and translation]] and [[#Ideas|Ideas]], below.

The Christian socialist and later anarchist Ishikawa Sanshirō 石川三四郎 (1876–1956) visited Rinsenji in September 1904 and addressed local villagers on cooperative economics and socialism at Uchiyama's invitation. Ishikawa returned in May 1906 during a religious crisis associated with his involvement in the Yanaka Village anti-pollution struggle and, at Uchiyama's suggestion, undertook six days of zazen at Rinsenji. Ishikawa later credited this experience, together with Uchiyama's discussion of Chan verses associated with Shenxiu and Huineng, as formative for his later concept of the “numinous light of the void” (''kyomu no reikō'' 虚無の霊光).<ref>Motegi Keita 茂木恵太 (2016). 「石川三四郎の思想形成と仏教――内山愚童との関係を契機として――」, ''Shagakuken ronshū'' 社学研論集 27: 54–61.</ref>

During these same years Uchiyama's dissatisfaction with established Buddhism deepened without immediately displacing his Buddhist vocation. In a 1905 letter to Itō Shōshin 伊藤証信, founder of the Selfless Love movement, he denounced teachings issuing from the Sōtō head temple as “false Dharma” (''gihō'' 偽法), yet insisted that he would remain at Rinsenji in order to “plant the Buddha-seed” among parishioners who knew little even of Dōgen.<ref>Kashiwagi Ryūhō 柏木隆法, ''Taigyaku jiken to Uchiyama Gudō'' 大逆事件と内山愚童 (Tokyo: JCA Shuppan, 1979), 230.</ref> A memorandum of February 1, 1906 similarly sought to transform relations between Rinsenji and its parish households from a largely customary exchange of financial support and ritual services into a genuine community of Buddhist teaching and practice.<ref>Kashiwagi, ''Taigyaku jiken to Uchiyama Gudō'', 226–27.</ref>

Uchiyama's political position became markedly more radical during 1907–08. In a postcard to Ishikawa Sanshirō on December 6, 1907, he imagined a future in which people would live according to their own “absolute faith” (''zettai no shinkō'' 絶対の信仰) without the need for politics, and described hastening the arrival of such a world as his own mission.<ref>Kashiwagi, ''Taigyaku jiken to Uchiyama Gudō'', 236–37; Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 15–16.</ref> Less than a month later, however, he told Itō Shōshin that his thinking had changed. Dissatisfied with Tolstoyan individualism and with religionists who claimed to side with the weak, Uchiyama contemplated whether the weapon required to create a society without superiors and inferiors should be “a bomb or a pistol,” and declared that “the hand that fingers the prayer beads must always carry a bomb as well.” See [[UG08ISH-T|the full postcard and translation]].

The Red Flag Incident (''Akahata Jiken'' 赤旗事件) of June 1908, in which socialist and anarchist demonstrators in Tokyo displayed banners proclaiming “anarchy,” “anarchist communism,” and “revolution,” provided the immediate context for Uchiyama's principal political pamphlet, ''Museifu Kyōsan Kakumei'' 無政府共産革命 (Anarchist Communist Revolution). Using a small press concealed at Rinsenji, Uchiyama clandestinely printed the pamphlet and other anarchist materials, including Japanese translations of Western texts. Between one and two thousand copies of ''Museifu Kyōsan Kakumei'' were reportedly produced and distributed, including to former subscribers of the ''Heimin Shinbun''.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 4, 7–8; Shields, ''Against Harmony'', 156–60.</ref>

In January 1909 Uchiyama left Rinsenji for an extended tour of impoverished communities elsewhere in Kanagawa Prefecture. During a visit to Kōtoku Shūsui 幸徳秋水 in Yokohama, in the presence of Sakamoto Seima and Kamikawa Matsu, he reportedly remarked that assassinating the crown prince rather than the emperor would be easier and more shocking; a similar remark was later reported from Osaka. These statements would subsequently be used as evidence against him.<ref>Sanada (2016), 56–57.</ref> They are consistent with Uchiyama's documented willingness by this period to contemplate revolutionary violence, but do not by themselves establish participation in a specific assassination conspiracy.

Uchiyama was arrested at Kōzu Station on May 24, 1909, for violations of the press laws. A subsequent search of Rinsenji uncovered his clandestine press and dynamite. Later accounts have variously explained the explosives as material associated with nearby construction work rather than with an assassination plan, but the documentary basis for that explanation is uncertain.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 4 n. 11; compare Victoria, ''Zen at War'', ch. 3, and Brons, ''A Buddha Land'', 79.</ref> Independently of the provenance of the dynamite, Uchiyama had by this time openly advocated the possibility of revolutionary violence and associated with anarchists who discussed direct action. On July 6, 1909, the Sōtō sect ordered him to resign as abbot of Rinsenji. He was convicted on publication and explosives charges on November 5 and initially sentenced to a combined twelve years' imprisonment; following appeal, the total sentence was reduced to seven years. On June 21, 1910, the Sōtō sect formally stripped him of his priestly status.<ref>Victoria, ''Zen at War'', ch. 3; Brons, ''A Buddha Land'', 80.</ref> While Uchiyama was already imprisoned, police investigations uncovered a small group centered on Miyashita Takichi 宮下太吉 (1875–1911) that had discussed and taken preliminary steps toward assassinating Emperor Meiji. The authorities expanded the investigation into a much broader alleged conspiracy involving socialists and anarchists across Japan. Among those arrested were two other Buddhist priests, Takagi Kenmyō 高木顕明 of the Shin Ōtani school and Mineo Setsudō 峰尾節堂 of the Rinzai school.<ref>Sanada (2016), 4, 12–17.</ref> Uchiyama's earlier advocacy of revolutionary violence, remarks about assassination, anarchist associations, and ''Museifu Kyōsan Kakumei'' made him particularly vulnerable to prosecution. The surviving evidence, however, does not establish that he participated in Miyashita's specific assassination plan.

Uchiyama and twenty-three other defendants were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death on January 18, 1911.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 5; Brons, ''A Buddha Land'', 79–80.</ref> Twelve of the sentences—including those of Takagi and Mineo—were commuted to life imprisonment the following day; Uchiyama's was not. He was hanged at Ichigaya Prison on January 24 together with ten other defendants; Kanno Sugako 管野スガ was executed the following day.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 5.</ref> Accounts of Uchiyama's final moments differ in detail, but several describe him as notably composed. Ishikawa Sanshirō later portrayed him as ascending the scaffold serenely, while another account records Uchiyama declining a rosary offered by the prison chaplain and joking that he was “the kind who won't be saved anyway.”<ref>Sanada (2016), 40–41; compare Victoria, ''Zen at War'', ch. 3.</ref>

The Sōtō sect formally rehabilitated Uchiyama on April 13, 1993, rescinding its earlier disciplinary action and acknowledging the sect's own accommodation with the imperial state in its treatment of him.<ref>Rambelli, ''Zen Anarchism'', 5; Victoria, ''Zen at War'', ch. 3.</ref> In 2005 a memorial stele was erected at Rinsenji bearing a passage from ''Heibon no jikaku'' 平凡の自覚, and another memorial was dedicated in his native Ojiya in 2013.<ref>Sanada (2016), 42–43.</ref>