Editing Meiji Buddhist Modernism (section)

== From Buddhist Modernism to Radical Buddhism ==

Meiji Buddhist modernism did not constitute a single movement, nor did it lead inevitably toward progressive or radical politics. Its significance lay instead in the range of possibilities it opened for reconstructing Buddhism under modern conditions. Inoue Enryō helped establish the legitimacy of criticizing inherited beliefs in the name of reason and modern knowledge; Murakami Senshō subjected Buddhist scripture and doctrine to historical criticism; Kiyozawa Manshi relocated religious authority toward the experience of the individual practitioner; and the New Buddhist Fellowship challenged sectarian privilege while insisting upon free inquiry, this-worldly ethical practice, and the social significance of religion. Tanaka Chigaku's Nichirenism demonstrates the political indeterminacy of these developments: anti-clericalism, lay activism, and an insistence upon Buddhism's relevance to contemporary life could be joined to nationalism and imperial ideology just as they could support criticism of established social and political authority.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2012), “Awakening between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations on Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945,” in Roy Starrs, ed., ''Rethinking Japanese Modernism'' (Brill/Global Oriental), 105–24; Shields, James Mark (2017), ''Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan'' (Oxford University Press); Ōtani Eiichi 大谷栄一 (2001), ''Kindai Nihon no Nichirenshugi undō'' 近代日本の日蓮主義運動 [The Nichirenist Movement in Modern Japan] (Kyoto: Hōzōkan).</ref>

Radical Buddhism emerged when some Buddhists carried these modernist critiques beyond the reconstruction of Buddhist belief and practice toward a critique of the structures of society itself. The crucial shift was not simply from “traditional” to “modern” Buddhism, or even from other-worldliness to ''genseshugi'' 現世主義 (this-worldliness), but toward the claim that suffering could be produced and reproduced through social, economic, and political institutions. Once that possibility was admitted, Buddhist practice could encompass not only individual ethical or spiritual transformation but also resistance to poverty, inequality, war, imperialism, and other forms of structural domination. Figures such as Takagi Kenmyō 高木顕明 and Uchiyama Gudō 内山愚童 began making this move during the late Meiji period, while Seno'o Girō 妹尾義郎 and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟) would develop it much more systematically in the 1930s. Radical Buddhism thus emerged not through the rejection of Buddhist modernism but through the politicization of possibilities that Buddhist modernism had helped to create.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2014), “Zen and the Art of Treason: Radical Buddhism in Meiji Era (1868–1912) Japan,” ''Politics, Religion & Ideology'' 15, no. 2: 205–23; Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony''; Seno'o Girō 妹尾義郎, “Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei sengen” 新興仏教青年同盟宣言 [Declaration of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism] (1931).</ref>