Editing Senoo Giro (section)

== Ideas ==

Seno'o's mature thought, elaborated most fully in 『社会変革途上の新興仏教』 [Revitalized Buddhism on the Road to Social Reform] (1932) and defended across numerous essays, represents one of the most sustained attempts by a modern Buddhist thinker to argue that Buddhism and Marxism are not merely compatible but mutually necessary.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2012). "A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism of Seno'o Girō (1889–1961) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism". ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies'' 39.2: 333–351, pp. 340–341.</ref> Against Marxist critics who dismissed religion outright as an opiate of the people, Seno'o insisted that Buddhism, properly understood, was already atheistic, materialist, and this-worldly, and that it supplied precisely the humanist dimension that a narrowly economistic Marxism lacked.<ref>Shields (2012), "A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution", pp. 341–344.</ref> He argued that Śākyamuni Buddha had never taught belief in a creator god or in an eternal soul, and that popular reliance on Amida, Dainichi, or other transcendent buddhas was itself an "opiate" no different from theistic religion, to be dissolved through a revitalized reading of the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination.<ref>Shields (2012), "A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution", pp. 343–345.</ref>

Central to this project was Seno'o's reinterpretation of the Three Jewels or Refuges (''sankiei'', 三帰依): the Buddha came to represent the manifest ideal of humanity embodied by the historical Śākyamuni rather than any transcendent buddha-figure; the Dharma was redefined as the law of selfless love (''muga-ai'', 無我愛) or "no-self-ism" (''mugaizumu'', 無我イズム), extending the traditional doctrine of no-self into an ethic of active, other-directed compassion; and the Sangha, traditionally the monastic community, was reimagined as a future "communal society" (''kyōdō shakai'', 共同社会) free of exploitation, loosely modeled on the economic arrangements of the early Buddhist monastic order.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', pp. 217–219.</ref> Buddhist "liberation" (''kaihō'', 解放)—a term Seno'o pointedly borrowed from the vocabulary of contemporary social movements, including the language of women's liberation and, later, liberation theology—thus became inseparable from concrete economic and political emancipation.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', p. 223.</ref>

Seno'o was equally insistent that Buddhism went further than orthodox Marxism in diagnosing the ultimate source of suffering, which he located in the individual's selfish ego and its craving for wealth and power rather than in economic structure alone; he accordingly resisted mechanistic or purely economistic readings of historical materialism, aligning himself with more humanistic currents within Japanese Marxism.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', pp. 219–220; Shields (2012), "A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution", pp. 340–341.</ref> He forcefully criticized the traditional Buddhist use of karma and rebirth doctrine to explain away poverty and social inequality, and rejected the classical Mahāyāna formula "differentiation is equality" (''sabetsu soku byōdō'', 差別即平等) as an abstract metaphysical harmony that obscured real, remediable injustice—an early anticipation of the critique of "topicalism" and ''hongaku'' (本覚, "original enlightenment") thought later developed by the Critical Buddhist (''Hihan Bukkyō'', 批判仏教) movement.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', p. 219; Shields (2012), "A Blueprint for Buddhist Revolution", p. 341.</ref> Complementing this critique was his concept of ''hansei'' (反省, self-reflective critique), which he applied not only to individuals but to the nation-state itself, reinterpreting Nichiren's ''Risshō Ankokuron'' (立正安国論) as a demand that rulers examine their own conduct as the root cause of social calamity, rather than as license for nationalist self-assertion.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', pp. 224, 228, 232–233.</ref> Scholars have noted a close structural parallel between Seno'o's "social Buddhism" (''shakaiteki Bukkyō'', 社会的仏教) and the contemporaneous "social Christianity" (''shakaiteki Kirisutokyō'', 社会的基督教) of the sociologist and Congregationalist theologian Nakajima Shigeru (中島重), both of whom criticized the individualism and institutional passivity of mainstream religion, and both of whom cast their respective this-worldly utopias—the "Buddha Land" and the "Kingdom of God"—as cooperative societies to be built through direct social and political engagement.<ref>Ōtani Eiichi (大谷栄一) (2009). 「中島重の社会的基督教と妹尾義郎の社会的仏教」 [Nakajima Shigeru's Social Christianity and Seno'o Girō's Social Buddhism]. 『宗教研究』 82.4: 963–965.</ref>

Seno'o's ethics of engaged compassion also entailed a distinctive reading of the East Asian formula ''issetsu tashō'' (一殺多生, "kill one to save the many"): where contemporaries such as the ultranationalist priest Inoue Nisshō (井上日召) read the phrase literally, as sanction for political assassination, Seno'o consistently read it metaphorically, as a call to overcome one's own weakness and selfishness in the service of society—an interpretation that did not prevent the phrase from being cited as evidence of "terrorism" at his 1936–1937 trial.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', pp. 235–236.</ref> His internationalism, sharpened by his response to the anti-Korean violence following the 1923 earthquake, led him to oppose Japanese militarism, the annexation of Manchuria, and discrimination against Koreans and ''burakumin'' (部落民), and to seek—ultimately without success—a chanted formula ("Namu Shakamuni ya") and institutional framework capable of uniting all Buddhist sects under a single, ecumenical, Śākyamuni-centered faith.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', p. 218; Lai, Whalen (1984). "Seno'o Girō and the Dilemma of Modern Buddhism: Leftist Prophet of the Lotus Sutra". ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies'' 11.1: 7–42, pp. 33–35.</ref>

=== The Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism ===
{{Main|Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism}}

Seno'o's ideas found their fullest institutional expression in the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), which he founded in April 1931 and led until his arrest in December 1936. The League translated Seno'o's synthesis of Buddhism and Marxism into a nationwide organization with its own press, annual conferences, and program of anti-capitalist, anti-militarist, and pan-sectarian reform, and it became one of the principal Buddhist participants in the mid-1930s popular front movement against fascism. Its suppression in 1937, following Seno'o's forced political recantation, effectively ended organized "Buddhist socialism" as a mass movement in prewar Japan.