Editing Japan (section)

=== Uchiyama Gudō ===
{{Main|Uchiyama Gudo}}

Uchiyama Gudō 内山愚童 (1874–1911), a Sōtō Zen priest and abbot of Rinsenji 林泉寺 near Hakone, developed one of the most explicitly anarchist forms of radical Buddhism in Meiji Japan. Explaining his embrace of socialism, Uchiyama recalled that as a Buddhist missionary he taught that all beings possess buddha-nature, that within the Dharma there is equality without high or low, and that all beings are children of the Buddha; he came to see these teachings as fundamentally compatible with socialism. His radicalism joined this Buddhist egalitarianism to a critique of private property, economic inequality, imperial authority, and militarism. Unlike Takagi Kenmyō, whose Buddhist socialism remained largely reformist, Uchiyama increasingly identified the social and political structures producing inequality as themselves objects of transformation. Using a clandestine printing press at Rinsenji, he produced and circulated socialist and anarchist writings calling upon ordinary people to free themselves from the political, economic, and religious beliefs sustaining the existing social order.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2017), ''Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan'' (Oxford University Press), 153–62; Sanada Yoshiaki 眞田芳憲 (2016), “Taigyaku jiken to zensō Uchiyama Gudō no ‘Bukkyō shakaishugi’ to sono kōdō no kiseki: Zensō Gudō no teikō no shūkyōteki rinri to sekinin” 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 [The High Treason Incident and Zen Priest Uchiyama Gudō's “Buddhist Socialism” and the Course of His Activities: The Religious Ethics and Responsibility of Gudō's Resistance], ''Chūō Gakujutsu Kenkyūjo kiyō'' 中央学術研究所紀要 45: 2–61, 20–21.</ref>

Uchiyama was arrested in May 1909 for violating publication laws after police discovered his clandestine printing operation at Rinsenji; during their search, police claimed to have found materials for making explosives. Already imprisoned, he was subsequently implicated in the High Treason Incident (''Taigyaku jiken'' 大逆事件), convicted of participating in the alleged conspiracy against Emperor Meiji, and executed on January 24, 1911. Although Uchiyama advocated revolutionary change and did not categorically reject violence, the extent of his involvement in an actual assassination plot remains disputed. The Sōtō establishment stripped him of his clerical status in 1910 and strongly repudiated his ideas; in 1993 the denomination reversed its earlier action and restored his status, acknowledging that its treatment of Uchiyama had reflected the sect's alignment with the emperor-centered political establishment.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', 153–56; Sanada (2016), “Taigyaku jiken to zensō Uchiyama Gudō,” 32–39; Sanada Yoshiaki 眞田芳憲 (2018), ''“Taigyaku jiken” to zensō Uchiyama Gudō no teikō'' 〈大逆事件〉と禅僧内山愚童の抵抗 (Tokyo: Kōsei Shuppansha).</ref>