Editing Japan (section)

=== From the High Treason Incident to the YLRB ===

The High Treason Incident of 1910–1911 marked a severe rupture in the development of explicitly radical Buddhism in Japan. The execution of Uchiyama Gudō and imprisonment of Takagi Kenmyō formed part of a broader suppression of socialist and anarchist activity, making open attempts to combine Buddhism with revolutionary socialism or anarchism exceptionally difficult. Buddhist social experimentation nevertheless continued in less overtly political forms. Itō Shōshin 伊藤証信 (1876–1963), for example, developed the ideal of ''muga-ai'' 無我愛 (selfless love), combining religious and ethical transformation, pacifism, and communal social practice while deliberately distinguishing his movement from socialism. His Muga-ai movement, begun in 1905, survived the repression of the late Meiji period and reemerged during the Taishō era alongside other experiments in Buddhist, Tolstoyan, agrarian, and communal reform.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2017), ''Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan'' (Oxford University Press), 163–80; Brons, Lajos (2022), ''A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism'' (punctum books), 77–80.</ref>

The relative openness of the Taishō period (1912–1926) nevertheless transformed the context in which Buddhist social thought operated. Socialist ideas circulated more widely, while Buddhist thinkers confronted questions of poverty, capitalism, labor, and the social responsibilities of religion. There was no continuous “radical Buddhist” movement linking the Meiji radicals to their successors: responses ranged from anti-socialist apologetics to social welfare, utopian experiments, and selective engagement with socialism and Marxism. Seno'o Girō's emergence from the quite different world of reformist and nationalist Nichiren Buddhism illustrates both this discontinuity and the persistence of the underlying social questions. By 1926 he was criticizing nationalist readings of Nichiren, and by 1929 he was arguing that a revitalized Nichirenism must stand with the public and engage the socialist struggle against capitalism. These developments prepared the ground for the founding of the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei 新興仏教青年同盟) in 1931.<ref>Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', 181–205, 213–16.</ref>