Editing Meiji Buddhist Modernism (section)

=== From Social Buddhism toward Radicalism ===

The social implications of New Buddhism varied considerably among members of the Fellowship. For Watanabe Kaikyoku 渡辺海旭 (1872–1933), this-worldly Buddhism developed especially through engagement with poverty, social welfare, and the human consequences of industrialization. A Jōdo-shū priest and Buddhist scholar who spent roughly a decade studying Sanskrit, Pāli, and Buddhist studies in Germany, Watanabe returned to Japan with an intensified interest in the “social question.” His subsequent activities brought Buddhist ethics into practical engagement with welfare and social reform and reflected an emerging conviction that the suffering addressed by Buddhism could not be understood exclusively as an individual or spiritual problem. Watanabe did not become a revolutionary socialist; his approach remained broadly reformist. Yet his work represents an important extension of ''genseshugi'': the “present world” to which Buddhism must respond was increasingly understood as a world structured by poverty, labor, and the disruptive effects of modern industrial capitalism.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2017), ''Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan'', [pages]; Brons, Lajos (2022), ''A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism'' (punctum books), 76–77.</ref>

Inoue Shūten 井上秀天 (1880–1945) pushed New Buddhist social criticism considerably further. A Zen priest, traveler, and prolific contributor to ''Shin Bukkyō'', Inoue developed a Buddhist critique of war, nationalism, and restrictions upon freedom of thought. His transnational encounters with Buddhist reformers elsewhere in Asia reinforced a conception of Buddhism that exceeded the boundaries of both sect and nation, while his writings increasingly emphasized pacifism and resistance to nationalist ideology. These commitments became especially consequential around the High Treason Incident (''Taigyaku jiken'' 大逆事件) of 1910–1911, when Inoue himself came under suspicion in the widening state campaign against socialists and anarchists. Inoue's significance lies not in the construction of a systematic Buddhist socialism but in demonstrating how the New Buddhist critique of sectarianism and religious authority could develop into criticism of nationalism, militarism, and political repression.<ref>Moriya Tomoe 守屋友江 (2005), “Social Ethics of ‘New Buddhists’ at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study of Suzuki Daisetsu and Inoue Shūten,” ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies'' 32, no. 2: 283–304; Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', [pages].</ref>

The Fellowship's proximity to the emerging socialist movement was nevertheless real. Its journal provided a forum in which Buddhist reformers and socialists could encounter one another, most notably through contributions and exchanges involving Sakai Toshihiko 堺利彦. Yet the relationship remained uneasy. The New Buddhists shared with contemporary socialists dissatisfaction with existing social conditions and a conviction that religion could not remain indifferent to poverty and injustice, but most resisted socialism's materialist foundations and revolutionary implications. The disagreement over Sakai's “pantheistic materialism” therefore represented a broader political as well as philosophical divide: how far could a radically this-worldly Buddhism go before it ceased to be recognizably religious? The Fellowship never arrived at a common answer.<ref>Shields, James Mark (2017), “Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism, Pantheism, and the ‘Religious Secular’,” ''Japan Review'' 30: 79–96, 85–87; Shields (2017), ''Against Harmony'', [pages].</ref>

The New Buddhist Fellowship thus occupies an intermediate position in the genealogy of radical Buddhism. It was neither a socialist organization nor simply another movement of Buddhist apologetics. Its members challenged sectarian privilege, rejected government control of religion, subjected inherited Buddhism to free investigation, and insisted that Buddhist faith be enacted within contemporary social life. Some moved further, confronting industrial poverty, nationalism, war, and political repression. In doing so, the New Buddhists helped establish a vocabulary and a field of debate within which later Buddhists could ask a more radical question: if suffering was produced not only by individual ignorance and craving but also by social, economic, and political structures, could Buddhist liberation require the transformation of those structures themselves? Takagi Kenmyō 高木顕明, Uchiyama Gudō 内山愚童, and later Seno'o Girō 妹尾義郎 would answer that question more explicitly than the New Buddhist Fellowship ever did.