Seno’o Girō, “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism”
Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎 (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite 新興佛教青年同盟について). (Japanese original here.)
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⚠ Awaiting Textual Verification ⚠ This digital transcription of the original text is complete but requires verification against the primary print edition or manuscript scans. |
Contents
1. Translation 2. Source Note 3. How to Cite this Text 4. Notes
Translation
The times are in constant flux. Everything is subjected to merciless selection. Any claim to continued existence is possible only in a form suited to the times; what fails to take such a form will sooner or later be entered on the list of things destined to collapse. Thus, [the wise?][1] constantly look squarely at the direction of the age, never neglecting to [reckon fully?][2] with themselves and respond appropriately to the new era. This is not accommodation to the times but a principle of self-regulation belonging to a healthy living organism.
We have now dissolved the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League and formed the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. We have also renamed the magazine Wakōdo (“Young People”)[3] “Under the Banner of Revitalizing Buddhism” and resolved to launch a new movement under the following platform.
1. We venerate Śākyamuni Buddha as the highest personality known to humanity and, in accordance with the guiding principle of fellowship, faith, and love, seek to realize the establishment of a Buddha land.
2. We regard all established Buddhist denominations as the vestigial remnants of institutions that have desecrated the Buddhist spirit. We reject them and seek a renewed proclamation of Buddhism appropriate to the present age.
3. We regard the existing capitalist economic system as contrary to the Buddhist spirit and an obstacle to the welfare of the masses. We seek to reform it and bring about the society to come.
Looking back, our youth organization was founded in the autumn of 1919. In the following year we launched Wakōdo; over the ensuing thirteen years we published 127 issues. Of course, in the Buddhist world as a whole we were a Nichirenist organization hardly worth mentioning. Yet I believe that within Nichirenist circles we may have represented something epoch-making. At any rate, we fought single-mindedly, as a crystallization of sincere devotion and a great surge of ardor, taking the practice of Nichirenism as our watchword.
But historical circumstances eventually compelled the self-reckoning and abrupt change of direction described above. Saint Nichiren taught: “In studying the Buddha Dharma, one must first learn to discern the times,”[4] and “To say that one should preach the Dharma according to people’s capacities is a grave error.” What penetrating insight! He transcended the individually oriented, “medicine prescribed according to the illness” model of salvation and adopted methods of social salvation directed beyond the individual toward the objective conditions of society. Indeed, what would Saint Nichiren do were he to appear in our own day? And Shinran? Dōgen?
Self-reckoning demands the utmost accuracy. Its standard must be determined in the concrete realities of lived experience; otherwise it is a lie. Thus we came to recognize the error of conventional religious movements distorted by individualism and idealism, and became convinced that advancing religious activity through concrete social methods was precisely what an age-appropriate religious movement required. At the same time, we clearly recognized the worldwide historical necessity of a Buddhist revival through a movement uniting all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name, rather than remaining indefinitely attached to denominational forms.
As for the three articles of the platform set out above, I believe that any Buddhist who rejects the notion of religion as a merely private affair, sees its value as a social movement, and advocates Buddhist unity as an important means of social concord would naturally support the first two articles when seeking to reform established denominations that have reached the limits of disorder. With regard to the third article, as our predecessors have repeatedly demonstrated in essays in Chūgai Nippō, social movements that leave untouched the transformation of the existing capitalist system—whose economic arrangements underlie the basic conditions of life—are, ultimately, merely palliative.[5] That hardly needs saying at this point. We are watching closely how this issue will be handled by the All-Japan Buddhist Youth Federation now being formed, and expect it to be the decisive test of that federation’s reason for existing.
After all, is not the Buddhist spirit upheld by the thirteen denominations and fifty-six branches, in brief, a recognition of impermanence and an affirmation of a life grounded in faith and love? Indeed, love gives rise to right understanding and heeds humanity’s demand for mutual love rather than merely inherited forms. A movement to unite all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name should therefore be possible so long as even a trace of aspiration to the Way remains. And in the difficult undertaking of transforming capitalism, should not Buddhists above all be the ones to exert themselves to the utmost in the construction of a Buddha land?
Source Note
The article announces the transition from the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League to the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, reproduces its three-point platform, and argues that Buddhist renewal requires trans-sectarian unity and transformation of capitalist economic structures.
Base text: Seno’o Girō 妹尾義郎, 「新興佛教青年同盟について」, Chūgai Nippō 中外日報, April 7, 1931. The present edition derives from the eight-part Japanese and English working master (v9, October 19, 2026), reportedly prepared using nine enlarged newspaper image crops. The introductory record calls the transcription “seven-paragraph,” but the supplied text identifies eight numbered units, with the three-point platform in §3. These are editorial divisions, not confirmed printed section headings.
Editorial status: Working transcription and translation, not yet a fully collated diplomatic edition. The historical orthography is preserved. The source file marks doubtful characters and punctuation, and those marks are retained. The current master does not identify reliable printed page/column transition coordinates; accordingly, no
markers have been invented. Comparison witnesses include the separate 1931 YLRB founding declaration and January 1933 「われらの綱領」; neither may substitute for the 1931 newspaper text.
Priority checks: §1 波動/流動, 賢明 and [ ? ]; §2 「若人」 and renamed publication; §3 manifesto wording; §4 劃期的, 純眞, 大潮 and punctuation; §5 the two Nichiren quotations; §6 清算; §7 「中外」の論説, 彌縫 and 全日本佛青聯盟; §8 生活提唱 and 人類相愛の要求に聽く. All remain provisional pending final comparison with the newspaper image.
Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields (2026). Conjectural English readings are marked with square brackets.
How to Cite this Text
Seno’o Girō (1931). “On the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism” (Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei ni tsuite 新興佛教青年同盟について). Translated and annotated by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of 21 October 2026. https://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/SG31SKB-T.
Notes
- ↑ Corresponds to 賢明, an unusual grammatical subject in the provisional Japanese transcription.
- ↑ The Japanese includes an undeciphered character or characters: 自らを[?]よく清算.
- ↑ The source prints 若人; its reading and the exact subsequent magazine title should be verified bibliographically.
- ↑ The two Nichiren quotations retain Seno’o’s 1931 wording; compare, but do not silently replace it with, the transmitted Senji shō 選時抄.
- ↑ The Japanese compound 彌縫 is a consequential but provisional transcription requiring image confirmation.
