Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West

by Snodgrass, Judith

• ISBN13: 9780807854587
• ISBN10: 0807854581
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Japanese Buddhism was introduced to a wide Western audience when a delegation of Buddhist priests attended the World's Parliament of Religions, part of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In describing and analyzing this event, Judith Snodgrass challenges the predominant view of Orientalism as a one-way process by which Asian cultures are understood strictly through Western ideas. Restoring agency to the Buddhists themselves, she shows how they helped reformulate Buddhism as a modern world religion with specific appeal to the West whilesimultaneously reclaiming authority for the tradition within a rapidly changing Japan. Snodgrass explains how the Buddhism presented in Chicago was shaped by the institutional, social, and political imperatives of the Meiji Buddhist revival movement in Japan and was further determined by the Parliament itself, which, despite its rhetoric of fostering universal brotherhood and international goodwill, was thoroughly permeated with confidence in the superiority of American,Protestantism. Additionally, in the contest of Japan's intensive diplomatic campaign to renegotiate its treaties with Western nations, the nature of Japanese religion was not simply a religious issue, Snodgrass argues, but an integral part of Japan's bid for acceptance by the international community.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Japan in Chicago	1	(15)
Japan Faces the West	16	(29)
Manifest Destiny: Christianity and American Imperialism	45	(20)
The Rules of the Parliament: Securing the Truth	65	(20)
Alterity: Buddhism as the ``Other'' of Christianity	85	(30)
Buddhism and Modernity in Meiji Japan	115	(22)
Buddhist Revival and Japanese Nationalism	137	(18)
Deploying Western Authority I: Henry Steel Olcott in Japan	155	(17)
Buddhism and Treaty Revision: The Chicago Project	172	(26)
Defining Eastern Buddhism	198	(24)
Paul Carus: Buddhism and Monist Mission	222	(23)
Deploying Western Authority II: Carus in Translation	245	(14)
From Eastern Buddhism to Zen: A Postscript	259	(20)
Notes	279	(44)
Bibliography	323	(22)
Index	345