Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Utopian Imagination (Pure Land Buddhist Studies)

For close to a thousand years Amida's Pure Land, a paradise of perfect ease and equality, was the most powerful image of shared happiness circulating in the Japanese imagination. In the late nineteenth century, some Buddhist thinkers sought to reinterpret the Pure Land in ways that would allow it speak to modern Japan. Their efforts succeeded in ways they could not have predicted. During the war years, economist Kawakami Hajime, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, and historian Ienaga Saburō--left-leaning thinkers with no special training in doctrinal studies and no strong connection to any Buddhist institution--seized upon modernized images of Shinran in exile and a transcendent Western Paradise to resist the demands of a state that was bearing down on its citizens with increasing force. Pure Land, Real World treats the religious thought of these three major figures in English for the first time. Kawakami turned to religion after being imprisoned for his involvement with the Japanese Communist Party, borrowing the Shinshū image of the two truths to assert that Buddhist law and Marxist social science should reinforce each other, like the two wings of a bird. Miki, a member of the Kyoto School who went from prison to the crown prince's think tank and back again, identified Shinran's religion as belonging to the proletariat: For him, following Shinran and working toward building a buddha land on earth were akin to realizing social revolution. And Ienaga's understanding of the Pure Land--as the crystallization of a logic of negation that undermined every real power structure--fueled his battle against the state censorship system, just as he believed it had enabled Shinran to confront the world's suffering head on. Such readings of the Pure Land tradition are idiosyncratic--perhaps even heretical--but they hum with the same vibrancy that characterized medieval Pure Land belief. Innovative and refreshingly accessible, Pure Land, Real World shows that the Pure Land tradition informed twentieth-century Japanese thought in profound and surprising ways and suggests that it might do the same for twenty-first-century thinkers. The critical power of Pure Land utopianism has yet to be exhausted. For a thousand years, Japanese Buddhists cultivated vivid images of utopia in the form of the Western Paradise, but in the modern period, this utopianism became troublesome. Shinshū modernizers reinvented the Pure Land: some molded it into something the nation-state could tolerate; others used it to secure their own autonomy. Their reinterpretations encouraged new engagements with the tradition; during the war years, as the Japanese state bore down upon its citizens, thinkers with no obvious connection to Shinshū seized upon the twinned images of Shinran in exile and Amida’s Pure Land. For economist Kawakami Hajime, the Pure Land represented an inner realm of peace, the discovery of which allowed him to remain committed to Marxism through years in prison and forced seclusion. For philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, it represented the proletariat’s historical mission of liberating humanity, making Shinshū proof positive of the possibility of a proletarian religion. For historian Ienaga Saburō, it represented sheer negation of this world, grounding Shinran’s confrontation with society; Ienaga himself sought to uphold this legacy of resistance, rallying against a state that failed to live up to its ideals. These radical readings reveal that the critical energy of medieval Pure Land has not been exhausted. Cover Contents Series Editor’s Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Chapter One: The Land in Pure Land Chapter Two: The Modern Tradition Chapter Three: Special Marxist, Special Buddhist: Kawakami Hajime Chapter Four: Pure Land for the People: Miki Kiyoshi Chapter Five: Man without a Hometown: Ienaga Saburō Epilogue: “Let Us Read Shinran, Young People!” Notes Works Cited Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U W Y Z The Land In Pure Land -- The Modern Tradition -- Special Marxist, Special Buddhist : Kawakami Hajime -- Pure Land For The People : Miki Kiyoshi -- Man Without A Hometown : Ienaga Saburō -- Epilogue : Let Us Read Shinran, Young People! Melissa Anne-marie Curley. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.