ABSTRACT

The comment above comes from an article in the Japan Advertiser, a journal of the Western expatriate community in Tokyo, observing the ‘decided and vigorous’ revival of Buddhism across a range of social and political activities in Japan at the time. Its tone reflects the popular characterization of Buddhism as ‘other-worldy’, the pursuit, through meditation, of individual spiritual development. The Z j ji event, the first meeting in Japan of the Far Eastern Buddhist Conference (T a taikai kondankai) that had taken place in Tokyo from 1 to 3 November 1925, did indeed challenge this perception with its dedicated program of what we would now call ‘engaged Buddhism’. Moreover, what was being discussed there was already happening in Japan, as we can see in the pages of the Young East, the English language journal that carried the report. Its first issue had been published in Tokyo in June that year.