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Experimental Buddhism Contexts and Trajectories THUS HAVE I HEARD . . . It was hours before dawn when the smell of smoke roused the Buddhist priest from his sleep. As he jumped out of bed and raced from his sleeping quarters down a long corridor, a persistent fear that his family’s 400-year-old temple and its treasures would suffer damage by fire snapped into a panicked reality. The smoke thickened as he approached the main hall of the temple, and he heard the popping sound of burning wood. When he flung aside the sliding door to the sanctuary, he saw its tatami floor, multicolored silk banners, and black-lacquered main altar with its drums, bells, and sutra books all engulfed in flames. Giving no thought to his personal safety, he plunged barefoot into the hall to try and rescue the most valuable object of all: a precious wooden statue of Amida, the Buddha of the Pure Land. Less than a minute had passed since he had awakened; in another few seconds, the priest would be badly burned and would later die from these injuries. The temple and its lovely buddha, its hand-painted sliding screens and numerous spirit tablets (ihai) so important for venerating ancestors— all would be destroyed.1 Police investigators would later concur (but were unable to prove) that the fire was arson. This shocking assessment seemed to further reinforce a general public perception that, beginning in the late 1960s, Japan had entered a new era of social unrest when anything was possible—even the willful destruction of a Buddhist temple.2 Although evidence could not be found that led to an arrest and prosecution, it was well known in the neighborhood that the middle-aged priest and local vendors selling food and drink from portable wagons (yatai) had an ongoing dispute. With the temple’s prime location in the heart of one of Kyoto’s main shopping and entertainment districts, the vendors wanted to lease space in the temple’s open yard to store their carts during the day and then mobilize them to ply their trade at night. However, concerned what his dwindling number of parishioners might think, the priest refused these repeated requests. The temple could certainly have used the additional revenue, but he maintained 2 • Experimental Buddhism that carts covered with blue plastic and parked on temple property during the day would be an eyesore. The details, settings, and actors involved in this incident might appear, at first reading, to represent fairly predictable oppositions: religious and secular interests , rapid social change and tradition, a once-stable community in the heart of Kyoto besieged by rootless economic forces that tear apart and reshape neighborhoods into entertainment or commercial districts. While these pairings are valid up to a point, they cannot fully explain the tensions in play. To do so, we need a network of cause and effect extending beyond Kyoto, at regional, national, and even transnational levels, shaped by new communication technologies, global systems of finance, shifting political alliances, and corporate and bureaucratic restructuring. Had Japan’s economy not been booming when this incident occurred , it is unlikely that the center of Kyoto would have become such a magnet for speculative real estate transactions, increased consumerism, and recreational sites. The area was flooded nightly with young people, corporate and blue-collar workers, even university students—all with disposable income or expense accounts looking for momentary reprieve from their roles within an increasingly demanding socioeconomic order. The small temple, along with many others, had been moved to its present location in the late 1500s by order of one of Japan’s three unifiers, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In some respects, the temple remained continuous with its premodern history through the memorial and funeral services it offered, its faith-based emphasis on salvation in the Pure Land, and an economic reliance on parishioner donations. But in recent times, as land prices began to rise and families that had lived in the neighborhood for centuries sold their property and relocated, the temple and its priest found themselves surrounded by forces they could neither control nor completely understand. Kyoto’s economy was expanding rapidly, but how could this temple benefit? The city’s mayors and administrators, some of them members of the socialist and communist parties since the end of World War II, were being replaced with politicians loyal to and supported by the wealthy Liberal Democratic Party and its policies favoring rapid economic development . Kyoto was being transformed. After the fire...

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