Buddhism, Unitarianism, and the Meiji Competition for Universality by Michel Mohr (review)

The Meiji period found Japanese intellectuals considering the role of religion in modernity. They reflected not only on Buddhism and Shintoism, but on Western imports also. Among those imports was Unitarianism, which appealed greatly to the Buddhists because it distanced itself from the theological strictures of other Christian sects. The Buddhists saw Unitarianism as a system that would not impose demands of allegiance to God and one tightly tied to rationalism, reason, and science. This appealed to the Buddhists as well as to Meiji enlightenment scholars, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi. Thus, the Unitarian mission quickly gained favor in the 1880s when scholars began considering whether there could be a universal unity, one that transcended religious sects. However, this favor was lost a few decades later as Japanese moved strongly toward State Shintō as part of a focus on a national faith.

Michel Mohr’s monograph focuses on the rise and fall of Unitarianism in Japan. The title of this volume contains three large areas of discourse— Buddhism, Unitarianism, and Universality—all of which are philosophical in nature. The work itself, however, is not so much a philosophical study as it is a political history of Unitarianism in Meiji Japan with some related material about Buddhists who were attracted to the concept of “unity.” With this work, Mohr has added to a very small corpus—no more than a few articles—in English on this topic by examining unpublished letters in the archives of the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, mostly by Americans involved in the Unitarian movement at the turn of the century. Thus, this book fills a small but significant niche. There are more resources on the Unitarian movement in Japanese, most notably more than half a dozen articles by Tsuchiya Hiromasa on Unitarianism, and in particular its relation to Fukuzawa Yukichi.

The book is divided by the author into three parts: the first part covers the arrival of Unitarianism in Japan and how it bloomed at first only to fade a few decades later. The second part is organized in a jinbetsu form, that is, it focuses on the same time frame as part 1 in separate chapters that recount the experiences of certain people. Chapter 4 features Furukawa Rōsen and Murakami Senshō, both Buddhist intellectuals who were influenced by Unitarian ideas. Chapter 5 features Kishimoto Nobuta (another Buddhist intellectual), and chapter 6 features Abe Isoo and connections between the labor movement and Unitarianism. The third part is also organized as a jinbetsu: chapter 7 features John B. W. Day, a Unitarian missionary, chapter 8 focuses on Saji Jitsunen (president of the Unitarians in Japan 19000–1909) and Hiroi Tatsutarō (a former professor and assistant to Saji), and chapter 9 focuses on the Zen teacher Kōgaku Sōen. An epilogue ties up some of the loose ends. At first I found this organization slightly confusing, but once I conceived of it as a jinbetsu it was easier to follow. Mohr provides a useful overall timeline at the beginning of part 1 which helps the reader keep the chronology straight.

If the reader approached this book looking for a doctrinal examination of Unitarianism in the Buddhist context, she would be disappointed. Mohr gives fair warning of this in his introduction:

The methodology guiding the present study is largely sociohistorical, for we need a better understanding of how particular ideas develop at specific junctures in specific contexts. . . . It does not imply a naive attempt on my part to create a “metadiscourse” about universality but simply my willingness to see to what extent historical figures embedded in particular religious and intellectual settings were able to see beyond their own horizons,

(p. 10)

Most early chapters certainly do this: they are largely an accounting of correspondence between various Japanese and Americans about the Unitarian presence in Japan. Sometimes the correspondence is grave and accusatory, and sometimes it is petty. Little of it is about what “universality” is; rather, it...