Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan by James Mark Shields (review)

Among the numerous books on modern Japanese Buddhism published in recent years, few have taken politics as their subject. As a result, it seems that the accusatory stance of Brian Victoria's Zen at War (New York: Weatherhill, 1997) and other books in its wake is still very much dominant—that is to say, the view that Buddhism, as a conservative establishment force, has largely opted to side with the powers that be even in times of militarism and war. Against Harmony by James Mark Shields forcefully challenges this view by introducing the many faces of Buddhism—including "modernist," "progressive," and "radical"—that emerged in Japan between the Meiji period and the early 1930s. Shields's main goal is to identify the philosophical foundations upon which a progressive reading of Buddhism became possible in modern Japan, a task that he undertakes by presenting a plethora of protagonists and their works in six chronologically arranged chapters that have an almost encyclopedic quality to them.

Before that, though, Shields usefully lays out his questions, some major problematiques, and his central terms in an extensive introduction. Shields considers the analytical category of Buddhist modernism, though popular in many Western works, to be less helpful for the bulk of his material, seeing as over time the movement increasingly fractured over tensions between materialism and idealism, a theme that runs through the entire volume. "Progressivism" is more straightforward, given Shields's broad understanding of the term as a political stance concerned with social welfare and reforms aiming at equality. Identifying socialist thought, in contrast, is much more difficult, considering on the one hand that Buddhist writers often focused more on welfare than on social transformation, and on the other that not everyone identifying with socialism before 1945 can also be readily labeled a progressive—hence Shields's plea for "radicalism" as a less controversial label (pp. 13–22).

Shields's chronological tour d'horizon begins in chapter 1, "The Many Faces of Meiji Buddhist Enlightenment," with the 1880s. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the first major thinker to be treated is Inoue Enryō, who is usually more noted for his nationalism than for any progressive tendencies. Shields however justifies the choice by explaining that Enryō, more than anyone else, argued for the primacy of reason, thus indirectly allowing for "the employment of 'reason' as a tool to expose the roots of individual and social suffering in prevailing structures of power and oppression" (p. 39). The rest of the chapter deals with Buddhist internationalists of the 1880s, more specifically figures who either attended the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1883 (Ashitsu Jitsuzen, Shaku Sōen, Yatsubuchi Banryū) or were associated with Theosophy and/or Unitarianism (Hirai Kinza, Nakanishi Ushirō). In his chapter summary, Shields acknowledges that the individuals he presents cannot easily be labeled "progressives"; drawing on Janine Sawada, he instead proposes to see them as "progressive conservatives," given the importance they attached to the conservation of tradition. He emphasizes that they do indeed deserve to be considered progressive, since they may be attributed with promoting "palpable—if ultimately unfulfilled—social and political implications" (p. 62), or in other words harboring a potential (albeit unrealized) for progressivism.

Chapter 2 ("Unification and Spiritual Activism") contains the two longest discussions of individual thinkers, namely, Murakami Senshō and Kiyozawa Manshi. Murakami is presented as the main figure arguing around 1900 for the unification of Buddhist sects on the basis of modern historical scholarship. Faced with the challenge that the (later) Mahayana teachings had not been articulated by the Buddha (the famous daijō hibussetsu ron), Murakami countered that while that was historically correct, it did not deter him from claiming the ability of the teachings "to convey key Buddhist truths," arguing that it is on the basis of these shared truths "at the level of fundamental doctrine that the unity of Buddhism lies" (pp. 70–71). What makes Murakami significant for Shields is his...