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168 Chapter Seven Local and Translocal Activities of Issei Shin Buddhist Ministers he acculturation of Shin Buddhism occurred in relation to the development of its organizations in Hawaii and on the mainland. In both regions, changes in organizational style, rituals, and doctrine reflected the processes of Japanization and Americanization, albeit on different levels. This chapter aims to go beyond the organizational settings and examine the sociopolitical implications of acculturation. When Shin ministers responded to the crises of the Nikkei community as a whole, their actions differed in these two regions. On the mainland, at two major international religious conferences, BMNA leaders appealed to the American public that Buddhism was a religion of peace. Japanese Buddhist leaders organized the International Buddhist Congress in San Francisco in August 1915 in conjunction with the Panama Pacific International Exposition and invited honorary guests from all over the world. After the weeklong conference, the Japanese delegates met with President Woodrow Wilson to petition for the ending of World War I. In August 1933, Shin clergy participated in the World Fellowship of Faiths in Chicago (the so-called Second Parliament of Religions), held in connection with the Second World’s Fair.1 On this occasion, not only Buddhist delegates but also representatives of the so-called New Religions (shin shūkyō) of Japan addressed world peace, though they ignored or attempted to justify Japan’s military aggression in China. The Japanese delegates were far from harmonious, since the BMNA leaders saw the Shintō groups Tenrikyō and Konkōkyō, which were then emerging in the United States, as their new rivals.2 Contrary to the BMNA, the HHMH became locally involved. Shin clergy participated in the 1920 territory-wide sugar plantation strike initiated by Japanese workers and the early legal test case brought about by Issei educators, who questioned the constitutionality of the territorial government ban on Japanese language schools.3 The HHMH supported the Nikkei grassroots movement mainly because the Japanese were one of the largest T Local and Translocal Activities 169 ethnic groups in Hawaii and the majority of their congregations worked on the island plantations. The geographical location of Hawaii with its U.S. territorial status also led the Nikkei to voice their demands. Despite the differences in translocal and local activities, which entailed various processes of Japanization and Americanization, the national identity of the Issei Shin ministers in North America was equivocal. In addition to Hawaii and the mainland United States, the two branches of the Honganji sent priests to Korea, China, the South Pacific, and even the Kuril Islands, north of Hokkaidō, following Japanese immigrants. The globalization of Shin Buddhism linked to Japan’s colonialism in Asia suggests the inherent conflict of Issei Shin clerics in North America, where two sets of secular rules to which they were obliged to conform collided with each other. As a result, they became confused with the identification of secular rules as defined in the doctrine of the two truths that needed to be observed. In other words, they had their own reasons for their ambivalence about identity, which paralleled the two-edged nature of Nikkei ethnicity. The political uncertainty of Shin Buddhists may suggest the limitation of the doctrine of the two truths as a religious ideology of submission. In Japan, citizens submitted themselves to the state and viewed faith as a private matter. As Article 28 of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan indicated , the government would recognize the citizenship of a person and his or her religious freedom, as long as that person maintained peace and order in society and observed his or her duties as the subject of the emperor . But on a religious frontier, where two sets of secular rules, those of the nation-states of Japan and the United States, came into conflict in relation to political contention and racial discrimination against the Nikkei, neither country assured Shin Buddhists of their political status. Since being Japanese in Hawaii and on the mainland was problematic in itself, Shin Buddhists did not benefit from holding their faith only in a private capacity . Given their plight, faith, which primarily dealt with transcendence, could become a means to critique mundane rule. Imamura’s action in Hawaii needs to be reconsidered in light of a critical Shin ethos, since Shin Buddhism had nurtured such a tradition. Translocal Activities Led by BMNA Ministers The International Buddhist Congress The BMNA held the International Buddhist Congress August 2–7, 1915. As part of the Panama Pacific International...

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