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Chapter Three The Development of Shin Buddhist Ministries in North America he Americanization and Japanization of the Honpa Honganji Mission of Hawaii (HHMH) and the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) are coupled with the expansion of their ministries. Their structural features reflected the spiritual concerns of the Issei, Nisei, and Caucasian ministers, who simultaneously maintained and transformed the teachings, practices, ordinations, and other rituals. By the 1930s, the HHMH and the BMNA had established ministerial duties for the three groups of priests, but a watershed event in the history of Shin Buddhism took place in Hawaii and on the mainland during that time period. With the death on December 22, 1932, of the charismatic leader of the HHMH, Bishop Emyō Imamura, whose tenure had lasted for thirty-two years, propagation in Hawaii began to stagnate. In contrast to the HHMH, the BMNA expanded in the 1930s under the supervision of Bishop Kenju Masuyama, who served in the office from July 1930 to February 1938 and who readily admitted Nisei and Euro-Americans to the ministry. Under his orders, six hundred Caucasians received Buddhist “initiation.”1 During that time, the bishop’s office in Canada also became independent from the BMNA, and Masuyama helped Hōzen Seki establish the BMNA’s first Buddhist church in New York. The 1930s was also an era in which Shin Buddhist women became more active. Laywomen not only expanded their roles at local churches, but also created a transnational network to collaborate with their Japanese counterparts . From Hawaii, Imamura sent several Nisei women to Japan where they received ordination. On the mainland, clerical leaders considered admitting women into the ministry. The Life of an Issei Minister It is unreasonable to compare lives of early Issei ministers with their affluent counterparts in Japan.2 In Hawaii, a minister’s salary was based on 59 T donations made by the congregation, whose earnings were determined by the economy of a particular plantation. In 1918, Imamura described the hardships of being a minister: Throughout the Hawaiian Islands, the minister’s residence is small enough to accommodate only one household. Some of them are experiencing much more inconvenience. At a site where a new temple hall was just constructed, the minister’s family lives in one or two rooms behind the altar. It is unthinkable for these ministers in Hawaii to live leisurely as some wealthy priests do in Japan. The Hawaiian ministers must be determined to share grief and anxiety with the immigrants.3 Buddhist priests at large temples in Japan lived in affluence, receiving substantial donations from their parishioners, but ministers in Hawaii did not. Imamura’s description also indicates that the relationship between the clergy and laity in Hawaii was unlike the inequality found in Japan, where priests still enjoyed certain privileges not shared by their congregations.4 A minister’s salary on the mainland was modest as well. Junjō Izumida in Los Angeles received a monthly wage of $50 in 1908.5 Yoshihiro Tokunō and Gijin Taga, who served at the Honpa Canada Buddhist Mission in 1926, received $80 and $100, respectively.6 By this time, the BMNA office had established a guideline for benefices: for a single chief minister, over $120; for a married chief minister, $150; for a single assistant minister, $90; and for a married assistant minister, $125.7 According to the BMNA budget in 1927, the bishop received an annual income of ¥5,000 (approximately $2,500), and his secretary earned ¥2,400 (approximately $1,200).8 In the early 1930s, the average salary was $125, but the earnings of twenty ministers were under $100, while those of another fourteen were over $200.9 The salary for Euro-American Buddhist ministers on the mainland is unknown , but in Honolulu, Imamura secured an annual stipend of $1,800 for Thomas M. Kirby and $1,500 for Ernest Hunt in 1926.10 Ministers on the mainland often faced financial difficulties, as many churches ran into debt due to the construction of church buildings and the overall economic depression in the United States.11 In January 1927, the Buddhist churches in Seattle, Portland, Watsonville, Vacaville, Alameda , and Berkeley owed liabilities. In Alameda, El Centro, Brawley, Vancouver , San Francisco, and Salt Lake City, the boards of directors were unable to pay their ministers’ salaries. In Fresno, Itsuzō Kyōgoku lived without payment for one and a half years. According to Marii Hasegawa, his second daughter, the Kyōgoku family left Fresno and moved to...

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