Politics and Buddhism in 1930s North China: The Case of the Sino-Japanese Society for the Study of Esoteric Buddhism

• In Event: Buddhism in Motion: Cross-Fertilizations Across National Borders in Modern Asia

Abstract

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an increase in contacts between Chinese and Japanese Buddhists. One area of active exchange was that of esoteric Buddhism (C. mijiao, J. mikkyō). This paper will investigate and analyze the activities of the Sino-Japanese Society for the Study of Esoteric Buddhism (C. ZhongRi mijiao yanjiu hui), founded by Chinese and Japanese Buddhists in Tianjin in 1931. The aims of the Society included the study and propagation of esoteric Buddhism and its membership consisted of Chinese political figures such as Duan Qirui and Wang Yitang as well as high ranking priests of the Japanese Kogi Shingon sect and representatives of the local Japanese community in Tianjin. The Society also had contacts to the Ninth Panchen Lama who was residing in China at the time, creating a pan-Asian network of esoteric Buddhists. The Society engaged in its educational activities against the background of Japan’s increasing encroachment on Chinese territory. Its activities thus provide a good example of the intersection of religion and politics in modern Sino-Japanese relations. The Society propagated the creation of Sino-Japanese friendship based on Buddhism and did indeed serve political goals, but Buddhism never ceased to be the central concern for its key Chinese and Japanese members. Thus, in the Sino-Japanese Society for the Study of Esoteric Buddhism, religion and politics formed a complex whole.

Author

• Erik Schicketanz, University of Tokyo