Introduction
In early June 1934, the Japanese organizers of the Second General Conference of Pan-Pacific Young Buddhists’ Associations (J. Dai-nikai han-Taiheiyō bukkyō seinenkai taikai; hereafter the second PYBA conference) were nervous. The huge international event they were planning, with hundreds of delegates attending from across the Buddhist world, was less than two months away, but it was still unclear whether there would be much of a delegation from China, one of the most important Buddhist nations both in terms of contemporary Buddhist activities and historic influence on Japan. Chinese newspapers were abuzz with angry articles condemning the conference because the organizers were treating Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, as an independent nation. To add insult to injury, conference materials even listed Manchukuo ahead of the Republic of China (ROC). In light of these perceived insults, Taixu (1890–1947), the prominent Buddhist reformer that conference organizers had hoped would lead the Chinese delegation, denounced the conference. In the pages of the periodical Zhengxin (Right Faith), Taixu urged a boycott to avoid legitimating Japan’s immoral invasion and occupation of northeast China, saying that the ‘mutual spiritual fusion’ (Ch. xianghu zhi jingshen de ronghe) that the conference prospectus called for was impossible unless the organizers eliminated the ‘accursed name’ (Ch. guiming) of Manchukuo, although he understood this was impossible in Japan’s current political atmosphere.Footnote 1 In the end, out of the 666 official delegates at the second PYBA conference, held from 18–23 July, only eight represented the Republic of China—and two of those ‘Chinese’ delegates were actually Japanese nationals.
The struggle over attendance at the second PYBA conference is a productive case study to consider the complex relations that Buddhists—Japanese and non-Japanese alike—had with Japanese imperialism in the early years of Japan’s wartime empire. Buddhist youth groups in the early twentieth century were sites of trans-imperial exchange as well as nationalist politics, which sometimes supported colonial projects (as in the Japanese and the American empires) and sometimes were strongly anti-colonial (as in the British empire).Footnote 2 The Japanese and Japanese American Buddhists who organized the PYBA conferences in 1930 and 1934 did so based on ideals of transcending sectarian and nationalist concerns to forge pan-Buddhist solidarity in the service of world peace. However, many who attended or considered attending the second PYBA conference in the Japanese metropole struggled with how to balance their commitment to religious and political ideals with the imperial realities of their day. Conference organizers and potential delegates were forced to consider what constituted ‘right action’ (a central Buddhist ideal) under an expansionist empire in which Buddhism served as an ideological bond and Buddhist institutions provided material networks, sometimes linking colonizers and the colonized in their common cause of resisting Western imperialism and Christian missionization.Footnote 3
This article first provides historical context for the PYBA conferences (including the first conference, held in Honolulu in 1930) before examining how the politics of Japanese imperialism impacted on the recruitment of Chinese delegations to the second PYBA conference. It then details the two ‘China hands’ (J. shinatsū) assigned to recruiting delegations from Manchukuo and the ROC: Mizuno Baigyō (1877–1949) and Fujii Sōsen (1896–1971), respectively. It concludes with some examination of the conference itself, with particular attention paid to attendees’ positions on Japanese imperialism, including many who fell into a ‘grey zone’ between accommodation and resistance.
Historical context for the Pan-Pacific Young Buddhist Associations conferences
The second PYBA conference should be seen in the context of a series of international conferences attended (and, later, organized) by Buddhists pursuing and promoting religious politics. The ur-event in this series was the World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, where the Japanese Buddhist delegation aspired to demonstrate (to both foreign and domestic audiences) Japanese Buddhism’s superiority to both Christianity and the ‘Southern Buddhism’ privileged by Orientalist scholars, goals tied up with Meiji Japan’s growing aspiration to challenge Western imperial domination of Asia.Footnote 4 Several attempts to hold a second international parliament of religions occurred in the following decade, including plans to hold one in Japan, which supporters also tied to Japan’s military success in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and Japan’s purported cultural superiority over South Asian countries.Footnote 5 While that event never came to be, 1902 saw two international events of note: the International Congress of Orientalists (Fr. Congrès international des études d’Extrême-Orient) held in Hanoi that September and a student conference held at Takanawa Buddhist University (a short-lived school in Tokyo run by the Nishi Honganji denomination) that October. The former event was organized and dominated by European scholars, and European delegates represented the Asian nations of China, India, Siam, and the host French Indochina, but not Japan, which had three Japanese delegates: Fujishima Ryōon and Nanjō Bun’yū from the Orientalist Society of Japan (J. Teikoku tōyō gakkai) and Takakusu Junjirō from Imperial Tokyo University. Two more Japanese men who resided in colonial Taiwan also attended, underlining the fact that, at this conference, ‘the coloniser possessed all intellectual agency’ and that Japan had joined Euro-American powers around that table.Footnote 6 The latter event was a much smaller affair, but it was a kind of ‘mini-parliament of religions’ that included representatives of Japanese Buddhism and Christianity alongside the Punjabi Hindu lecturer Swami Rama Tirtha.Footnote 7
In the 1910s and 1920s, Buddhists began holding their own international Buddhist conferences that, like the subsequent PYBA conferences, promoted Buddhism’s revival in Asia and its spread to the West as integral to international goodwill and world peace. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco on the occasion of the Panama Canal’s completion, the Buddhist Mission to North America (an organization of Japan’s Nishi Honganji, one of the two major denominations of Jōdo Shin or True Pure Land Buddhism, also known as Shin Buddhism) hosted a World Buddhist Conference, inviting Buddhist priests and scholars from Japan, the British Raj (India, Ceylon, and Burma), and the US Territory of Hawai‘i.Footnote 8 The five-point resolution adopted at this conference urged Buddhists ‘to introduce the essence of Eastern civilisation to the world for the purpose of fusion of East and West and the rapprochement of humankind … [and] to propagate Buddhism to the American people for the purpose of Japan-US friendship’.Footnote 9
Then, in dialogue with the Japanese Buddhist scholar Inada Ensai and the Japanese consul in Jiujiang, Edo Sentarō, the Chinese Buddhist reformer Taixu planned a series of lectures and conferences under the auspices of his World Buddhist Federation (Ch. Shijie fojiao lianhe hui) in 1923 and 1924, which also inspired the East Asian Buddhist Conference (J. Tōa bukkyō taikai), held in Tokyo in November 1925. These meetings, predominantly attended by Chinese and Japanese (including, at the 1925 conference, representatives from colonial Korea and Taiwan), stressed international and ecumenical Buddhist solidarity as a means to transform East Asia and the world through the ideal of universal brotherhood contained in the Buddhist Dharma.Footnote 10 These pan-Asianist ideas would be instrumental to the two PYBA conferences held in the early 1930s, but the organizing idea that a shared Buddhist culture would help to ensure peaceful political relations became increasingly untenable given Japanese militarism and expansionism in that period.
The First Pan-Pacific Young Men’s Buddhist Associations Conference
The First Pan-Pacific Young Men’s Buddhist Associations Conference (hereafter the first PYBA conference) was held in Honolulu in July 1930. The driving force behind the conference was Imamura Yemyō (1867–1932), bishopFootnote 11 of the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin (the Hawai‘i headquarters of Nishi Honganji) founded in 1921. Imamura had a long history of calling for pan-Buddhist solidarity, organizing institutions for Buddhist youth, and promoting Buddhism as a means for cosmopolitanism. In the 1880s and 1890s, Imamura had been an influential voice in Japan’s inchoate ‘New Buddhist’ movement, which critiqued ‘Old Buddhism’ and Buddhist institutions as overly ritualistic, superstitious, and corrupt, and pushed for a more socially active and internationalized form of Shin Buddhism that included young laypeople. After becoming the Hawai‘i bishop in 1900, he promoted Shin Buddhism and Buddhist youth groups as forces for egalitarianism and democracy.Footnote 12
The idea for the first PYBA conference took shape in the late 1920s, influenced by both local actors and transnational trends. Throughout the interwar period, Honolulu hosted a series of varied ‘Pan-Pacific’ conferences, part of a ‘Pan-Pacific movement’ headed by the publisher and Hawai‘i advocate Alexander Hume Ford (1868–1945) and his organization, the Pan-Pacific Union (PPU). These conferences, including the Pan-Pacific Educational Conference and the Pan-Pacific Women’s conferences, inspired Tsunemitsu Kōnen (1891–1973), a Buddhist educator visiting Hawai‘i in 1928 as part of a research trip, to propose that Imamura organize a PYBA conference in Honolulu.Footnote 13 Imamura approved, and Tsunemitsu spread the word about an upcoming conference at a meeting of the League of Young Men’s Buddhist Associations of North America in Fresno, California, in March 1929 (where a delegation was approved) and upon his return to Japan that August. In July, Imamura announced his plans to host a meeting of Buddhist youth associations from across the Pacific and, indeed, from around the world. Rev. Ernest Hunt (1878–1967), a local Englishman who headed the Betsuin’s English Department (which had recently been renamed the Hawai‘i branch of the International Buddhist Institute, founded by Taixu), was sent on a three-month tour of Buddhist centres in North America and Europe to recruit further participants.Footnote 14
The event itself was held 21–26 July 1930 and media accounts emphasized its international nature, ostensibly including delegates from the ROC, Siam, India, and Burma. In actuality, roughly 95 per cent of the attendees were Japanese or Nikkei (persons of Japanese ancestry) from Hawai‘i or the mainland United States, and most of the remainder were white Americans; no one from China, Siam, or the British Raj actually attended.Footnote 15 The delegates resolved to create a set of non-sectarian Buddhist organizations, including a Honolulu-based publishing house to create and distribute literature, a ‘Buddhist university of world scope’, and a transnational network of peace organizations.Footnote 16 Together, they hoped, these new modernist institutions would strip Buddhist teachings of sectarian dogmas and disputes, adapt the Dharma for Western mindsets, and help propel the planet into a new ‘Pacific era’ of world peace. Indeed, printed in the proceedings and recited throughout the conference was an English-language hymn called ‘Y.M.B.A. Gatha’ that decried wars for the sake of earthly power and promoted instead an army of ‘Buddha’s soldiers’ who ‘seek to slay … illusion’s self that hinders mankinds [sic] progress day by day’ and spread the truth and ‘Love’s light’.Footnote 17
While the organizers said they promoted a ‘universal’ and non-sectarian form of Buddhism suitable for a global audience, in fact the structural elements of this new proposed international movement favoured its Japanese and Japanese American architects. For example, despite some discussion of Esperanto, the delegates decided that the international Young Men’s Buddhist Associations journal would be published in two languages: English and Japanese. There was also the issue of whether Buddhist youth groups should celebrate Vesak according to the lunar or the Gregorian calendar. Conference delegates decided that it should be celebrated on 8 April, the day preferred by Japanese, Japanese Americans, and Japan’s colonial authorities, in spite of several entreaties to hold it according to the lunar calendar, preferred by the All-India Buddhist Conference (as expressed in a letter to the first PYBA conference), Taixu (as expressed at the 1925 East Asian Buddhist Conference), Korean Buddhists living under Japanese colonial rule, and most Buddhists around Asia.Footnote 18 Moreover, Bishop Imamura’s opening address to the delegates implied that a new ‘universal’ form of Japanese American Buddhism was the vehicle to help usher in a new ‘Pacific era’ for humanity, reflecting widespread rhetoric that both Hawai‘i and second-generation Japanese Americans would serve as bridges between East and West to help ensure a peaceful future.Footnote 19
In a kind of counterpoint to that main theme of (Japanese) American Buddhism as the model for universal Buddhism, the lone Korean delegate Toh Chinho (aka Do Jinho, 1889–1979?) used the conference as a platform to promote Korean Buddhism as distinct from, even the ‘mother’ of, Japanese Buddhism. On the ship to Honolulu, Toh successfully argued that he be removed from the Japanese delegation and listed as a Korean delegate. While at the conference, Toh distributed an English-language pamphlet by the Korean nationalist author Choe Nam-seon (1890–1957), which described Japan as Korea’s baby and Korea’s Buddhist canon as the ‘nutritious milk’ that nourished this culturally dependent nation.Footnote 20 Hwansoo Ilmee Kim argues that Toh’s activities at the first PYBA conference epitomize how Korean Buddhists promoted a nationalist agenda through modern religious means such as religious governmentality, print media, and lay associations.Footnote 21 As such, Toh’s attendance made the event more polyphonic, expressing colonized voices that changed the overall sound of the dominant Japanese and Japanese American chorus.
It is unclear exactly why no Chinese delegation attended the first PYBA conference. Imamura hosted Taixu in April 1929, when the Chinese reformer stopped in Honolulu on his way back to China after a round-the-world trip to Europe and the United States, and they decided to redesignate the English Department of the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin as the Hawai‘i branch of Taixu’s International Buddhist Institute.Footnote 22 It is likely that Taixu was told about the conference at this time, and he later wrote, ‘Chinese Buddhists had been invited, but because there was no Chinese Buddhist youth association at that time, they did not attend.’Footnote 23 One likely factor is that the leading Buddhist youth society of the 1920s—the New Buddhist Youth League (Ch. Xinfohua qingniantuan), inspired by Taixu’s ‘Buddhicization movement’ (Ch. fohua yundong)—was abruptly disbanded in 1926 when one of its leaders was imprisoned for allegedly offending a politician’s teacher with his attacks on ‘superstitious religious practices’.Footnote 24 There may also have been a lack of interest in sending a Chinese delegation to the first PYBA conference due to local troubles with the Republican state, which had revived a Qing policy of seizing temple properties to build schools (Ch. miaochan xingxue).Footnote 25 In the event, the first ‘Pan-Pacific’ meeting of young Buddhists had little Chinese presence, aside from a message of solidarity from a monk named Dazong.Footnote 26
Organizing the second PYBA conference
One of the final resolutions of the first PYBA conference was that a second conference would be held in Japan in 1934. The organizers of this second conference intended it to be a truly international event, bringing together Buddhists of every denomination from around the world. The scholar Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945), who served as an adviser for the conference, had calculated 1934 to be the 2,500th anniversary of Shakyamuni Buddha’s birth, an event considered to have great potential for pan-Buddhist solidarity.Footnote 27 Japan as the meeting ground for Buddhists from many lands, including Buddhism’s South Asian homeland, symbolized Japan’s role as Asia’s emerging hegemon that could help ensure a new global age for Buddhism.Footnote 28 The reflections written by South Asian delegates, such as the Mahabodhi Society general secretary Devapriya Valisinha (1904–1968), indicate that they considered Japan’s ‘wealth [and] power’ to be essential for the worldwide spread of the Dharma, which they associated with the creation of an era of world peace.Footnote 29 Yet the paeons to peace, harmony, and goodwill expressed at this conference were not only contemporaneous with Japanese military expansionism, but also deeply intertwined with it; Japanese bureaucrats in China and Manchukuo were involved (sometimes counterproductively) with recruiting delegates, and conference delegates attended a reception at the prime minister’s residence, where they were addressed by Japan’s foreign minister, Hirota Kōki.
The organization of the second PYBA conference was managed by the Japan Young Buddhist Association (J. Zen-Nihon bukkyō seinenkai renmei; hereafter JYBA), which the aforementioned educator Tsunemitsu Kōnen founded in April 1931 as an inter-sectarian umbrella organization to unite Japanese Buddhist youth groups, with Takakusu as the first director.Footnote 30 That September, Japan invaded Manchuria. When the second PYBA Conference Preparation Committee was formed in July 1933, it was just a few months after Japan had withdrawn from the League of Nations due to international opprobrium over the invasion and establishment of the puppet government of Manchukuo.
The conference prospectus’s opening sentences reflect the Sino-Japanese tensions (in Japanese, Chinese, and English): ‘It cannot be denied that the present political situation foreshadows a crisis in the Pacific, in view thereof our religious impulse cannot rest still with folded arms. Our present scheme is to form a Buddhist block [sic] of the Y.M.B.A.s of the countries bordering on the Pacific, through which to seek a real goodwill and understanding among the different nations.’ The language of this prospectus took seriously the brewing crisis in the region and proposed a religious solution. International Buddhist solidarity, they argued, could help defuse the situation and create a new, peaceful order.
Echoing earlier conflicts between Japanese ‘New Buddhists’ and sect administrators, the prospectus also decried ‘the retarding trend of the old form of Buddhism in Japan’. While this progressivist critique was doubtless intended to attract international delegates eager to converse with progressive Buddhists in the seat of imperial power in East Asia, ironically, the conference leaders themselves were an ‘old guard’ who may have been relatively progressive a generation prior but were now strongly aligned with state and sectarian power. JYBA leaders’ willingness to accommodate, even defend, Japan’s militarism created tensions with some younger Japanese organizers. To illustrate this divergence, let us turn to the two ‘China hands’ who worked to recruit delegates from Manchukuo and the Republic of China (ROC), respectively Mizuno Baigyō and Fujii Sōsen.
Mizuno Baigyō (1877–1949) and recruiting a Manchurian delegation
In 1933, when he was asked to recruit a Manchukuo delegation, Mizuno Baigyō was a former priest (initially ordained in Sōtō Zen, later switching to Nishi Honganji, before disrobing entirely circa 1931) with decades of experience in China and ties to many key Buddhists and politicians in both China and Japan. Mizuno was the fourth son in a samurai family, born in Fukuyama in 1877, and adopted by a relative who was the abbot of a Sōtō Zen temple.Footnote 31 After completing primary school, he became a dedicated disciple of a layman named Takami Shokō, who taught Zen and Confucianism at his hermitage in Daitokuji in Kyoto. After some time studying at the Tetsugakkan in Tokyo, Mizuno returned to his studies under Takami. There, during a meditation retreat in 1897, he met Nezu Hajime (1860–1927), an Army veteran who had been director of a Sino-Japanese trade organization in Shanghai before and during the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1901, Mizuno travelled to Shanghai to attend the influential semi-governmental Japanese institute, the East Asia Common Culture Academy (J. Tōa dōbun shoin), where Nezu was headmaster.Footnote 32 Mizuno’s aim to advance Japanese interests in China was profoundly influenced by his studies under Takami and Nezu. For example, Hironaka Issei cites a 1926 article by Mizuno (under a pen name) that references Nezu’s idea that Japan could help defend East Asia from Western imperialism by following the Confucian ‘Kingly Way’ (J. ōdō) of benevolent governance, as opposed to the ‘Despotic Way’ (J. hadō) of rule by militaristic force.Footnote 33 Around the time of the second PYBA conference, Mizuno was invoking this concept of the ‘Kingly Way’ to praise Japanese rule in Manchukuo.Footnote 34
While at the East Asia Common Culture Academy, Mizuno and another Japanese priest, Itō Kendō of the Higashi Honganji sect, helped to inspire a movement to build modern schools associated with Buddhist monasteries to resist the Qing state’s confiscation of Buddhist temple properties for school construction.Footnote 35 They moved to Changsha, capital of Hunan province, where such confiscations were ‘particularly widespread’ according to Holmes Welch, and established a Buddhist school affiliated with the renowned Chan temple Kaifusi where Mizuno taught Sōtō Zen and Japanese language.Footnote 36 At the same time, they helped dozens of Chinese temples become Higashi Honganji affiliates, thus lending them Japanese diplomatic protection.Footnote 37
Around 1908, Nishi Honganji’s chief abbot Ōtani Kōzui (1876–1948) visited Mizuno’s school and the two developed a close relationship that eventually led to Mizuno changing his sectarian affiliation to Nishi Honganji.Footnote 38 Ōtani became the twenty-second chief abbot in 1903 after the death of his father, Ōtani Kōson (1850–1903), and abdicated in 1914 following a financial scandal. He strongly promoted Japanese interests in Asia, using missionary work to reinforce Japanese imperial expansion, dating to at least 1904, when he established a Nishi Honganji chapter (including a youth group) in Dalian. Kōzui is believed to have worked in military intelligence for decades, and used Mizuno as a source of information in China.Footnote 39 Conversely, Ōtani was just one power player in Mizuno’s broad network, including the Nationalist revolutionaries Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, and Song Jiaoren (and, later, Chiang Kai-shek), whom he hoped would establish a new regime that was more open to Japanese Buddhist missionaries. Mizuno argued that Japanese Buddhists could help revive Chinese Buddhism, citing the Japanese Army’s protection of a historical set of wooden printing blocks of the Tripitaka during the Boxer Rebellion. His activities in the years around the 1911 Xinhai Revolution (during which he organized battlefield hospitals) gained Mizuno a reputation as a tairiku rōnin (lit. ‘masterless samurai on the continent’). These were Japanese ‘adventurers’, often engaged in military intelligence, who promoted Japanese interests in China.
In the years following the Revolution, as the Nationalists continued to struggle to consolidate power, and now opposing the new Beiyang government led by Yuan Shikai, Mizuno amplified his brand of Buddhist tairiku rōnin activism. In 1913, he wrote to Ogawa Heikichi, a member of Japan’s House of Representatives known as a hardliner against Russia, pushing for an independent state of Manmō (Manchuria and Inner Mongolia) that could be dominated by Japanese interests, and in 1916 he wrote an article that proposed sending Japanese troops to this region.Footnote 40 At the same time, he supported the Nationalist revolutionaries, aiding their retreat to Japan after the failed Second Revolution in 1913.Footnote 41 In 1915, as a member of the Buddhist Volunteers Association (J. Bukkyōto yūshi taikai), Mizuno petitioned Japanese politicians to pursue rights for Japanese Buddhists to undertake missionary work in China. That same year, a clause for this was included in the Twenty-One Demands that Japan made on the Republic of China. After Japan withdrew this group of clauses from the final agreement, Mizuno wrote a book further promoting this cause.Footnote 42 Mizuno’s activism led to his appointment in 1921 as one of the founding directors of the Eastern News Agency (J. Tōhō tsūshinsha), a venture of Japan’s Foreign Ministry to promote Japanese interests in China, and in 1924 he started the Shina jihō (China news) magazine.Footnote 43
Between the mid-1920s and the early 1930s, Mizuno’s views became progressively non-interventionist before swinging back to supporting Japanese expansionism, all while labouring to strengthen Sino-Japanese Buddhist ties. Mizuno helped facilitate Chinese Buddhists’ relief efforts and memorial services following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake in the Tokyo area, which led to a series of exchanges that culminated in the East Asian Buddhist Conference (J. Tōa bukkyō taikai) held in Tokyo in November 1925. This conference, which Mizuno helped organize and for which he liaised with the sizeable Chinese delegation, received significant funding from the Japanese Foreign Ministry, which most likely saw promoting international Buddhist ties as a way to expand Japanese influence in China (as well as strengthen Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan and Korea).Footnote 44 However, around this time, Mizuno thought Japan could better strengthen Sino-Japanese relations through non-intervention in Chinese politics.Footnote 45 Mizuno’s new politics caused friction with Ōtani Kōzui, who supported a more aggressive policy, leading to Mizuno disrobing (distancing himself from Ōtani’s Nishi Honganji denomination) and even to the Japanese Army’s assessment of Mizuno as a potential liability.Footnote 46
However, following the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, Mizuno became a vocal advocate for a Japanese presence in Manchukuo. On 25 March 1932, weeks after the founding of Manchukuo, Mizuno authored a China News editorial exalting Manchukuo as a great opportunity for the revival of ‘Eastern culture’ (J. Tōhō bunka). The following year he extended this argument in The cultural significance of the Manchurian Incident (J. Manshū jihen no bunkateki igi) and became the founding director of the Japan-Manchuria Culture Association (J. Nichiman bunka kyōkai), publishing widely to promote Japanese-Manchurian ties.Footnote 47 As such, Mizuno was a major figure working to legitimize Manchukuo as an independent nation and Japan as a benevolent force helping to preserve and promote traditional culture on the Asian mainland.
In the autumn of 1933, Mizuno travelled to Manchukuo with instructions from the PYBA Conference Preparation Committee to recruit a delegation. His report to them upon his return suggests that he worked more closely with government and military offices than with religious leaders. In Changchun, he met with Nishiyama Masao, the puppet government’s education minister, who agreed to help select delegates and finance their travel to Japan to promote Japan-Manchuria relations. Nishiyama agreed to send 20 to 30 delegates from four of Manchukuo’s provinces, excluding the largely Mongol Xing’an Province. It is not clear whether Nishiyama’s choice to exclude Xing’an was for practical, political, or religious reasons. Then, Mizuno travelled to Rehe Province (the Inner Mongolian province of Jehol, which Japan had seized and annexed for Manchukuo that March), where he worked with interpreters from the intelligence agency of Japan’s Kwantung Army to communicate in the local dialect. Mizuno reported to the committee that, despite Sino-Japanese relations having deteriorated at that time, the situation in Manchukuo was relatively calm, so he was able to travel around the region.
No doubt Mizuno’s military escorts shaped his interactions there, and he most likely shared with them a belief that Buddhist activities such as the conference could strengthen ties between Manchukuo and Japan, but his report to the preparation committee reveals that Mizuno’s politics did not eclipse his doctrinal concerns. He reported his unease about how Buddhism in Manchuria was often mixed with elements of Chinese folk religion or Daoism, which led him to caution the Education Ministry to only select Buddhists ‘in the strict sense of the word’.Footnote 48 As with Education Minister Nishiyama’s decision to exclude Xing’an Province from the delegation, we see here how Japanese biases against who counted as ‘proper’ representatives helped shape the recruitment of the Manchurian delegation. However, against Nishiyama’s original wishes, ultimately a substantial number of the 30-member delegation were Mongolian Buddhists from Xing’an. One handwritten delegate list mentions ten ‘lamaist priests’ (J. ramasō) from Xing’an and Rehe provinces; another typed list says there were seven delegates and one translator from Xing’an; and a photo from a conference publication shows a seated group of eight ‘lamaist priests’.Footnote 49 The inclusion of the Mongolians may have been Mizuno’s doing, as he had long championed strengthening Japanese influence in Inner Mongolia. For example, around the time of the conference he seems to have been involved in allocating monies to repair the ‘lamaist’ Wutasi (Five Pagoda Temple) in Hohhot, a project that he held up as evidence of the benefit of Japanese cooperation and assistance to the young nation of Manchukuo.Footnote 50
Fujii Sōsen (1896–1971) and recruiting a Chinese delegation
In contrast to the relative ease with which Mizuno arranged a Manchurian delegation, Fujii Sōsen, a ‘China hand’ a generation younger than Mizuno, had a much more difficult time recruiting delegates from the ROC. In some ways Fujii was among Mizuno’s protégés, but their political differences became clear in the 1930s, with Fujii expressing greater distaste for Japan’s growing militarism. Fujii had been raised in a Higashi Honganji temple family and would be involved with this sect throughout his life.Footnote 51 After graduating from Ōtani University in 1922, he reported for the influential Buddhist newspaper Chūgai nippō until 1924 (although he remained a frequent contributor for years). His interest in China and Chinese Buddhism grew while helping Mizuno organize the 1925 East Asian Buddhist Conference, and in 1928, with funding from the Foreign Ministry, he began to study at the same East Asia Common Culture Academy in Shanghai where Mizuno had studied decades prior. While there, he became close to many Chinese monks and Buddhist laypeople, including several on whom he would rely when recruiting a delegation to the second PYBA conference.
The early months of 1934 saw some promising leads for recruiting a Chinese delegation, but as there was more public discussion of the conference and its political meanings in the spring and summer, most Chinese Buddhists came to consider attendance undesirable. Japan’s Foreign Ministry made several statements (including the controversial ‘Amau statement’ of 17 April) that China was within Japan’s sphere of influence, so any foreign influence in China, even trade or aid, threatened peace in East Asia. Many Chinese and Westerners saw these calls for Western noninterference in China as Japan’s declaration of an ‘Asian Monroe Doctrine’, which they considered an unacceptable violation of Chinese sovereignty, stoking the already considerable anti-Japanese sentiment in the ROC following Japanese military actions in Manchuria in 1931 and in Shanghai in 1932.Footnote 52 Moreover, throughout the summer months there were several more ‘incidents’—including one particularly infelicitously timed for Fujii’s mission, described in more detail below—suggesting that further military aggression was forthcoming, thus strengthening arguments to boycott the conference.
In February 1934, the influential Japanese Buddhist newspaper Chūgai nippō ran two unsigned articles that described the difficulties in recruiting a Chinese delegation. First, on 22 February, an article stated, ‘it seems that the conference will have no Chinese attendees’ aside from the Manchurian delegation, and raised concerns that this absence would undermine the conference’s significance. It then mentioned that Fujii was seeking the permission of the conference organizers to travel to major Chinese cities to try to recruit delegates.Footnote 53 Then, three days later, a follow-up article tried to reassure readers that these anxieties were most likely baseless.Footnote 54 This latter article reported that the Conference Preparation Committee had named Fujii head of the communication section’s ROC team and recounted that Fujii had been working with a Chinese monk named Mochan (d.u.) to communicate with ROC Buddhist organizations. A native of Zhejiang, Mochan had graduated from Taixu’s Wuchang Buddhist Academy and taught at the Minnan Buddhist Academy in Xiamen before coming to Tokyo in 1931 to study at Taishō University.Footnote 55
The 25 February article described several potential leads for the Chinese delegation. Mochan had reportedly received a letter from Daxing (1899–1952), editor-in-chief of the Chinese Buddhist periodical Haichaoyin (Sound of the Tides) and co-founder of the Minnan Buddhist Academy, reporting that five or six students from the Wuchang Buddhist Academy (where Mochan and Daxing had studied together) would attend.Footnote 56 It then described a second letter that Fujii had received from the Japanese priest Kanda Eun (1901–1948), head of Higashi Honganji’s temple in Xiamen, instructor at the Minnan Academy, and a friend of Daxing, expressing Kanda’s excitement about the conference. He had indirectly heard about it about via two more of Mochan’s letters: one to Cai Jitang (1904–1996),Footnote 57 a Taiwan-born layperson who had studied with Taixu and YinguangFootnote 58 and had become an important member of the Buddhist youth association at Kanda’s temple; and another to the monk Dengxia (d.u.), who had studied with Kanda, was currently living at the World Buddhist Study Association (Ch. Shijie foxuehui) in Nanjing, and was a frequent contributor to Haichaoyin. While the article asserted that Kanda, Cai Jitang, and Dengxia (all friends of Fujii) were all eager to attend, it also concluded on a more regretful note by acknowledging that Taixu himself, whom the organizers had hoped would lead the Chinese delegation, might not attend due to unnamed ‘circumstances’, and that the Conference Preparation Committee was currently deliberating on sending Fujii to China to recruit a more robust delegation. Given Fujii’s ties to the Chūgai nippō, it is possible he anonymously authored or instigated these unsigned articles to use his media connections to pressure the conference organizers to fund his travel to China because of his (legitimate) concerns over the Sino-Japanese political situation’s impact on a Chinese delegation.
On 1 April 1934, the JYBA published a Summary of progress preparing for the second PYBA conference (hereafter Summary of progress). The section ‘Communication with the Republic of China’ repeated much of the information from the 25 February article. This section is bookended with concerns about the relationship between the delegation and Sino-Japanese politics, opening with a statement that there were considerable fears that ‘the Sino-Japanese incident’ (i.e. the invasion of Manchuria and establishment of Manchukuo) would prevent any Chinese delegation from attending, and closing with a hope that a substantial delegation would be a great help towards restoring harmonious Sino-Japanese relations, which had deteriorated since the 1931 invasion of Manchuria and 1932 attack on Shanghai. It also reported that Mochan had been doing office work at the JYBA headquarters (although it is unclear whether as an employee or a volunteer) and describes receiving a letter from Taixu that recommended several more Chinese Buddhists as delegates, including Changxing (1896–1939) of the Minnan Buddhist Academy, Tanxuan of the Wuchang Buddhist Academy, Dengxia, and the laypeople Cai Jitang and Lu Foxin (another former Wuchang student). It again mentions Fujii’s aspiration to travel to the ROC to recruit even more delegates.Footnote 59
Then, on 6 and 8 May, the Chūgai nippō published a two-part article by Fujii that described in confrontational, if coded, terms the dilemma he faced trying to recruit a Chinese delegation.Footnote 60 He referred to a ‘certain influential person’ who had said that efforts to invite a Chinese delegation were doomed to be as unsuccessful as they were for the first PYBA conference four years prior, so the organizers would have to settle for simply having a Manchurian delegation. However, citing another, more encouraging, senior colleague in Osaka, Fujii punned that, without delegates from the ROC, it would not be a ‘pan-Pacific’ conference, but rather a ‘half-Pacific’ conference (both pronounced han-Taiheiyō). Unfortunately, he said, the JYBA was not supporting his travel to recruit a Chinese delegation due to a lack of response to their invitation letters and also because the ‘certain central figure’ whom they had asked to lead the delegation (i.e. Taixu) had declined to do so.
Fujii complained that the JYBA was unsupportive of his efforts to recruit Chinese delegates because its leaders were reactionary elders who, he said, ‘instinctively dislike youth movements’ yet refused to relinquish their control of the organization. He also accused them of a kind of ‘self-glorifying belligerence’ that he said was typical of many Japanese, who saw themselves as the ‘leader of Asia’, but ‘prefer to solve problems with the bayonet and are even more eager to conquer than the military’. He continued that ‘if Japan is actually a superior country’, it could peacefully ‘unite minds’ so that Asia would become ‘one body’ (J. dōshin ittai) and thus ‘properly lead the people of the undeveloped nations’.Footnote 61 Fujii’s words echo the pan-Asian strain of Japanese imperial thought, like the 1930s slogan of Japan and Korea being one body (J. naisen ittai), illustrating how even the JYBA’s younger ‘progressives’ saw Japanese Buddhists as having a crucial role to play in guiding the development of Japan’s neighbours, though they contrasted their vision of benign imperialism with their compatriots’ zeal for crude colonization through military force.
Despite the lack of JYBA support for Fujii’s proposed trip and the understandable anti-Japanese sentiment in the ROC, Fujii vowed there would be a Chinese delegation, and the 8 May article suggested that he was hopeful. In addition to the names mentioned in the Summary of progress, he provided several other names, such as Zhifeng (1901–1971), and mentioned institutions where he and Mochan were hoping to recruit delegates. He also clarified that Taixu was unlikely to attend as he was in the midst of negotiations with the ROC government regarding regulations on Buddhist education and ordination, which helped the conference organizers save some face. Most importantly, Fujii announced that he had arranged to guide the famous scholar of Buddhism Suzuki Daisetsu (also known as D. T. Suzuki, 1870–1966) through China to meet important Chinese Buddhists from late May into June. As this trip may have received funding from the Foreign Ministry and was partly facilitated through Japanese consulates in China,Footnote 62 there is a certain irony that Fujii’s trip to recruit a Chinese delegation was made possible through government assistance, while the conference’s political ties would ultimately doom his efforts. Still, Fujii was hopeful that the second PYBA conference would be ‘taking the first step towards a long-term plan of a hundred years of Sino-Japanese Buddhist relations’.Footnote 63
Unfortunately, Fujii’s dream was not to be. As indicated in this article’s introduction, the tide largely turned around the protests regarding the conference organizers’ treatment of Manchukuo. Not only had the organizers included Manchukuo as a nation among other nations (whereas the Chinese considered it a ‘fake country’ or weiguo), they even placed it above the ROC in the list of participating nations. Thus, the conference was seen as a Japanese government tool to use Buddhism as a means to legitimize Manchukuo (which was, as of the summer of 1934, only diplomatically recognized by Japan, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic) in international affairs.
Starting in late May, many Chinese newspapers strongly denounced the conference, listing the names of Chinese Buddhists who were reportedly planning to attend, and condemning anyone who attended as traitors to the Republic.Footnote 64 Prominent Buddhists, including Taixu, Daxing, and Changxing, were listed as going to or supporting the conference.Footnote 65 The popular (and strongly anti-Japanese) Shanghai newspapers Shenbao and Dawanbao (Evening News) were particularly incendiary, calling the conference a form of ‘religious aggression’. For example, on 26 May, Shenbao published an article titled, ‘The truth about the participants in the national humiliation conference: Taixu’s disciples collaborating with the Japanese’, which cited the abovementioned articles from the Chūgai nippō as well as a letter to the prospective delegates published in the Chaozhou-based Buddhist publication Renhaideng (Lamp of Humanity). As the article’s title suggests, its author considered the possibility that Chinese Buddhists would attend the conference to be a ‘national humiliation’ and blamed this ‘secret collusion’ (Ch. mimi goujie) on Taixu’s disciples (and, by extension, Taixu himself).Footnote 66 In response, Taixu wrote an open letter disavowing accusations that his disciples were collaborating with the Japanese to attract a PYBA delegation,Footnote 67 as well as the article cited in the introduction, in which he called for an international group of organizers for the third PYBA conference to avoid similar incidents in the future.Footnote 68
Meanwhile, Suzuki’s tour had taken Fujii to a number of important temples around Ningbo in Zhejiang province. The abbot of Tiantong Temple, Yuanying (1878–1953), was also the president (and co-founder, with Taixu) of the Chinese Buddhist Association (Zhongguo fojiao hui; hereafter CBA), which was about to have its national conference at which participation in the PYBA conference was to be debated.Footnote 69 Fujii had high hopes for their meeting, as winning over Yuanying could result in attracting a sizeable delegation. Fujii’s meeting with Yuanying occurred on the auspicious date of the lunar celebration of the Buddha’s birth (in the very year alleged to be the two thousand five hundredth anniversary of his birth), a few days before the media firestorm started, but regardless it seems to have been something of a bust.Footnote 70 On the other hand, Fujii made other promising contacts at Tiantong who agreed to help recruit delegates.Footnote 71
After Ningbo, Fujii travelled with Suzuki to Nanjing, where the Japanese vice consul, Kuramoto Hideaki, arranged a meeting between their party and ROC Premier Wang Jingwei on 2 June.Footnote 72 Fujii asked Wang whether anything could be done about the negative press, which was particularly concerning to Taixu and his students, and apparently Wang nervously responded that the ROC supported both freedom of religion and freedom of speech, so Chinese Buddhists and the Chinese newspapers were both free to do as they pleased.Footnote 73
On 10–11 June, the CBA held their sixth National Conference in Shanghai, attended by over a hundred people, including many of the top figures in Chinese Buddhism as well as three representatives of the Shanghai city government.Footnote 74 Unfortunately for Fujii and others hoping for a robust Chinese delegation to the PYBA conference, this meeting came at the relative high point of Sino-Japanese tensions in the summer of 1934: the so-called ‘Secretary Kuramoto disappearance incident’ (J. Kuramoto shokisei shissō jiken). On the morning of 9 June, Vice Consul Kuramoto (who had accompanied Fujii and Suzuki to meet Premier Wang a week prior) went missing in Nanjing and the Japanese consulate responded by having the Imperial Navy dispatch warships to the ROC capital. Although Kuramoto turned up on the 13 June with no foul play involved in his disappearance, the week was full of heightened rhetoric and real fears that Japan would use his disappearance as a pretence for a full-on invasion of the Republican capital.Footnote 75 Amid this crisis, the CBA resolved that no members should attend the PYBA conference and several young Buddhists who had previously wished to attend declared that they would not, for fear that, with the whole country’s eyes upon them (and with the Shanghai city government’s involvement), their attendance would cause all Chinese Buddhists to be considered ‘national disgraces’ (Ch. guoru) or ‘traitors’.Footnote 76
In the end, Fujii drew on personal connections to bring eight official delegates to the conference to represent the ROC, a delegation so disappointingly small that it was commented on in official conference materials (excerpted below). As a comparison, the South Pacific Mandate (population 80,000, with a Buddhist history dating only to the beginning of Japanese occupation in 1914) also sent eight delegates. The ‘Chinese’ delegation was chaired by the Nishi Honganji minister Kanda Eun and one of the other ‘Chinese’ delegates was also a Japanese national working in China.Footnote 77 This willingness to consider that Japanese Buddhists could represent non-Japanese nations was a shift from the consensus of the first PYBA conference, where a Japanese Buddhist missionary working in Pusan asked to be considered to be part of the Korean delegation (alongside the Korean Buddhist nationalist Toh Chinho) but was denied and grouped with the Japanese delegation instead.Footnote 78
The six more properly ‘Chinese’ delegates from the ROC included the layman Cai Jitang (from Xiamen) and the father-and-son pair, Ruan Ziyang and Ruan Shiyuan.Footnote 79 Despite being listed as an official delegate in the conference materials, the elder Ruan (a graduate of Toyo University who was fluent in Japanese) gave several speeches prior to the start of the conference in which he emphasized that he was attending in his personal capacity (that is, not as a representative of any organization).Footnote 80 It appears that more Chinese Buddhists attended the conference, but may have chosen not to be listed as delegates to avoid reprisals. A Chūgai nippō article published days before the conference began suggested that 12 Chinese would be in attendance: six official delegates and six attending in their personal capacity.Footnote 81 For example, the monk Tanxuan of the Wuchang Buddhist Academy apparently attended the conference despite not appearing on the official registration.Footnote 82
Japanese imperialists at the second PYBA conference
The second PYBA conference, held from 17–23 July in Tokyo and Kyoto with side trips to Mount Kōya and Hiroshima, was a massive event. As mentioned in the introduction, the official delegate count was 666 and, with hundreds of local volunteers working as support staff, roughly a thousand people were involved. Naturally, an event of that size, with attendees from across the Japanese empire (including Taiwan, Korea, and the South Seas Mandate), Manchukuo, the Republic of China, Canada, the United States (and the U.S. Territory of Hawai‘i), Siam, India, Ceylon, and Burma, would incorporate a variety of political and Buddhological positions.Footnote 83 But, as Tsujimura Shinobu and Sueki Fumihiko have pointed out, Japanese Buddhism’s spiritual supremacy as the ultimate flowering of the Dharma (perhaps implying a kind of divine right to rule Asia) was a recurrent motif throughout the talks given at the conference.Footnote 84 Moreover, the speeches given by various officials papered over the problem of Japan’s ongoing imperial endeavours, including in Manchuria, in the name of fostering international goodwill and harmony through an emphasis on their shared faith.
Several prominent figures involved with the conference were active agents of Japanese imperialism. The most explicit were the two speakers from Japan’s Foreign Ministry—Foreign Minister Hirota Kōki (1878–1948) and Vice Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru (1887–1957)—both of whom were closely involved in efforts to strengthen Japanese dominance over China and legitimate Manchukuo; they would later both be convicted of war crimes at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials.Footnote 85 On the first day of the conference, Shigemitsu gave a welcoming address to the delegates in which he called Buddhism ‘the greatest religion in the world’, and said the conference was a most timely undertaking to employ Buddhism to ‘spiritually unite’ the nations bordering the Pacific, generating ‘mutual goodwill and harmonious relationships’.Footnote 86 That afternoon, Hirota hosted a Foreign Ministry reception at the prime minister’s residence, where in his speech to over 300 delegates he recounted how he himself had received initial ordination (J. tokudo) 35 years earlier and had been a believer ever since, so he felt overjoyed to be among an international group of Buddhists who shared his faith and feelings.Footnote 87 In addition to this address, Hirota personally communicated with the conference president, Shibata Ichinō (1873–1951), to authorize 5,000 yen from the Foreign Ministry to defray the travel expenses of delegates from Manchukuo and the ROC, in support of ‘Buddhists’ international goodwill and the overseas promotion of Japanese culture’.Footnote 88 Whatever their personal beliefs regarding Buddhism, these Foreign Ministry leaders clearly considered the conference to be part of a broader project of Japan-led pan-Asianism, which fostered international solidarity that could offset tensions over Japan’s imperial endeavours in Asia, including Manchuria.
The conference’s ‘honorary president’ (J. sōsai) was Ōtani Son’yū (1886–1939), a member of the House of Peers and another figure who illustrates the entanglements between Japanese Buddhism and imperial politics. Son’yū’s father, Ōtani Kōson, had been the twentieth chief abbot of Nishi Honganji; his older brother, the aforementioned Ōtani Kōzui, had been the twenty-first chief abbot; and his nephew, Ōtani Kōshō, was the current twenty-second chief abbot. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Kōzui assigned Son’yū to head the Nishi Honganji branch in Dalian, later considered to be the beginning of Japanese Buddhism’s advances into Manchuria. On this mission, Son’yū worked closely with the Japanese military, using space he had been given in a military building as the initial Nishi Honganji branch office, and, after the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, he became the director of missionary work for the sect in China.Footnote 89 Like his brother and Mizuno, Son’yū developed ties to the Nationalist government in the years around the Xinhai Revolution, which he used to promote Honganji interests in China.Footnote 90 He was also involved with expanding Nishi Honganji branches in Korea, which were closely tied to promoting Japanese imperial ideology there.Footnote 91 Son’yū was elevated to the House of Peers in 1928 and, in the years following the conference, he became Minister of Colonial Affairs in Konoe Fumimaro’s cabinet and director of the North China Development Corporation (J. Kita Shina Kaihatsu kabushiki kaisha), which played a major role in Japan’s empire.Footnote 92
Like the members of the Foreign Ministry, in his capacity at the conference, Ōtani Son’yū similarly invoked Buddhism’s capacity to help ensure international harmony in the Pacific region. His opening remarks appealed to delegates to apply their ‘fervent religious spirit’ to discuss ‘international problems’ in a cooperative and unified manner. He said that to simply discuss the issues from their individual perspectives as representatives of their organizations would undermine the purpose of the conference, so they needed to overcome their particular allegiances in the name of solidarity. Establishing common ground, he said, would contribute to world peace by promoting goodwill and harmony among the nations of the Pacific.Footnote 93 The problem, of course, is that no amount of religious fellowship generated at the conference could make up for the facts on the ground: the Japanese empire had invaded Manchuria and installed a puppet government; Chinese Buddhists largely agreed that the PYBA conference was helping to legitimate that government by treating Manchukuo as an independent nation; the conspicuous absence of a sizeable delegation from the Republic of China meant that discussion of the most pressing ‘international problem’ would necessarily be limited; and any consensus that could be reached would have little, if any, impact in China itself.
The Chinese delegation at the conference
The conference proceedings contain reports on how the various delegations were recruited. The report on the recruitment of the Manchurian delegation is quite similar to that in the Summary of progress published three months before the conference, but the report on China required significant updating to explain the controversy and the small delegation. The English version (which accurately translates the Japanese version) reads:
In May, 1934 … a certain group of people in China put forth a view in the papers to say that ‘the Second General Conference of Pan-Pacific Young Buddhists’ Associations was a plan to make the foreign countries extend de jure recognition to Manchukuo, a fictitious country, and because it is an insult to China to see Manchukuo ranked first and China sitting next, the Chinese Republic should on no account be represented in the forthcoming conference.’ The public opinion in that country was greatly agitated, the anti-Conference view running all over the country…
That the General Conference was to be held, in consonance with the political intention of the Japanese Government, with a view to make other countries recognize Manchukuo was a serious misunderstanding on the part of China. But, as it was a thing that happened close after the Manchurian Incident, it was perhaps but natural that the course of event [sic] took such a turn, for which the organisers of the Conference now feel a great regret.Footnote 94
In the section on the proceedings in which the delegates reported on the status of the Buddhist youth movement in their respective countries, the Chinese delegation report was provided by Fujii Sōsen and the Manchurian delegation submitted no report.Footnote 95 At the conference, the Chinese and Manchurian delegations seem to have played relatively minor roles, with little representation in the various meetings and thus authoring few of the bills and resolutions passed in those meetings. Out of the 124 bills recorded in the proceedings, none of them appears to have been written by Chinese or Manchurian delegates, and the only motion recorded from those delegations was one by Sun Cuo (a diplomat from the Manchurian embassy) to hold the third PYBA conference in Manchukuo.
The main contributions of these two delegations seems to have been speeches given on the evening of the second day: a Japanese-language speech by Ruan Ziyang entitled ‘Buddhism and true friendship in Asia’ and a Chinese-language speech (translated into Japanese by the Manchurian diplomat Sun Cuo) by a leader of the Manchurian delegation, Ven. Ruguang (1895–1962), titled ‘Buddhism is the gate of happiness’.Footnote 96 Both speeches expressed the hope that Buddhism would unite the world’s nations to transcend the various dangers of their time and foster a new ‘Pacific era’ (J. Taiheiyō jidai), and that this conference was an important step towards realizing those goals. As one might expect from the titles, Ruguang’s speech was more flattering towards Japan, arguing that the problems currently facing humanity were because Buddhism, ‘the spiritual civilization of the East’, had not yet spread worldwide, and therefore ‘it is a great blessing for the future of humanity that we are able to participate in this conference held in the imperial capital of Japan, where Buddhism is the most developed’ (a line that received applause).Footnote 97 Ruan’s speech had a more critical bent, as one of its central metaphors was the idea that Buddhist youth could prompt each of the countries of Asia to perform an ‘about-face’ (J. maware migi) in both domestic and foreign affairs, to set them on a path of ‘spiritual solidarity’ that would return them to ‘the way of the Buddha’.Footnote 98 While this language is indirect, it could certainly be understood as critical of Japan’s current foreign policy. As this section of Ruan’s speech is also recorded as having received ample applause, it might be inferred that some proportion of the audience assembled in Tokyo on that July night was similarly unhappy with Japanese militarism in China.
Conclusion
The second PYBA conference was a flashpoint in the relationship between Japanese and Chinese Buddhists, demonstrating that their shared goals of pan-Buddhist solidarity to achieve international goodwill, even world peace, overlaid complex political and moral landscapes. In this context, the peace, harmony, and goodwill described in the conference prospectus could be understood as acceptance, even endorsement, of Japanese militarism and imperial expansionism. The prospectus implored its Buddhist readers ‘not to sit with folded arms’ in light of the potential ‘crisis in the Pacific’ foreshadowed by ‘the present political situation’, but rather to come together with their co-religionists ‘to form a Buddhist block [sic] of the Y.M.B.A.s of the countries bordering on the Pacific, through which to seek a real goodwill and understanding’. At face value, this could be read as a mea culpa by its Japanese authors, acknowledging the unethical actions by their military and state actors. However, the organizers’ aspiration to overcome political differences and host Chinese Buddhists was undermined by treating Manchukuo as a legitimate independent nation (despite its rejection by the international community) and their working closely with the Foreign Ministry. In this sense, even if the organizers’ intentions were sincere, they can be seen as appropriating pan-Buddhist solidarity and anti-colonial language in ways that accommodated Japanese imperialism, just as Japanese Pan-Asianists across the political spectrum had legitimized the annexation of Korea and an ‘Asian Monroe Doctrine’ as part of creating an ‘East Asian bloc’ under Japanese rule for the good of all parties concerned.Footnote 99 Their accommodationism can also be seen in the choice of honorary president for the conference, Ōtani Son’yū, who worked at the nexus of Japanese Buddhism and Japanese imperialism, and in the choice to have Foreign Minister Hirota and Vice Foreign Minister Shigemitsu address the delegates. And we have already seen how Mizuno Baigyō, like other conference organizers, lauded the ideals of peace and international goodwill while publicly supporting Japanese military expansionism.
However, such flagrant imperialists were most likely in the minority of attendees and many of the actors involved with the conference occupied a kind of ‘grey zone’ between collaboration with and resistance to Japan’s wartime empire. In contrast to Mizuno, the younger Fujii Sōsen was willing to take a stronger stance against Japan’s growing militarism in the 1930s while also sharing Mizuno’s belief that strengthening Buddhist identities in East Asia could reinforce Sino-Japanese relations. Fujii’s position was complex, as he believed that Japan had a unique role to play in leading the region, while being opposed to the means by which it was being carried out. Similarly, he expressed sympathy for the concerns of Chinese Buddhists but still implored them to attend the conference.
Ruan Ziyang could also be considered to fall in this ‘grey zone’. In addition to his conference speech described above, he wrote an article with the same title (but different content) published in the Chūgai nippō on the first day of the conference. This article bluntly stated that nothing positive had come out of the roughly 25 years of talking about ‘Sino-Japanese goodwill’ (J. Nisshi shinzen) and, on the contrary, when a Chinese person heard a Japanese person use this phrase, they should be cautious. Moreover, this phrase’s ambiguities and ‘extreme contradictions’ had accompanied the two nations falling together into a dark, deep, bottomless valley. Despite this critique, Ruan remained hopeful that Japan and China could overcome this ‘false goodwill’ and achieve a true goodwill not only between themselves, but also across Asia.Footnote 100 This article is a good example of how the Pan-Asianist ideals of the early twentieth century continued into Japan’s wartime empire, although many who espoused them struggled to maintain their optimism in the face of Japan’s growing militarism.
The eruption of total war between Japan and China in 1937 caused the cancellation of the planned third PYBA conference, which some (including Ruguang) were trying to hold in Manchukuo. However, as Yukiko Sakaida’s article in this issue explores, figures involved with the second PYBA conference, including Fujii Sōsen and Kanda Eun, continued to try to use Buddhist institutions to benefit the Chinese people under Japanese rule. Similar meetings and conferences continued to be held in occupied territories and under the Wang Jingwei regime, such as the meetings of the Mahayana Buddhist Youth Association (Ch. Dasheng fojiao qingnianhui) in Xiamen and the East Asia Buddhist Conference (Ch. Dongya fojiao dahui) in Nanjing in 1941. In the late 1930s, Fujii was given authority in Higashi Honganji’s growing missionary work in occupied China, while also trying to find ways to promote Chinese Buddhism and support Chinese autonomy.Footnote 101 In 1935, Fujii and Kanda Eun organized the Sino-Japanese Buddhist Studies Association (J. Chūnichi butsu gakkai), which also included Ruan Ziyang and Cai Jitang.Footnote 102 Due to his divided commitments to Japanese Buddhism and Chinese welfare, Fujii typifies occupying the complex ‘grey zone’ between collaboration and resistance in Japan’s wartime empire. Sadly, as Japan grew increasingly fascist, such positions became untenable, and his work to promote Buddhism in occupied China was most likely related to his arrest in 1943 by the Special Higher Police and imprisonment in 1944.Footnote 103
It is possible that some of the young Chinese Buddhists who attended or had hoped to attend the conference in 1934 planned to leverage their Buddhist alliances to promote their own political agendas in the way that Toh Chinho did at the first PYBA conference in Honolulu in 1930. As I continue to research this conference’s delegates (and would-be delegates), I expect to find more examples like Devapriya Valisinha, an anti-colonial activist who also considered Japanese power uniquely capable of making Buddhism into the world religion, and Fujii Sōsen, who critiqued Japanese rule by ‘the bayonet’, while also believing in Japan’s capacity to lead the region towards a peaceful, prosperous age where the Dharma might flourish. The contradictions of ethical action under empire led (and lead) some ‘progressives’ to work within illiberal regimes in ways that cannot be clearly said to be collaboration or resistance, but rather something in-between.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Erik Schicketanz for organizing this Forum, as well as his feedback and help in collecting primary sources. Many thanks also to Ōtani Eiichi and Nakanishi Naoki for their advice and support regarding this research. Thanks also to Bianca Chui, Zeryab Shabbir, Bernie Shen, Itō Eri, and Ueda Kakuya for their help with sources and to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their feedback.
Funding statement
Research for this article was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Research Fellowship #P17745 and the Kwantlen Polytechnic University 0.6% Faculty Professional Development Fund.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
