[Buddha-l] Japanese Buddhism in decline

[Jamie Hubbard]

Both of those articles were very misleading. Buddhism is thriving in Japan, though perhaps not the sort of thing that makes many of the traditional funeral Buddhist types happy--although that too is thriving, just in rather changed ways (look at some of the work by Mark Rowe of McMaster University). New Buddhist movements are extremely vigorous and growing, and the older forms of devotion are also continuing well (look at Sarah Horton's new book on "Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan." And so too the Western "convert" sort of movements (Tibetan, Zen, insight meditation, etc.) are also finding "converts" all over Japan.
 
The rumor of the death of Buddhism in Japan has been greatly exaggerated.

 
>>> Franz Metcalf <franz at mind2mind.net> 7/14/2008 2:06 PM >>>
Gang,

An article on Buddhism in contemporary Japan that fails to mention the  
two most popular forms of Buddhism there! Sheesh. Thanks, though, to  
Erik and Dan for the links. Taken together, the two articles are  
evocative (though they remain anecdotal). I liked the suggestion, at  
the end of the Asahi Shimbun article, that temples move back toward  
their (possibly imagined) pre-Meiji roles as community centers where  
life and joy were part of the mix. That's what Pure Land temples are  
trying to do here in the States, and that may be a model Japanese  
temples could emulate.

But perhaps the world is moving beyond Buddhism. What good it has done  
in history might now be accomplished via other means. Popularizers  
(not mentioning any names) seem to want to reduce Buddhism to some  
kind of DIY psychological grab-bag, so "Buddhism" is thinning out or  
drying up, no matter what we think about it. Perhaps it's inevitable.  
This *is* mappo, after all.

Franz
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