[Buddha-l] The upaya express

[Dan Lusthaus]

> Ok, so if they've traditionally made most of their bread off the
> funeral biz and didn't do much for duhkha, then who did? Pure
> Land? Sokka gakkai? or are they all going Christian like most of
> the Koreans did?
>
> JK

Complicated. Without doing a somewhat detailed survey, difficult to answer 
adequately, but the short(er) answer is something like:

These are all included in what I was describing as Japanese Buddhism. Zen 
has always been a minority tradition in Japan -- though we in the west often 
treat it metonymically as "Japanese Buddhism." Largest Japanese sect is Pure 
Land (Jodo). Shingon, Tendai, Nichiren all have far more adherents (though 
"membership" can often be merely a nominal family association that one is 
unaware of until a familiy member dies and one has to figure out which 
Buddhist group the familiy traditionally belongs to, in order to arrange the 
funeral). Don't have the actual current figures on hand (google, etc., 
should be able to provide them, but Zen affiliates are a fraction of the 
others.

Nichiren and Soka gakkai (before the latter splintered off from the former) 
were considerable, with a political party that accounted for a major chunk 
of the Japanese parliament. Despite numerous scandals, Soka Gakkai forges 
on. Their rhetoric is about world peace, etc.; the scandals involve arms 
dealings, illegal art trade, etc. One of the recent Jodo Shinshu responses 
to the "crisis" of Japanese Buddhism is to invent even more elaborate 
pre-death funerary rituals (borrowing in odd and creative ways from the 
Western Death-and-dying movements), all with a price tag, all with pastoral 
counseling in mind. When I suggested a few years ago to some of the leaders 
that if they wanted to do something for Japanese culture, instead of these 
gentrified rituals, they tackle the problem of suicide (which has been 
astronomical in Japan, and has taken on multiple social forms), they just 
stared at me speechless. Not in their vocabulary. (and not lucrative?)

As Franz noted, Japanese are not converting to Christianity outright in any 
significant numbers, but Christian influence has been infiltrating Japanese 
culture in many ways. The Japanese seriously underestimate the long range 
impact. Just as in the west "Buddhism" carries an air of the exotic, the 
different, the fresh air that revitalizes stale spirituality, in Japan 
Buddhism is the old fashioned, old time, obsolete, superstitious, familiar, 
worn out, untrustworthy tradition, and Christianity is exotic, new, 
associated with the West and prosperity. Japanese marry in churches, in 
tuxedos and western-style wedding gowns in elaborately overly expensive 
affairs, western style.

Japanese who come to the West typically convert, since they usually have 
little to no commitment to their family's traditional denominational 
affiliation (if they even know what it is).

Born Shinto, Wed Christian, Die Buddhist (only, the last is starting to 
fade).

Dan