traditions within Buddhist studies can also be called premodern comparative
religion, which can be described as either an inclusivist or an exclusivist theory
of religious pluralism for Buddhist apologetic purposes.
7 The grouping of the three ‘religions’ was already customary in China, as He
Guanghu points out in this volume.
8 He developed his approach apart from Western influence in the sense that he
could not access Western literature because it was a period of national isolation.
To take a broad view, it was in part contact with Western countries from the
sixteenth to the early seventeenth century that weakened the authority of
Buddhist schools and made it easier for later scholars like Tominaga to critique
Buddhist scriptures objectively.
9 Nevertheless, just as Confucianism is not necessarily included in the category of
‘religion’ today, these ‘-isms’ were not always conceived of as the same in kind
back then. Confucian scholars, who promoted rational thinking, grouped
Buddhism and Christianity together, arguing that both of them presented illusory
worldviews, which functioned to govern the uneducated populace (Shimazono
1998: 72). If they had known modern Western terminology, they would have
said that Buddhism and Christianity were irrational religions, while Confucianism
was a secular philosophy or science.
10 With regard to this, Tsuneya Wakimoto (1983: 16–17) examines the differences
between Japanese pluralism and Western tolerance and dialogue. Japanese
pluralism is based on the idea of the common root of all religions, while Western
tolerance or interreligious dialogue often presupposes fundamental differences
of religions. According to him, many Japanese scholars of religion used to share
the idea. In addition, Susumu Shimazono (1982) argues that pluralism in Japan
helped scholars to relativize individual religions, which was a condition for the
development of Religionswissenschaft.
11 Officially they were not called ‘universities’ but were denoted by names such as
senmon gakko(professional school) and juku(private school).
12 Strictly speaking, Anesaki became a professor in the field of religious studies in
- At the same time, an independent program of religious studies was set
up. What was created in the following year was a formal ‘chair’ (kÿza) of religious
studies. It can be said that the department of religious studies had virtually existed
for a year, but it is conventional to regard 1905 as the startup year of modern
religious studies in Japan (Fujii 1982: 22–23).
13 At the same time, many of them were affiliated with one religion or another. It
is also true that they were inclined to specialize in religions of their own faiths.
14 Later scholars of religion referred to this trait as the ‘psychologism’ of the
Japanese tradition of religious studies (Oguchi 1956).
15 Fujiwara (1998) compares the study of religious experience of an early Japanese
scholar with that of Rudolf Otto. On the other hand, Isomae (2003) criticizes
the de-politicized view of religion among Japanese scholars of religion.
16 While these thinkers’ works remain classics today, there are thinkers who were
popular at that time but are so no longer, such as G. Stanley Hall and James
H. Leuba (Oguchi 1956: 8).
17 To be precise, Japanese regarded those colonized Asians at once as ‘others’ in
other cultures and as ‘family members’ in the same Asia, to be protected from
the West by the power of the Japanese emperor as their ‘father’. The latter
rhetoric justified Japanese colonization.
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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
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30111
1
2
3
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35
6
7
8
9
40111
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