116 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
Ideology in Modern Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
26 (1999), pp. 83–106. Moreover, in the early 1910s, the Shinshu
socialist and pacifist Takagi Kemmyo strongly criticized the reading
of Shinran’s injunction to say the nenbutsu for the sake of the im-
perial court as advocating subservience. He points out how later in
the same letter Shinran encourages the fellowship to recite the nen-
butsu “with the wish ‘May there be peace in the world and may the
Buddha’s teaching spread’”. This latter injunction seems to contra-
dict the violent and repressive policies of “the imperial court” (at
Takagi’s time) and cannot be understood as implying obedience, but
simply as a wish for the wellbeing of all, including those opposed to
the nenbutsu. The increasingly militarized Japanese state of the early
20 th century seems to sit awkwardly with the wish for peace and so
Takagi refuses to imagine that compliance with its policies could be
justified in any way through Shinran’s teaching. Takagi thus confronts
the Shinshu scholars who legitimate the imperial polity through this
particular letter: “Although the passage above is a gospel for peace,
have people mistaken it for the sound of a bugle commanding us to
attack the enemy? Or did I mistake the bells and drums of battle for
injunctions for peace?” Takagi Kemmyo, “My Socialism”, in Living
in Amida’s Universal Vow, Alfred Bloom, ed., (Bloomington, Indiana:
World Wisdom, 2004), p. 193.
- A Collection of Letters V. CWS, p. 565.
- Ibid.
- A Record in Lament of Divergences. Tannisho, Postcript. CWS,
p. 679; A Record in Lament of Divergences. Tannisho II. CWS, p. 662.
The Kalama sutta from the Pali canon features the historical Buddha
exhorting his audience not to rely on authority, received tradition, or
well-sounding words. The Buddha insists that every individual should
question and test everything they hear and then decide for themselves
whether it is true or not. See Tannisaro Bikku, trans., Kalama Sutta:
To the Kalamas (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/
an03.065.than.html, 1994). - Lamp for the Latter Ages. Mattosho XVIII. CWS, p. 549.
- Lamp for the Latter Ages. Mattosho XIX. CWS, pp. 551–552.
Some of the actions described in these letters comprised what East
Asian Mahayana Buddhism considered the acts carrying the worst