There were, on the other hand, endeavors to develop psychology in a way that fits
the Japanese cultural, especially Buddhist, tradition, as we shall see. They involved
expositions and theoretical developments of Buddhist psychology, empirical studies
of Buddhist meditation, and the application of Buddhism to psychotherapy.
Another feature of early modern Japanese Buddhist psychologists, to be mentioned,
is their universalism. They were not involved in any particular tradition within Zen
or Buddhism in general. They were not interested in the difference between Rinzai
Zen and Soto Zen or between Zen Buddhism and Shin Buddhism or Shingon
Buddhism in Japan. Further, they wanted to find something common among
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, and between religion and non-religious
creative activities such as arts. For their primary concern was universal human
experience. And this universalism was shared by early modern Japanese intellectuals
in other disciplines as well. For philosophers of the Kyoto School initiated by Kitaro
Nishida, for example, Zen was not Zen of the Zen sect but simply Zen, or Zen of
what could be called Zen spirit.
Enryǀ InoueEnryǀ Inoue (1858–1919) played an important role in initiating both philosophy
and psychology in early modern Japan. As early as in 1884, as a student he founded
the first Japanese philosophical association, and in 1887 he published his first book
The Outline of Psychology, and started a philosophical journal, founded Tetsugakukan,
the antecedent to Toyo University, and lectured on applied psychology there.
Inoue saw in Buddhism an advantage that could not be expected from Christianity.
While Christianity refused the Copernican theory and Darwinism, Buddhism seemed
to have an affinity with modern rationalism. Unlike other cultural traditions such as
Shintoism, Confucianism, and Taoism, Buddhism was for him, therefore, a
promising cultural heritage for assimilating modern Western civilization. In other
words, he thought it would be compatible with Western science. That is the point
where Inoue and his followers differ from Suzuki and other Zen philosophers.
Two seemingly opposing stances are clearly evidenced in Inoue: on the one hand,
he tried to dispel irrational elements in his cultural traditions, including Buddhism,
with the aid of the Western rational mind. Writing books and articles in the discipline
that he called Yǀkai-gaku, which literally means phantom studies, he studied
seemingly mysterious phenomena, and believed most of them were merely
superstitions to be explained away by science, especially psychology.
On the other hand, he systematically presented Buddhist psychology in his books,
Eastern Psychology (maybe 1894), Buddhist Psychology (1897), and Zen Psychology
(1902). Inoue was not only the first Japanese psychologist in general but also the first
psychologist in particular that combined the Buddhist psychological tradition with
modern Western psychology. Other Japanese Buddhist psychologists were indebted
to him in one way or other.
AKIRA ONDA 237