Tanabe Hajime and the Kyoto School: Self, World, and Knowledge. By Morisato Takeshi. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022, 224 pages, ISBN 978-1-35010-171-5 (hardback), $90.00, 978-1-35010-170-8 (paperback), $26.95, 978-1-35010-172-2 (e-book), $24.25.
Reviewed by Melanie Coughlin
Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard, and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption. Edited by Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg. Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 208 pages, ISBN 978-1-3501-9553-0 (hardback), $115, 978-1-3501-9554-4 (e-book), $103.50.
Reviewed by Mark Speece
Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All. Edited by Sallie B. King. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2021, xvi + 256 pages, ISBN 978-0-367-56181-9 (hardback), $160, 978-1-00-310045-4 (e-book), $44.05.
Reviewed by Timothy Loftus
Jeff Wilson
Renison University College, University of Waterloo
Despite omission from much of the record of scholarship on Engaged Buddhism, Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism has significant potential for positive involvement with social causes. Here I propose six principles based on elements of the Jōdo Shinshū teachings that might inspire or inform efforts at reducing harm in the world. I further provide some examples of social engagement from Jōdo Shinshū history that demonstrate how they might be applied.
Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher. By Steven Heine. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2021, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1-61180-980-0 (paperback), $29.95.
Reviewed by Zuzana Kubovčáková
Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia. Edited by Stephanie Balkwill and James A. Benn. Studies on East Asian Religions 6. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022, x + 191 pages, ISBN 978-90-04-51022-7 (open access e-book: https://brill.com/downloadpdf/ title/61003.pdf)/978-90-04-50961-0 (hardback), $125.00.
Reviewed by Yilun Zhai
Damien Keown
Goldsmiths, University of London (Emeritus)
The claim that Buddhism is exclusively a “religion of peace” has been shown to be untenable. Buddhism now faces the challenge of explaining how the pacifist spirit of its teachings can be reconciled with its well-documented recourse to military and punitive violence. Buddhism is not the only religion to face this challenge, and we first consider the Christian stance on violence as formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas before turning to the views of the Tibetan polymath Jamgön Mipham. We consider to what extent the views of the two thinkers are compatible and conclude with a suggestion as to how what Michael Jerryson calls “the quandary of Buddhism and violence” might be resolved.
Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. By Steven Heine. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, 312 pp., ISBN 978-0-231-18229-4 (paperback), $35.00.
Reviewed by Zuzana Kubovčáková
Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism. By Richard M. Jaffe. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2019, xvi + 309 pp., ISBN 978-0-226-39115-1 (paperback), $32.50.
Reviewed by Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Nothingness in the Heart of Empire: The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Kyoto School in Imperial Japan. By Harumi Osaki. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2019, xii+ 292 pp., ISBN 978-1-4384-7309-3 (hardback), $85.00.
Reviewed by Matteo Cestari
André Laliberté
University of Ottawa
Introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics: “Buddhism and Politics.”
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Ohio State University
In November 1945, the United States military took over the use of Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison in order to house those charged by the Allied Powers with war crimes. For close to three years, Hanayama Shinshō served as the prison’s volunteer Buddhist chaplain, attending thirty-six executions. Hanayama did not protest the imposition of the death penalty but this essay argues that in his work as chaplain he nonetheless resisted the carceral logic shaping life and death inside Sugamo by mobilizing the ritual and narrative repertoire of Pure Land Buddhism. In Hanayama’s framing, Sugamo was a site of liberation as well as confinement, affording the condemned a unique opportunity to reflect upon the past and commit themselves to a different future, even in death. As Hanayama tells it, the peace discovered by the dead was an absolute peace, transcending politics; he also insists, however, on a connection between this absolute peace and the ordinary peace that the living might hope to secure. The article concludes with a consideration of the political and ethical implications of Hanayama’s reading of the dead as having “found peace” in light of larger conversations about how best to remember—or forget—the nation’s dark past, and what it means to share responsibility for crimes against humanity.
Phra Nicholas Thanissaro
University of Warwick
Monastic saṅgha members may be seen as monopolizing leadership in traditional forms of Buddhism. The usual Theravādin justification for this is that monastics keep a greater number of precepts than laypeople and therefore provide a higher standard of ethical leadership as well as being symbols of their religion. Such allocation of authority to monks breaks down where the monastic-lay distinction blurs. This paper presents a review of the literature of anthropological and attitude research findings to explore how the demand for alternative modes of leadership, such as charismatic, visionary, servant, facilitative, strategic, or participative leadership or management, has opened up opportunities for lay people to take more prominent roles in Buddhist leadership in Western Buddhism as well as contemporary Asian contexts.
Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan. By James Mark Shields. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, 404 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-066400-8 (hardback), U.S. $99.00.
Reviewed by Christopher Ives
Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record: Sharpening a Sword at the Dragon Gate. By Steven Heine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-939776-1 (hardback) 978-0-19-939777-8 (paperback), $105.00 USD (hardback) $36.95 USD (paperback).
Reviewed by Rafal K. Stepien
Gods of Medieval Japan, Volume 1: The Fluid Pantheon by Bernard Faure. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015, xii + 496 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3933-8 (hardback), $55.00.
Gods of Medieval Japan, Volume 2: Protectors and Predators by Bernard Faure. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015, x + 512 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3931-4 (hardback), $55.00.
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Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
Narratives of Sorrow and Dignity: Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving. By Bardwell L. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, xvii + 410 pag-es, ISBN 978-0-19-994213-8 (cloth), $115.00.
Reviewed by Maureen L. Walsh
Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia. Edited by Vladimir Tikhonov and Torkel Brekke. New York: Routledge, 2013, 264 pages, ISBN: 9780415536967 (cloth), $125.00.
Reviewed by Kendall Marchman
Marek Sullivan
University of Oxford
“Holistic eco-Buddhism” has been roundly criticized for its heterodoxy and philosophical incoherence: the Buddha never claimed we should protect an “eco-self” and there are serious philosophical problems attendant on “identifying with things.” Yet this essay finds inadequate attention has been paid to East Asian sources. Metaphysical issues surrounding eco-Buddhism, i.e., problems of identity and difference, universalism and particularity, have a long history in Chinese Buddhism. In particular, I examine the notion of “merging with things” in pre-Huayan and Huayan Buddhism, suggesting these offer unexplored possibilities for a coherent holistic eco-Buddhism based on the differentiating effects of activity and functionality.
Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought. By James Mark Shields. Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2011, ISBN: 978-1-4094-1798-9 (hard-back), $119.95.
Reviewed by Ronald S. Green
The Princess Nun: Bunchi, Buddhist Reform, and Gender in Early Edo Japan. By Gina Cogan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, xvi+309 pages, ISBN 978-0674491977 (hardback), $49.95.
Reviewed by Febe D. Pamonag
The Kyoto School: An Introduction. By Robert E. Carter. Albany: SUNY, 2013, ISBN: 978-1438445427 (paperback), $24.95.
Reviewed by Ilana Maymind
Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan. By John K. Nelson. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013, 292 pages, ISBN: 9780824838980 (paper-back), $32.00.
Reviewed by Erez Joskovich
Douglas K. Mikkelson
University of Hawai’i at Hilo
The Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki provides a good introduction to Dōgen’s ideas about the virtues possessed by “the good person.” His depiction includes, but extends beyond, the conception of a “morally good” human being. This is evident by the number of “nonmoral” virtues that are manifest in the text. Edmund Pincoffs presents a schematization of numerous virtues based on his conception of virtues and vices as dispositional properties that provide ground for preference or avoidance of persons. This schematization seems especially well suited for an exploration and description of the nonmoral virtues that appear in the Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki.
Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia: A History. By Fabio Rambelli and Eric Renders. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012, xvi + 247 pages, ISBN 978-1-4411-4509-3 (hardback), $120.00.
Reviewed by Joseph P. Elacqua
Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia. By Thomas David DuBois. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, xii+ 259 pages, ISBN 987-1107400405 (paperback), ISBN 978-1107008090 (cloth) $81.00.
Reviewed by Yueh-Mei Lin
Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsurō’s Shamon Dōgen. Watsuji Tetsurō, translated by Steve Bein. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011, 174 pages; ISBN 978-0824835569 (Paperback), $24.00.
Reviewed by Anton Luis Sevilla
The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism. Ugo Dessi, Editor. Leiden: Brill, 2010, 286 pages; ISBN 978-90-04-18653-8 (Cloth), $153.00.
Reviewed by Glenn R. Willis
Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism. By Mark Michael Rowe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011, xv + 258 pages, ISBN 978-0-226-73015-8 (paper), $29.00.
Reviewed by T.O. Benedict
Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics. By Christopher Ives. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009, x + 274 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-3331-2 (hardcover), US $52.00.
Reviewed by Douglas Ober
The 1918 Shikoku Pilgrimage of Takamure Itsue, an English translation of Musume Junreiki by Takamure Itsue. Translated by Susan Tennant. Bowen Island, BC: Bowen Publishing, 2010, 274 pages, ISBN 978-1-45-054075-9 (paper), $16.95.
Reviewed by Ronald S. Green
Shugendō Now. A film directed by Jean-Marc Abela and produced by Mark P. Mcguire. Montréal: Empower Productions, 2009, 88 minutes, Japanese with narration; English, French, Spanish subtitles and narration, Individual use: CAD $20.00; Public/Educational use: CAD $150.00.
Reviewed by Heather Blair
Shōtoku: Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition. By Michael I. Como. New York: Oxford, 2008, 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0195188615 (hardcover), US $45.00.
Reviewed by Mark Dennis
Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia: Places of Practice. Edited by James A. Benn, Lori Meeks, and James Robson. New York: Routledge, 2010, 248 pages, ISBN: 9780415489775 (hardcover), US $135.00.
Reviewed by Pei-Ying Lin
Anton Luis Sevilla
Ateneo de Manila University
In this article, I hope to suggest (1) a fertile ground for human rights and social ethics within Japanese intellectual history and (2) a possible angle for connecting Dōgen’s ethical views with his views on private religious practice. I begin with a review of the attempts to found the notion of rights within Buddhism. I focus on two well-argued attempts: Damien Keown’s foundation of rights on the Four Noble Truths and individual soteriology and Jay Garfield’s foundation of rights on the compassionate drive to liberate others. I then fuse these two approaches in a single concept: Buddha-nature. I analyze Dōgen’s own view on the practice-realization of Buddha-nature, and the equation of Buddha-nature with being, time, emptiness, and impermanence. I end with tentative suggestions concerning how Dōgen’s particular view on Buddha-nature might affect any social ethics or view of rights that is founded on it.
Ethics and Society in Contemporary Shin Buddhism. By Ugo Dessi. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008, 265 pages, ISBN: 978-3825808150 (cloth), €39.90.
Reviewed by Jeff Wilson
Anton Luis C. Sevilla
Ateneo de Manila University
Japanese intellectual culture is a mélange of many schools of thought—Shinto, many forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and so on. However, these schools of thought are distinct in approach and focus, and key ideas of one school may even be found to be in contradiction with the key ideas of other schools of thought. Many have deliberately tried, with varying degrees of success, to reconcile these schools of thought, academically, politically, and so forth. But amidst these attempts, one that stands out for its uncontrived naturalness and vitality is that of Zen Master Shōsan.
Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan: Images of Compassion in the Gyōki Tradition. By Jonathan Morris Augustine. London and New York: Routledge, 2005, vii + 174 pages, ISBN 0-415-32245-6 (cloth), US $170.00.
Reviewed by Amy Holmes
Explaining Pictures: Buddhist Propaganda and Etoki Storytelling in Japan. By Ikumi Kaminishi. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 246 pages, ISBN 0824826973, US $52.00 (cloth).
Reviewed by Pamela Winfield
The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans. Commentary and Verse by John Daido Loori. Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori. Boston: Shambhala, 2005. 472 pages. ISBN 590302427 (cloth).
Reviewed by Gregory Miller
Christopher Ives
Stonehill College
Judging from pronouncements by contemporary Engaged Buddhists, one might conclude that historical expressions of Zen social ethics have rested on the foundation of compassion and the precepts. The de facto systems of social ethics in Japanese Zen, however, have been shaped largely by other epistemological, sociological, and historical factors, and compassion should best be understood as a “theological virtue” that historically has gained specificity from those other factors.
Dale Wright
Occidental College
Martin Adam
University of Victoria
Barbra Clayton
Mt. Allison University
Bradford Cokelet
Northwestern University
Christian Coseru
College of Charleston
James Deitrick
University of Central Arkansas
Peter Hershock
East-West Center
Whitley Kaufman
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Damien Keown
Goldsmiths College, University of London
Jessica Main
McGill University
Eric Nelson
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Abraham Velez
Georgetown University
Brian Victoria
University of Adelaide
Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition. By Judith Snodgrass. London and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 351 pages. ISBN: 0-8078-5458-1 (paperback); 0-8078-2785-1 (cloth).
Reviewed by Jason Ānanda Josephson
The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sōtō Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan.By Duncan Ryūken Williams. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. xiv + 241 pages. ISBN: 0-691-11928-7.
Reviewed by Steven Heine
Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. By Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe, Jr. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998, xii + 303 pages, ISBN: 0–8248–2065–7 (Hardback), ISBN: 0–8248–2090–8 (Paperback), US $45.00 (Hardback), US $22.95 (Paperback).
Reviewed by Fabio Rambelli
Michael G. Barnhart
Kingsborough, CUNY
It is quite clear from a variety of sources that abortion has been severely disapproved of in the Buddhist tradition. It is also equally clear that abortion has been tolerated in Buddhist Japan and accommodated under exceptional circumstances by some modern Buddhists in the UṢ. Those sources most often cited that prohibit abortion are Theravādin and ancient. By contrast, Japanese Buddhism as well as the traditions out of which a more lenient approach emerges are more recent and Mahāyāna traditions. Buddhism itself, therefore, speaks with more than one moral voice on this issue, and furthermore, the nature of the moral debate may have important applications for similarly situated others and constitute an enlargement of the repertoire of applicable moral theories and rationales.
William R. LaFleur
University of Pennsylvania
In Japan, persons who have had abortions but believe that a fetus has more value than merely disposable matter may act on that belief, most commonly by making a ritual apology to the spiritual aspect of the fetus, referred to as a mizuko or “child of the waters.” R. Zwi Werblowsky wrote a scathing attack on the practice of mizuko kuyô across the board, claiming that it has been nothing more than a scam from beginning to end. And now, in Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, Helen Hardacre has given us a study which, in essence, makes much the same claim. The issues Hardacre raises are important, not just for an understanding of Japanese religion but because of what they may tell us about the state of our own debates in North America. By this I mean not only our debates about abortion but also about religion, especially as expressed in societies different from our own.
Stephen J. Lewis and Galen Amstutz
When comparative ethicists consider the question of ethics in Buddhism, they are tempted to implicate conceptions of teleology and virtue from Western philosophy. Such implications cannot apply to Mahāyāna exemplified in the Japanese Shin tradition. Shin is characterized not only by emptiness philosophy but also by its emphasis on spontaneous (tariki) enlightenment; both of these features undercut the notion that Buddhism can ultimately concern an intentional goal. But a teleological or virtue-oriented sensibility is not needed for the purposes of ordinary life. On the contrary, Shin social history has demonstrated that a powerful tradition of practical life based on Buddhist teaching can exist perfectly well without it. Such wisdom manifests itself both socially and at the individual level as a kind of character, if not ethics in the usual sense.
Daniel Palmer
Purdue University
As the discourse in the West comes to focus more upon social issues, any form of understanding that is to remain alive must be able to respond to such concerns. If Western Buddhism is to survive it must illustrate how it can address these issues. I will argue that Abe recognizes that this has been an area in which Buddhism has been traditionally deficient, but that by reinterpreting several key Buddhist concepts Abe offers a new paradigm of Buddhism that does allow for the possibility of social critique while still retaining the essential insights of traditional Zen Buddhism. In the first section of the paper I will develop the specific nature of the criticisms in relation to the traditional understanding of Buddhist doctrine. In the second section I will show how Abe’s transvaluation of Zen Buddhism in light of his dialogical hermeneutic takes account of these criticisms and develops the resources within Zen thought to deal with them.
Hōjōki: Visions of a Torn World by Kamo-no-Chōmei. Translated By Yasuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins, with illustrations by Michael Hofmann. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1996, 93 pages, ISBN 1-8806-5622-1 (paperback), $9.95.
Reviewed by David L. Gardiner
Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography. By Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998, 227 pages plus 22 color plates and 104 black-and-white illustrations, ISBN: 0-8248-2000-2, US $52.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8248-2081-9, US $29.25 (paper).
Reviewed by Ian Harris
The Zen Poetry Of Dōgen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace. By Steven Heine. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc., 1997, viii + 183 pages, ISBN: 0-8048-3107-6, US $14.95.
Reviewed by Taigen Dan Leighton
Popular Buddhism in Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion and Culture. By Esben Andreasen. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998, 199 pages, ISBN: 0-8248-2027-4 (cloth), US$39.00, ISBN: 0-8248-2028-2 (paperback), US$22.95.
Reviewed by Charles B. Jones
Hōnens Buddhismus des Reinen Landes: Reform, Reformation oder Häresie?. By Christoph Kleine. Bern, Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang, 1996, xiii + 427 pages pages, ISBN 3-631-49852-7, DM 108.
Reviewed by Gregor Paul
Zen at War. By Brian (Daizen) A. Victoria. New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1997, xii + 228 pages, ISBN 0-8348-0405-0, $19.95.
Reviewed by Fabio Rambelli
The Heart of Being: Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen Buddhism. By John Daido Loori. Boston: Charles E.Tuttle, 1996, 267 pages, ISBN0-8048-3078-9, $16.95.
Reviewed by Damien Keown
The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism. By Steve Odin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Pp. xvi, 482. ISBN: 0-7914-2492-8 (paperback), $24.95.
Working Emptiness: Toward a Third Reading of Emptiness in Buddhism and Postmodern Thought. By Newman Robert Glass. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1995. Pp. ix, 146. ISBN: 0-7885-0080-5 (cloth), $38.95; ISBN: 0-7885-0081-3 (paperback), $25.95.
Reviewed by Steven Heine
Gregory K. Ornatowski
Boston University
This paper offers an outline of the development of Buddhist economic ethics using examples from early Theravāda Buddhism in India and the Mahāyāna tradition as it evolved in India, medieval China, and medieval and early modern Japan, in order to illustrate the pattern of continuities and transformations these ethics have undergone. By “economic ethics” the paper refers to four broad areas: (1) attitudes toward wealth, i.e., its accumulation, use, and distribution, including the issues of economic justice and equality/ inequality; (2) attitudes toward charity, i.e., how and to whom wealth should be given; (3) attitudes toward human labor and secular occupations in society; and (4) actual economic activities of temples and monasteries which reflect the lived-practice of Buddhist communities’ economic ethics.