Engaged Buddhism in Japan Vol.1

    These volumes are the culmination of sixteen years of research and engagement in the growing Socially Engaged Buddhist movement in Japan by the International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC) @ Kodosan in Yokohama, Japan. They follow its two publications dedicated to the Northeast
Japan tsunami and nuclear disaster in This Precious Life: Buddhist Tsunami Relief and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Post 3/1 1 Japan (2012) & Lotus in the Nuclear Sea: Fukushima and the Promise of Buddhism in the Nuclear Age (2013).

    Volume I provides an essential presentation of historical themes that make Japanese Buddhism so unique and hard to understand for even other Buddhists in Asia. Volume I also provides a critical and comprehensive survey of Socially Engaged Buddhism in the modern era, which for the postwar period has never been fully documented. Volume II presents the new Socially Engaged Buddhist activities of 21st century Japan, a dynamic movement arising out of the social crisis of Japan's "disconnected society" (mu-en shakai).

Part l
The Historical Struggle of Buddhism to Axialize Japan in the Pre-Modern Era
1. Buddhism's Entry into Japan and the Nara Period (646-794)
2. Esoteric Buddhism as Socio-Political Ideology in the Heian Period (794-1185)
3. Buddhist Axialization in the Kamakura Period
etc.

Part ll
Archaic Modernity and the Foundations of Socially Engaged Buddhism in Prewar Japan
6. Archaic Continuity across the Tokugawa and Meiji Periods
7. The Meiji Buddhist Enlightenment
8. Axial Challengers: Buddhist Socialism and the Lotus Sutra in the Taisho and Early Showa Periods
etc.

Part lll
Defining Peace and Internationalism in the Liberal Utilitarian State : Socially Engaged Buddhism in Postwar Japan
10. The Sudden Turn Towards Peace in the 1940s and the of Principled Social Change
11. The Lotus Sutra, Confrontational Buddhism, and Social Protest in the 1950s
12. Responsibility and Autonomy in Japanese Social Ethics in the 1950-60s.
etc.