Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West : Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian exposition / by Judith Snodgrass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Snodgrass, Judith.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World's Parliament of Religions (1893 : Chicago, Ill.).

World's Parliament of Religions.

Buddhism--Missions.

Buddhism.

Buddhism--Japan--History--1868-1945.

Japan.

History.

Orientalism.

Physical Description:

351 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2003]

Summary:

Japanese Buddhism was introduced to a wide Western audience when a delegation of Buddhist priests attended the World's Parliament of Religions, part of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In describing and analyzing this event, Judith Snodgrass challenges the predominant view of Orientalism as a one-way process by which Asian cultures are understood strictly through Western ideas. Restoring agency to the Buddhists themselves, she shows how they helped reformulate Buddhism as a modern world religion with specific appeal to the West while simultaneously reclaiming authority for the tradition within a rapidly changing Japan. Snodgrass explains how the Buddhism presented in Chicago was shaped by the institutional, social, and political imperatives of the Meiji Buddhist revival movement in Japan and was further determined by the Parliament itself, which, despite its rhetoric of fostering universal brotherhood and international goodwill, was thoroughly permeated with confidence in the superiority of American Protestantism. Additionally, in the contest of Japan's intensive diplomatic campaign to renegotiate its treaties with Western nations, the nature of Japanese religion was not simply a religious issue, Snodgrass argues, but an integral part of Japan's bid for acceptance by the international community.

Contents:

Japan faces the West

Manifest destiny: Christianity and American imperialism

The rules of the parliament: securing the truth

Alterity: Buddhism as the "other" of Christianity

Buddhism and modernity in Meiji Japan

Buddhist revival and Japanese nationalism

Deploying western authority 1.: Henry Steel Olcott in Japan

Buddhism and treaty revision: the Chicago project

Defining Eastern Buddhism

Paul Carus: Buddhism and Monist mission

Deploying western authority 2.: Carus in translation

From Eastern Buddhism to Zen: a postscript.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-343) and index.

ISBN:

0807827851

0807854581

OCLC:

50920700