Inoue Enryo

Inoue Enryo

Signature of Inoue Enryō

Inoue Enryō ( Japanese 井上 円 了 ; born as Inoue Kishimaru 井上 岸 丸 ; born May 18, 1858 in Echigo , Japan ; † June 6, 1919 in Dalian , China ) was a Japanese philosopher of the Meiji period . He is best known for his reflections on Buddhism and his discussion of the supernatural, which gives him the name “Dr. Monsters ”( 妖怪 博士 , yōkai hakase ).

Life

Inoue Enryō was born as Inoue Kishimaru in rural Echigo in 1858 as the son of the monk Inoue Engo ( 井上 円 悟 ). The father was the small temple Jikō-ji ( 慈光 寺 ), which belonged to the Ōtani branch of the Buddhist sect Jōdo-Shinshū . According to Enryō's memoir, the family lived in relative poverty; nevertheless, no savings were made in the upbringing of the first son. At a young age Enryō studied the Chinese classics with the young doctor Ishiguro Tadanori 石 黒 忠 徳 , whereupon he became a novice of the Ōtani sect and after his ordination took the Buddhist name Enryō. From 1873, the 15-year-old is said to have shifted his main focus to Western studies, for which he first studied Dutch in a small school and one year later switched to the Nagaoka School for Western Studies. There he was junior teaching assistant before he went to the English Academy in Niigata in 1877 .

In 1881 he was accepted as the first Buddhist monk at the Imperial University of Tokyo . During his studies, the young monk specialized in philosophy and took lessons a. a. with Ernest Fenollosa and Hara Tanzan ( 原 坦 山 ), a Zen priest of the Sōtō sect , who was the first professor of Buddhist teaching at the university.

As a student, Enryō immersed himself deeply in the world of philosophy and dealt with questions of religion and education. After his early academic activities and the successful completion of his studies as a Bachelor of the Arts in 1885, however, two difficult years for Enryo followed, in which he turned down a position at the Ministry of Education, returned his ordination as a monk and lost his job as a researcher at the Imperial University. He later attributed his psychological problems to the fact that he had wrestled with the question of how Buddhism could be restored to a status as a recognized religion. From 1887 onwards, Enryō devoted himself to his life's work, rehabilitation and thus redefinition of Buddhism, in a number of publications as well as numerous public speeches and lectures. In 1896 the Imperial University of Tokyo awarded him a doctorate. His travels took the philosopher across Japan and to China, where he died in 1919.

Document from Inoue

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As a student, Inoue Enryō participated in the founding of the Philosophical Society ( 哲学 会 , Tetsugaku-kai ) in 1882 , in which many prominent scholars came and went, u. a. Nishi Amane , Nishimura Shigeki and Katō Hiroyuki . Furthermore, in 1886 he began the publication of the influential philosophical journal Tetsugaku zasshi ( 哲学 雑 誌 ), in which he also published himself. In the course of his research on the supernatural, he also founded the "Research Society of the Supernatural" ( 不 思議 研究 会 , Fushigi Kenkyūkai ), which was later renamed the "Monster Research Society" ( 妖怪 研究 会 , Yōkai Kenkyūkai ). Inoue also founded the "Private Philosophical Institute" ( 私立 哲学 館 , Shiritsu Tetsugaku-kan ) in 1887 , which later became the Tōyō University .

Reform of Buddhism

Inoue Enryō is one of the most influential reformers of Japanese Buddhism in the 19th century. He played an essential role in transforming the Buddhist traditions of Japan into a modern religion . In the Edo period (1603-1868), Buddhism was a fundamental element in the political system of the Tokugawa - Shoguns , he therefore stable organizational and financial structures could build. In everyday life, people consulted Buddhist monks as teachers, mediators, counselors or doctors. The main task of the monks was therefore also to carry out exorcisms , religious healing, apotropaic measures and similar rituals. In the subsequent Meiji period (1868–1911), Buddhism was relegated to its place as a pillar of the old regime and a powerful institution; The new elites turned to Shinto ( state Shinto ) and demonized Buddhism as corrupt, decadent, foreign and hindering modernization. Anti-Buddhist resentments erupted in the population with the destruction of temples and devotional objects ( Haibutsu kishaku ). Buddhist reformers responded to this criticism by trying to turn their traditions into a modern religion based on the Western Christian model and to plead for the usefulness of Buddhism in the modern world.

Inoue spread his redefinition of Buddhism in several influential works, such as Meishin to shūkyo ( 迷信 と 宗教 ), Bukkyō Katsuron ( 佛教 活 論 ) and meishinkai ( 迷信 解 ). The slogan gokoku airi ( 護 国 愛 理 , “Defend the nation and love the truth”), first introduced in Bukkyō Katsuron Joron ( 佛教 活 論 序 論 , 1887 ), expresses Inoue Enryō's attachment to Japan and Buddhism. Assuming a symbiotic relationship between the two, he offered other reform Buddhists a conceptual space in which they could see themselves as both patriotic and Buddhist.

The core of the project presented in Meishin to shūkyo (“Superstition and Religion”) consisted of turning Buddhism into a religion by releasing it from its assessment of superstitious elements. According to Inoue, superstition was anything that contradicted modern science . This included the belief in ghosts, which is also widespread among Buddhists, the effectiveness of magical rituals or prayers for health and many other practices or cosmological ideas. While the rejection of divination and demon worship as harmful was by no means new, Inoue took the radical position that apart from the gods and the Buddhas, there were no supernatural beings. Enryō even denied them being able to influence the world. According to Inoue, a true religion consists solely of striving for a transcendent Absolute, while natural science, on the other hand, is limited to the material world. Inoue presented Buddhism as a system of philosophical beliefs that was compatible with scientific knowledge and therefore superior to all other religions. This Buddhism, cleared of traditional practices, had little resemblance to the traditions actually practiced in the population, but was enthusiastically taken up in the 1890s by new Buddhist societies such as the "Society of New Buddhists" ( 新 仏 教徒 同志 会 , Shin Bukkyōto Dōshikai ), the many influential scholars of the time belonged, u. a. Inoue Tetsujirō and Ōuchi Seiran .

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• The Inoue Enryo Center, Tōyō University
• Josephson, Jason Ananda. "When Buddhism Became a" Religion: "Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō ( Online ), in: Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 33/1 (2006), pages 143-168
• Staggs, Kathleen M., "Defend the Nation and Love the Truth". Inoue Enryō and the Revival of Meiji Buddhism. In: Monumenta Nipponica, Tokyo 38 (1983), 251-281

Individual evidence

1. ^ Josephson 2006
2. ↑ Josephson 2006, pp. 148-149.
3. ↑ Staggs 1983, p. 252
4. ↑ Josephson 2006, p. 157.
5. ↑ Josephson 2006, pp. 153-154.
6. ^ Josephson 2006, p. 159.
7. ↑ Josephson 2006, pp. 160-160.
8. ↑ Josephson 2006, pp. 162-164.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Inoue is the family name, Enryō the first name.