Kojima Kendo

Kojima Kendō ( 小島 賢 道 ; born October 25, 1898 in the village of Nana'yo, Kaito-gun, Aichi Prefecture ; † August 22, 1995 in Toyama ) was a Zen Buddhist nun who prevailed in the Japanese Sōtō-shū that female ordinates came closer to equality.

Life

Kojima Kendō was the youngest of five children and the third daughter of Kojima Sōgōro. During the summer vacation after fifth grade, she became a novice. Unusual for the time, she received another eight years of schooling. She was trained in Nagoya in a school specially set up for nuns in 1903, the strict Nisōsodō (the later 愛 知 専 門 尼僧 堂 ) for rites. The school was devastated by a typhoon in 1912 and rebuilt by the nuns in the following years. Kojima obtained her secular degree in 1918 at Aichi Gakuin.

It took several years until she, along with three or four other nuns, was one of the first women to be admitted to the sect's Komazawa University , which she then attended for three years. For the next ten years she taught at the Nisōsodō. As early as 1930 she had been agitating for the nuns to have a say in the leadership of the strictly hierarchical Sōtō School.

Released from her teaching duties, she lived in Hawaii from 1938 until the beginning of the Pacific War , where she was mainly active in pastoral care among second generation emigrant women.

After returning to Japan, she worked again at the Nisōsodō. She saw the solid education of nuns as a lever to break the patriarchal structures; she was a strict teacher herself.

Since 1944 Kojima stood before the newly founded "Association of Sōtō-Nuns" ( Sōtō-shū Nisō Gokokudan, 曹洞宗 尼僧 護 国 団 after the war 曹洞宗 尼僧 団 , Sōtō-shū Nisōdan ). She held this post until 1963, when it became increasingly difficult for her to commute between her home in Nagoya and the organization's headquarters in Tokyo.
At the same time, she worked in the leading position in the national nuns' association ( 全 日本 仏 教 尼僧 法 団 ) from 1951 to 1961 ; 1961–65 as director. From 1952-65 she was also involved in the "Japanese Association of Buddhist Women."

After the American occupiers laid down five fundamental, must-see reforms on October 9, 1945 - one of which was equality between men and women - Kojima acted quickly. In December, she organized a sesshin in Eihei-ji , at which Dōgen's woman- friendly text Raihaitokuzui was studied and, in the next year, she argued that women should in principle have access to Komazawa University and that nuns should also be abbots at the two main temples equal rights and that nuns would be allowed to “pass on the Dharma”. The sect leaders gradually agreed to most of these concerns until 1953. Other minor reforms followed by 1965, largely thanks to Kojima's 35-year efforts.

Kojima continued to be socially committed. In January 1947, she founded the Lumbini orphanage in Toyama for bombed-out Tokyo residents . Its management took over the nun Taniguchi Setsudō (1901-65).

Altar of Nippon-ji in Bodhgaya (2005).

She was sent as a delegate to the third World Buddhist Congress, held in Burma in 1954. The delegation then traveled to India. Kojima noticed that among the temples of the various countries in Bodh Gaya there was not a Japanese one. Her student Kitō Shuntō (* 1925) took on the task of building a temple that represents all Japanese schools. The Nippon-ji was inaugurated on December 3, 1973 under Kojima's direction.

From 1958 to 1965 Kojima looked after the nuns sent from Vietnam to Japan to study.

It is to be regarded as a special honor that in 1980 she was able to lead the 700th anniversary celebration in memory of Koun Ejō in Eihei-ji and was allowed to wear a yellow robe of honor.

Since 1982 Kojima withdrew to a temple in Toyoda , but then went to Lumbini-en, where she also died.

In the last years of her life, the meanwhile 93-year-old was bedridden, she began to devote herself to calligraphy , which she performed mainly on square cardboard ( shikishi ).

Works

Co-editor:

• 曹洞宗 尼僧 史 ( Sōtō-shū Nisō-shi ), "History of the Sōtō Nuns"
• Hanahachisu magazine (from 1961), house journal of the nuns' association

literature

• Paula Arai: Bowing to the Dharma: Japanese Buddhist Women Leaders & Healers . In: Religions , Vol. 8 (2017), No. 11, p. 247, doi: 10.3390 / rel8110247
• Paula Arai: Women Living Zen: Japanese Sōtō Buddhist Nuns . Oxford University Press, New York 1999

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