Rich in primary sources and featuring contributions from scholars on both sides of the Pacific, Issei Buddhism in the Americas upends boundaries and categories that have tied Buddhism to Asia and illuminates the social and spiritual role that the religion has played in the Americas. While Buddhists in Japan had long described the migration of the religion as traveling from India, across Asia, and ending in Japan, this collection details the movement of Buddhism across the Pacific to the Americas. Leading the way were pioneering, first-generation Issei priests and their followers who established temples, shared Buddhist teachings, and converted non-Buddhists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book explores these pioneering efforts in the context of Japanese diasporic communities and immigration history and the early history of Buddhism in the Americas. The result is a dramatic exploration of the history of Asian immigrant religion that encompasses such topics as Japanese language instruction in Hawaiian schools, the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia, the roles of Buddhist song culture, Tenriyko ministers in America, and Zen Buddhism in Brazil. Contributors are Michihiro Ama, Noriko Asato, Masako Iino, Tomoe Moriya, Lori Pierce, Cristina Rocha, Keiko Wells, Duncan Ryûken Williams, and Akihiro Yamakura.| Table of Contents Introduction: Dislocations and Relocations of IsseiBuddhists in the Americas PART 1. NATION AND IDENTITY 1. "Can I Put This Jizo Together with the Virgin Mary in the Altar?": Creolizing Zen Buddhism in Brazil 2. Bukkyokai and the Japanese Canadian Community in British Columbia PART 2. EDUCATION AND LAW 3. The Japanese Language School Controversy in Hawaii 4. The Legal Dimensions of the Formation of Shin Buddhist Temples in Los Angeles PART 3. RACE AND PRINT CULTURE 5. Buddhist Modernism in English-Language Buddhist Periodicals 6. "Americanization" and "Tradition" in Issei and Nisei Buddhist Publications PART 4. PATRIOTISM AND WAR 7. The United States-Japanese War and Tenrikyo Ministers in America 8. The Role of Buddhist Song Culture in International Acculturation Contributors Index | "In expanding the geographical frame of scholarly narratives and appealing to new primary sources, Issei Buddhism in the Americas opens bold new conversations about Buddhism in the western hemisphere."—Thomas Tweed, author of Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion
|Duncan Ryûken Williams is an associate professor of Japanese Buddhism and the chair of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California Berkeley. Tomoe Moriya is a professor of international communication at Hannan University, Japan.