“Never the ‘Twain Shall Meet”: Disorienting East and West in Teaching and Scholarship
Issue: Vol 44 No. 2 (2015)
Journal: Bulletin for the Study of Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the categories of "East" and "West" within teaching and scholarship on Asian religions. After reflection on both the problematic and useful aspects of these terms in classroom pedagogy, I analyze the life and work of Hirai Kinza (1859–1916), a Japanese lay Buddhist who experimented with Unitarianism and socialism in an attempt to bridge "East" and "West" in the context of Japanese modernization.
Author: James Mark Shields
References :
Hirai Kinza. 1892.“Sōgō shūkyōron” (On synthetic reli- gion), Dento 35.
———. 1893. “The Real Position of Japan toward Christi- anity.” In The World’s Parliament of Religions, vol. 1, ed- ited by John Henry Barrows, 444–50. Chicago: Parlia- ment Publishing.
———. 1900. “Jinrui shinporon” (On the progress of hu- manity). Rikugō zasshi 236.
———. 1901. “Kagakuteki oyobi shikateki shakai” (Scien- tific or poetic society). Rikugō zasshi 245.
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Hirai Kinza. 1892.“Sōgō shūkyōron” (On synthetic reli- gion), Dento 35.
———. 1893. “The Real Position of Japan toward Christi- anity.” In The World’s Parliament of Religions, vol. 1, ed- ited by John Henry Barrows, 444–50. Chicago: Parlia- ment Publishing.
———. 1900. “Jinrui shinporon” (On the progress of hu- manity). Rikugō zasshi 236.
———. 1901. “Kagakuteki oyobi shikateki shakai” (Scien- tific or poetic society). Rikugō zasshi 245.
Ketelaar, James Edward. 1990. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mullins, Mark. 1998. Christianity Made in Japan: A Study of Indigenous Movements. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Snodgrass, Judith. 2003. Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press..
Yoshinaga Shin’ichi. 2007. “Hirai Kinza, sono seikai” (The world of Hirai Kinza). In Hirai Kinza ni okeru Mei- ji bukkyō no kokusaika ni kan suru: shūkyōshi, bunkashi kenkyū (Hirai Kinza and the globalization of Japa- nese Buddhism of the Meiji period: a cultural and re- ligio-historical study). Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Re- search, Category C, no. 16520060, 7–30.