Exploring church-state relations in modern Japan: count Ōtani Kōzui’s quest for the pure land in an age of turbulence

Abstract

Ōtani Kōzui (1876-1948), the twenty second patriarch of the Honpa Honganji denomination of Buddhist Jōdo Shinshū sect (True Pure Land or Shin Buddhism) and the chief-abbot of its head-temple Western Honganji, Kyoto. He lived through the Meiji, Taishō and the first half of the Shōwa periods and witnessed the rapid transformation from pre-modern to modern his society went through. Likewise, Western Honganji, the largest and most influential religious institution in the country had played a crucial role in the making of the Meiji Restoration and in the settling of secularism in Japan. Ōtani Kōzui was the leader of this institution between 1903-1914, but then he resigned and started living a secular life in China. He is known for the three Ōtani Expeditions into Central Asia but most of his other deeds remain in obscurity. Kōzui was an Asianist who, in ten volumes of his Kōa Keikaku (The Construction of Asia Project) had proposed a Tokyo-Istanbul-Berlin railway. He was an agriculturalist who had plantations in Johor (Malaysia), Singapore, Sulawesi and Java islands (Indonesia), Kaohsiung (Taiwan) as well as investments in Ankara Gazi Farm and Bursa Turkish-Japanese Silk Weaving Factory. He was the adviser to the Konoe and Koiso cabinets, and a public opinion leader whose followers had established “The Gate of Kōzui Society” (Zuimonkai ). The dissertation focuses on Count Ōtani Kōzui’s multi-faceted life and demonstrates the role of a religious institution,Western Honganji in the making of modern Japan.