The Institute for the Defense of the Dharma and the Study of Christianity in a Japanese Buddhist Context, 1858–1872
In: Learning from the West, Learning from the East: The Emergence of the Study of Buddhism in Japan and Europe before 1900
Author:
Micah Auerback
Micah Auerback
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Abstract
Threatened by an imminent influx of Euro-American Christian missionaries starting from the late 1850s, some Japanese Buddhist intellectuals began to study Christianity in order to refute it. Kōzan’in (Higuchi) Ryūon, of the Ōtani denomination of True Pure Land Buddhism, served in its short-lived Institute for the Defense of the Dharma, and he researched Christian texts produced by missionaries active in China. Ryūon’s multiple refutations of Christian doctrine reflect an unprecedented level of study in geopolitics and Protestantism, but his apologetics are also deeply informed by traditional Buddhist critiques of the “heresy” of monotheism.