Buddhism, Marxism, and Fascism

Buddhism, Marxism, and Fascism--On Sakaguchi Ango and Takeda Taijun

Kojin Karatani

1

It is a general tendency of modern Japanese thinkers to counterpose Buddhism
against Western influences. While it is true that Japanese culture and
thinking after roughly around the 7th to 8th centuries --the time when Chinese
letters were introduced--cannot be scrutinized without stumbling into
Buddhism, strange is the fact that even today Japanese consider Buddhism to be
an adopted foreign idea. Watsuji Tetsuro has compared the Japanese reception
of Buddhism to that of Christianity in the West. For the Germanic people,
Christianity was undoubtedly a foreign idea; however, because non-Christian
elements were thoroughly repressed during the process of its naturalization,
it has never been considered as foreign. Therefore the reception took place
gradually over a long period of time; in Japan, on the other hand, Buddhism
took root and blossomed immediately after being transplanted. Watsuji
explained this case as follows:

"For this, we have to take account not only of the pacifist nature of Buddhism
itself, but also of Japanese magnanimity toward religion. Japanese did not
feel the necessity of abandoning their faith in indigenous Gods in order to
become believers in Buddha. It is still conspicuous today that there was no
contradiction in devotees having faith in both native Gods and Buddha. Some
might say this is a lack of rigor in faith. Nevertheless, the Buddhistization
of Japan did not cause a conversion that resulted in a total denial of non-
Buddhist elements. Rather, it was the Japanese who appropriated Buddhism. It
follows that throughout many centuries they have kept the margin that allowed
them to consider Buddhism as a foreign idea, and during this long period, it
turned into their own flesh and blood" (Watsuji Tetsuro, "Nihon ni okeru
Bukkyo Shiso no Ishoku [The Transplantation of Buddhist Thoughts in Japan]")

First of all, it is misleading to ascribe the peculiar reception to "the
pacifist nature of Buddhism." For Buddhist scriptures, such as the Saddharma
Pundarika Sutra, contain militant and exclusionist tendencies which have
produced radicalist movements in Japan, past and present. Furthermore, from
the moment of its inception in India, Buddhism was radicalist thought par
excellence; transplanting it unequivocally required "a total denial of non-
Buddhist elements." In India this tendency had to disappear. In China, where
it developed into Zen [Dhyana] and Jodo [Sukhavati], it again faded away,
leaving only some historical vestiges. In Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet, and
Nepal, where Buddhism endures, it is internalized with strict precepts, and
never treated as foreign. Why is it that in Japan in particular Buddhism is
still a foreign idea?

Second, it is also wrong to ascribe this situation to "Japanese magnanimity
toward religion," or to Watsuji's statement that "it was Japanese who
appropriated Buddhism." In various areas around the world, subjectivity was
constructed, as it were, by being castrated by the world religions:
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. In these places, it was never possible for
people to think of world religions as being foreign to them because their
subjects were formed by encounters with those religions. In Japan, it is not
possible that there had already been a subject--the "Japanese"--that
appropriated Buddhism, as Watsuji claimed. Rather, it might be said, because
castration by Buddhism had been foreclosed, the Japanese subject had not been
formed. No wonder Buddhism struck root immediately, without resistance.
Accepting anything and everything is a form of exclusion. This is different
from the tolerance seen in Europe, forged as it was by the Religious War.
Under these circumstances and permeating everywhere, Buddhism remains foreign
in Japan.

After all, Watsuji's gesture of returning to ancient times was nothing but a
justification of his own conversion and the post World War I situation. The
Japanese, who accepted Westernization without resistance after the Meiji
Restoration, began to seek Japanese culture as an authentic self-identity
after their victory in the Russo-Japan War. But the simple contraposition of
Buddhism, Confucianism, and the like against Western thought could not
suffice. What was required was an empty locus where even Buddhism would be an
adopted foreign idea, and any Western thought would be accepted as foreign:
such a place of nothingness (Nishida Kitaro) must be self-identity itself.
Watsuji wrote his essay at the time he was writing A Pilgrimage to Old Temples
and Ancient Japanese Culture, that is, when he suddenly made a turn to
Japanese things from his concerns for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. To be
precise, however, Watsuji did not reject Western thought; rather, totally
accepting it, he treated it as foreign. In other words, Watsuji "appropriated"
Western thought. In this sense, it might be said, he was just talking about
himself while using various references. But it goes without saying that
Watsuji cannot be deemed the representative of all Japanese modern thinkers.

Buddhistization was not so constant and smooth in Japan as Watsuji claimed.
Not only was Buddhism appropriated by way of foreclosure, but it assumed the
power to force castration that penetrates foreclosure. To repeat, Buddhism is
not an open-armed, tolerant religion; it was practical and even radicalist
against the Indian caste society from which it derived. Buddhism sees every
substance merely as a bundle of relations; but more than anything, it targets
the idea of reincarnation, namely, the identity of the soul that
transmigrates. Before Buddhism, the real misery of life in the caste system
was regarded as the result of reincarnation, and ascetic practices were
recommended in order to escape the vicious cycle. Many doctrines that are
claimed to be Buddha's were in fact remnants of previous thought. What Buddha
really attempted was to shift the individualistic will toward salvation to an
acceptance of the practical relation with real others. To do this, he
deconstructed the idea of an identical soul that reincarnates. I call
this "deconstruction", because he criticized the ideas of the identical soul
and life after death in such expressions as: "it neither is nor is not."
Saying that the soul "is not" necessarily invokes another substance to be the
premise. He rejected the obsession with the metaphysical question itself and
attempted to reorient our concern toward practical ethics with regard to
others. This is the reason he denied ascetic practices as a path to salvation
from reincarnation. It was natural that early Buddhism was supported by
merchants and women, the disdained classes.

Buddhism gradually lost its power of practical reformation in India. Becoming
preceptive (the Lesser Vehicle) on the one hand and profound theory (the Great
Vehicle) on the other, it was slowly absorbed into the existing conventional
religions and the caste system at the same time as it was becoming influential
outside India: the Lesser Vehicle in South East Asia and the Great Vehicle in
Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. But when it was transplanted into non-Indian
environments, where there had been no idea of reincarnation, Buddhism was
ironically accepted as a reincarnation ideology--the very aspect that it had
sought to deny. It is said that in China the idea of living again and again--
the unbearable karma that Indians had attempted to abandon--was welcome in
turn. Although it once was influential in China, Buddhism could not compete
with the Confucianist hold, pervaded by the worshipping of the ancestral
spirit and it was absorbed into an all-embracing neo-Confucianism. The same
thing happened in Korea. In Japan it was not in an