Tracing Karma in Meiji Japan

Abstract

Despite its doctrinal importance, the concept of karma or karmic causality has come to occupy a complicated place in contemporary Japanese Buddhism, due to its historical connection with discrimination against outcast groups and disabled people. Furthermore, among post-war Japanese intellectuals, the idea of karma has often invoked criticism in the context of modern values such as free will and human potential. Against this conventional framework, this paper demonstrates how the concept of karma was the focus of intense interest among Meiji Japanese intellectuals and a center concern in the developing global network of modern Buddhists. At the intersection of the multifaceted problems facing the Buddhist world at that time—namely, the Buddhist search for scientific religion, civil morality in the nation-building process, reformulating Buddhism for non-Japanese audiences, and the confrontation with competing forms of Western thought—lies the relatively unexamined story of karma in Meiji Japan (1868–1912).