Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion

Abstract

tions later in Chapter 4 of a Japanese ‘pan-Asianism’ whereby Japanese Buddhists used a shared Buddhist past as a common ground through which to express ‘solidarity’ with southern Asiatic peoples (207–208). Drawing on Buddhist texts, letters, material artefacts, travelogues and a wide variety of vernacular Japanese sources, Jaffe’s wide-ranging analysis nonetheless makes for a compelling historical account of the formation of modern Japanese Buddhism. With its detailed insights, thought-provoking distinctions and comprehensive analysis of the exchanges between Japan and southern Asia, Jaffe’s project will inevitably serve as a basic reference point for those seeking to examine both modern Japanese Buddhism and the interactions between the Mahayana and Theravada worlds during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jaffe is correct to conclude that subsequent investigations of Buddhist exchanges between Japan and South Asia ought next to explore their effect on South Asia itself (241). Yet his original research herein will surely remain crucial for any future attempt to trace modern Buddhist interconnectivity across Asia and beyond.