Tag: utopianism

Imperial Internationalism in Japan: The Bahai Faith Meets the Concordia Movement

The Bahai faith originated in Iran in the mid-19th century led by its living prophet Baha’u’llah. His teachings called for the unification of the world’s religions, viewing all faiths as different manifestations of God.1 The eldest son of Baha’u’llah, Abdu’l-Baha, succeeded his father and led a campaign to spread the teachings of Bahai to the United States and Europe. Agnes Baldwin Alexander, a young American woman from Hawaii, would spread the religion in Japan in the 20th century. The faith’s humanist, internationalist doctrine fit neatly within the nation’s imperial ideology.

In London in 1912, Agnes B. Alexander wrote an account of the meeting between Abdu’l-Baha and Jinzo Naruse, President of Japan’s Women’s College. Naruse was a liberal educator who sought support for Japan’s Concordia Movement, an internationalist project intending to find “Common ground on which all nations could harmonize”.2 Abdu’l voiced his support for Naruse’s movement, positioning the Bahai cause as central to the peace and unity of the human race while stressing the need for a “Divine Power” to put these principles into practice. He signed Naruse’s autograph book with the following prayer:

“O God! The darkness of contention, strife and warfare between the religions, the nations and the people has beclouded the horizon of Reality and hidden the heaven of Truth. The world is in need of the light of Guidance. Therefore, O God, confer Thy favor, so that the Sun of Reality may illumine the East and the West” (December 30, 1912. Translated by Ahmad Sohrab)

Abdu’l’s prayer demonstrates the faith’s capacity to justify Japan’s imperial internationalism. The symbolic power of light for human purification, “The Sun of Reality”, is central to the Bahai teachings. Likewise, the Sun has great symbolic importance in the history of Japan. The Japanese imperial army’s adoption of the ‘Rising Sun Flag’ illustrates the nation’s mission to bring peace, unification, and modernity to Asia. Similarly, the Bahai faith is a humanist religion. Abdu’l-Baha shows his humanist values by denouncing the war and hatred that stems from national differences. In “Bahai World Faith” he argues the spread of Bahai to all nations will birth a unified “heavenly civilization”.3 This utopian vision of world peace and unity aligns with the Concordia Movement. Abdu’l-Baha saw the Japanese as uniquely capable of spreading his faith through its imperial internationalism. However, this reveals an obvious contradiction in the imperial Japanese and Bahai doctrine.

Historians like Mark Linicicome are critical of 20th-century Japanese liberal internationalists like Naruse for the paradox of justifying imperialism on humanist grounds. Lincicome shows how during the Taisho Democracy Era, educators advocated for Japan’s role in promoting world peace through the cultural, political, and economic assimilation (Doka) of weaker Asian nations.4 This internationalism adapted to become hypernationalism after the Manchurian Invasion in 1931. The Concordia Association of Manchuko, originally established to promote left-leaning ideas of Panasiamism and self-determination would become a totalitarian puppet regime after the Japanese Kwantung Army’s occupation in the Second Sino-Japanese War.5 Like Taisho educators, Naruse’s Concordia movement turned away from its liberal values through political pressure and liberal internationalism’s adaptability. Likewise, Abdu’l-Baha viewed Japan as a divine power to bring God’s purifying light for an international utopia. This humanist logic explains Japan’s ability to justify “world war in the name of world peace”.6

Although Jinzo Naruse and Abdu’l-Baha criticize war, nationalism, and militarism, it becomes clear how internationalist rhetoric during Japan’s liberal Taisho Era would quickly be adapted to justify Japan’s hypernationalism, militarism, and imperial expansion in Asia during the Showa Era leading into the Manchrua Invasion and the Second World War.

 

  1. Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Baha’i World Faith’ (1975), pp.254-257  [↩]
  2. Agnes B. Alexander “Abdu’l Baha meets President Naruse of Japan Women’s College.” Bahai Reference Library (1912) p. 113. [↩]
  3.   Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Baha’i World Faith'(1975), pp.254-257 [↩]
  4. Mark Lincicome, “Imperial Subjects As Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism and Education in Japan.” Lexington Books (2009) p. 40 [↩]
  5. Young L., “When Facism met empire in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.” Journal of Global History 12, no.2 (2017) pp.282-283 [↩]
  6. Mark Lincicome, “Imperial Subjects As Global Citizens: Nationalism, Internationalism and Education in Japan.” Lexington Books (2009) p. 104 [↩]

Paradise on earth: Uchiyama Gudō’s imaginations of a (Buddhist) anarcho-communist utopia

The utopian vision of Uchiyama Gudō (1874-1911), a Zen Buddhist priest who was executed for his purported role in the plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji in 1910, offers a unique example of the fusion of Buddhist and socialist ideas in early twentieth-century East Asia. Throughout his writings, Gudō repeatedly imagines a vision of tengoku, explicitly evoking the Christian idea of “soteriological and eschatological” paradise rather than the Buddhist jōdo (Pure Land) or gokuraku (land of bliss).1 Although connections between Christianity and the development of socialist revolutionary thought in Meiji Japan by Rambelli help to contextualise the contemporary meanings and connotations of tengoku, it is arguably most significant in the negative sense; that is, the imagination of an earthly, anarcho-communist utopian ‘paradise’ over a Buddhist heavenly bliss.

Gudō’s (Buddhist) anarcho-communism formed part of a broader wave of emerging Radical Buddhism in late Meiji Japan. He was not alone in his focus on earthly paradise; contemporary anarchists like Tanaka Jiroku were similarly advocating ideas of genseshugi (‘this-world-ism’).2 In China, both Taixu (1890-1947) and Lin Qiwu (1903-1934)  developed similar imaginations of a “pure land in this world” where anarchist utopia and Marxism respectively were “one and the same” as the Buddhist Pure Land.3 Yet, not only do Gudō’s ideas predate many of these other anarchists, his utopian imagination also differs in a critical way in its absence of Buddhist spiritualism. Avoiding references to the pure land, Gudō situates his paradise purely in the earthly realm; in a way, he subverts Radical Buddhism, which views socialism and anarchism as paths to an explicitly Buddhist ‘pure land’, and instead proposes an anarcho-communist revolution in which consciousness and freedom is achieved through Buddhism (as Buddhism and socialism are two sides of the same coin) yet paradise itself is defined by its material, social and political conditions rather than ‘heavenly bliss’. For example, during his interrogation for his alleged role in the High Treason Incident of 1910, Gudo describes his intellectual conversion to anarcho-communism as a result of reading about the communal lives of the Buddhist sangha in Chinese monasteries4. However, this is framed from a specifically worldly perspective; it was the communal and egalitarian aspects of the sangha that appealed to Gudō, as opposed to their spirituality and religious practice. Thus, Gudō removes the distinction between Buddhism and anarcho-communism; he is not striving for a spiritual awakening to nirvana or pure land, but for a (Marxian) social revolution through labour unions to achieve “the ideal land of anarchist communism, where all are free and live a comfortable life”.5

As Rambelli emphasises, Gudō was seeking to transform the (earthly) world as a Buddhist anarcho-communist, rather than “striving for a socialist form of Buddhism”6. Paradise would be distinctively and exclusively anarcho-communist. Whilst inherently informed by the semantic, epistemological, and ontological frameworks of Gudo’s Buddhism, paradise on earth in its realised form seems more rooted in classical Marxism. Paradise would thus begin when the capitalist bourgeoisie “reject[s] the old crime of living out of his capital” and “realize[s] that all human beings must secure their clothing and food through their own labor”.7

Consequently, Gudō’s vision for paradise was both inseparable from his conception of Buddhism and yet fundamentally material. This fusion of Buddhism and socialism was the path necessary to achieve individual and collective consciousness to eliminate oppression and achieve freedom. Attaining social consciousness and establishing paradise would be achieved through Buddhism not because he imagined a future land of heavenly bliss, but instead because the worldly anarcho-communist ‘paradise’ envisaged by Gudō would be the true realisation of Buddhism on earth.

  1. Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharam of Uchiyama Gudō (Berkeley, 2013), p.31. [↩]
  2. Lajos Brons, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism (Santa Barbara, 2023), p.76. [↩]
  3. Brons, A Buddha Land in This World, pp.92-95. [↩]
  4. Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.20. [↩]
  5. Uchiyama Gudō, Museifu Kyosan kakumei, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.50. [↩]
  6. Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.30. [↩]
  7. Uchiyama Gudō, Heibon no jikaku, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.63. [↩]