Inoue Shūten (井上秀天, 1880-1945) was a Japanese

Zen Buddhist Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...

scholar and advocate for

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

and the anti-war activist from the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

to the early Showa period.Shields, James Mark, "Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō and the Crisis of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity in Late Meiji Japan" (2022). Faculty Contributions to Books. 262. https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_books/262Moriya Tomoe 守屋友江. "Social Ethics of “New Buddhists” at the Turn of the Twentieth Century A Comparative Study of Suzuki Daisetsu and Inoue Shūten." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32/2: 283–304 © 2005 Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

Life

Inoue entered a Sōtō Zen temple at the age of nine and later studied Indian philosophy at Komazawa University. During his travels throughout south China, Ceylon, Burma, and India, he met Anagarika Dharmapala and was deeply influenced by the region's Theravāda Buddhist traditions. These experiences, along with his socialist leanings, influenced his strong

pacifism Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ...

and opposition to

Japanese imperialism The territorial conquests of the Empire of Japan in the Western Pacific Ocean and East Asia began in 1895 with its victory over Qing China in the First Sino-Japanese War. Subsequent victories over the Russian Empire (Russo-Japanese War) and the ...

. Inoue was also a member of the Japanese Socialist organization called the Kobe People's Club (J. Heimin Kurabu). Inoue was critical of Japanese militarism and of "Imperial Way Buddhism," which supported Japanese imperialism. He also criticized Suzuki Daisetsu for defending the idea that Buddhists could be effective soldiers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shūten, Inoue 1880 births 1945 deaths Japanese socialists Soto Zen Buddhists

Life

See also

References