Pure Land, Real World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Critical Energy ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Modern Period

For a thousand years, Japanese Buddhists cultivated vivid images of utopia in the form of the Western Paradise, but in the modern period, this utopianism became troublesome. Shinshū modernizers reinvented the Pure Land: some molded it into something the nation-state could tolerate; others used it to secure their own autonomy. Their reinterpretations encouraged new engagements with the tradition; during the war years, as the Japanese state bore down upon its citizens, thinkers with no obvious connection to Shinshū seized upon the twinned images of Shinran in exile and Amida’s Pure Land. For economist Kawakami Hajime, the Pure Land represented an inner realm of peace, the discovery of which allowed him to remain committed to Marxism through years in prison and forced seclusion. For philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, it represented the proletariat’s historical mission of liberating humanity, making Shinshū proof positive of the possibility of a proletarian religion. For historian Ienaga Saburō, it represented sheer negation of this world, grounding Shinran’s confrontation with society; Ienaga himself sought to uphold this legacy of resistance, rallying against a state that failed to live up to its ideals. These radical readings reveal that the critical energy of medieval Pure Land has not been exhausted.

The Modern Tradition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Complementary Relationship ◽  
The Real ◽  
Pastoral Letter ◽  
Private Matter ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
The Ideal

Abbot Kōnyo’s pastoral letter of 1871 codifies an understanding of the Pure Land as a transcendent realm, attainable only after death, and of faith as a private matter of the heart. This understanding is valuable as a way of negotiating a place for Shinshū in the regime of the modern nation-state. Early Meiji thinkers like Shimaji Mokurai rely on this understanding of religion as internal in arguing for the separation of church and state. Shinshū reformer Kiyozawa Manshi pushes this focus on interiority to its limit, destabilizing the complementary relationship between the Buddhist law and the imperial law that his predecessors sought to secure. During the Taishō, Kiyozawa’s disciple Kaneko Daiei attempts to rearticulate the connection between the ideal Pure Land and the real world, while the Honganji-ha thinker Nonomura Naotarō argues that it is time for the Pure Land tradition to set aside the myth of the Western Paradise.

The Land in Pure Land

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Real World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Warring States Period ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Community Based ◽  
The Real ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
A Site

Polemical accounts suggest that the Western Paradise has traditionally been imagined as a strictly transcendent pocket universe, having no relation to this world. But medieval Pure Land believers sought the Pure Land in this world in a variety of ways, mapping it onto the landscape around them in order to rehearse the event of birth. Hōnen’s understanding of the Pure Land amplifies its supernatural character as a site within which the laws governing the real world do not apply. Shinran’s identification of himself as neither monk nor layman further knits together estrangement from the real world and birth in the Pure Land. Rennyo takes Shinran’s self-identification seriously, attempting to build a community based on the principle of mutual equality and organized according to seniority, reflecting the utopian values of the Warring States period. “Traditional” Pure Land does not begin to emerge until the early modern period.

Questioning the Hegemony of the Nation State in Belarus: Production of Intellectual Discourses as Production of Resources

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 623-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Pershai
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Nation States

Katherine Verdery writes that “[i]n the modern period, nation has become a potent symbol and basis of classification within an international system of nation states”; in turn, nationalism “is a political utilization of the symbol nation through discourse and political activity, as well as the sentiment that draws people into responding to this symbol's use.” However, the idea of “nation state” and its functioning can be seen as a part of the larger hegemonic constructions that operate on the level of “common” beliefs that legitimize existing social hierarchies and divisions of economic resources, and on the level of relationships between states and nations.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Keyword(s):  
Critical Force ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Specialized Training ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Utopian Vision ◽  
Pure Land Buddhism ◽  
Medieval Japan

The utopian vision of the Pure Land that flourished in medieval Japan becomes a problem for some thinkers in the modern Shinshū tradition who, like other religious modernists, find utopianism embarrassing. Theodore Adorno and Edward Said suggest a way of preserving the critical force of utopianism by tying it to exile. Japanese thinkers working during the war years also seize on this possibility, using ideas drawn from Pure Land Buddhism to imagine alternatives to the nation-state. Thinkers without specialized training in ritual or doctrine are able to make use of Buddhism in this way as a result of the same processes of secularization that make the Pure Land a problem for Shin modernizers.

scholarly journals Social Theory and the Principium Unitatis

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
William Orton
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
General View ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
History Of

Complex as is the immediate situation of social theory, a general view reveals some significant continuities, both spatial and temporal. The attitude of the pluralists, whether in theory or in practice, to the sovereign nation-state has more common ground than at first appears with that of the states themselves toward the nascent organs of international government; and the dilemma underlying both controversies is in fact nothing less than a restatement, in modern ideology, of an issue fundamental to the history of the entire Christian era.That issue, stated in the broadest terms, centers about the relation between de facto and de jure sovereignty; or, more broadly still, between political and ethical, secular and spiritual, authority; and its importance may be suggested by the generalization that security in social relations is attainable, and has in fact been attained, only when the de facto, or political, sovereign—whatsoever form it may take—has been substantially integrated with the immediate source of ethical or moral authority. The pre-modern period of history abounds in statements, both factual and doctrinal, of this issue.

THE FORMATION OF A JAPANOCENTRIC WORLD ORDER

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arano Yasunori
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
World Order ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Nation State

Two major phenomena helped define Japan's foreign relations in the early modern period: the ban on international maritime travel and trading, and the Japanese adaptation of a Sinocentric rhetoric governing foreign relations with tributary states. In this article I will describe and analyze how these phenomena emerged and evolved, with special emphasis on the role they played in shaping Japan as an early modern nation state and forming for it a sense of “national identity.” My examination will focus on them especially in the context of Japan's relationship with its East Asian neighbours, and I place particular emphasis on four points.

scholarly journals Varieties of Militarism: Towards a Typology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srdjan Vucetic
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

Militarism—a mercurial, endlessly contested concept—is experiencing a renaissance of sorts in many corners of the social science community. In critical security studies, the concept’s purview has become increasingly limited by an abiding theoretical and analytical focus on various practices of securitisation. We argue that there is a need to clarify the logic and stakes of different forms of militarism. Critical security scholars have provided valuable insights into the conditions of ‘exceptionalist militarism.’ However, if we accept that militarism and the production of security are co-constitutive, then we have every reason to consider different manifestations of militarism, their historical trajectories and their inter-relationships. To that end, we draw on the work of historical sociologists and articulate three more ideal types of militarism: nation-state militarism, civil society militarism, and neoliberal militarism. We suggest this typology can more adequately capture key transformations of militarism in the modern period as well as inform further research on the militarism-security nexus.

Beyond Pan-Asianism

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State System ◽  
Western World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Definite Answer

Within Asia, the period from 1840s to 1960s had witnessed the rise and decline of Pax Britannica, the growth of multiple and often competing anti-colonial movements, and the entrenchment of the nation-state system. Beyond Pan-Asianism seeks to demonstrate the complex interactions between China, India, and their neighbouring societies against this background of imperialism and nationalist resistance. The contributors to this volume, from India, the West, and the Chinese-speaking world, cover a tremendous breadth of figures, including novelists, soldiers, intelligence officers, archivists, among others, by deploying published and archival materials in multiple Asian and Western languages. This volume also attempts to answer the question of how China–India connectedness in the modern period should be narrated. Instead of providing one definite answer, it engages with prevailing and past frameworks—notably ‘Pan-Asianism’ and ‘China/India as Method’—with an aim to provoke further discussions on how histories of China–India and, by extension the non-Western world, can be conceptualized.

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