The Scope and Limits of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) and the Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery of Society'

<p> Although New Buddhism is a term sometimes employed to refer to the broad sweep of reform and modernization movements in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice beginning in the 1870s, the term <em> shin bukky&omacr; </em> refers more specifically to a broadly influential movement of some two dozen young scholars and lay Buddhists active in the last decade of the Meiji period (1868&ndash;1912). Founded in February 1899 as Bukky&omacr; Seito D&omacr;shikai <em> </em> (Buddhist Pure Believers Fellowship or Buddhist Puritan Association), the group changed its name to Shin Bukky&omacr; D&omacr;shikai (New Buddhist Fellowship) in 1903. Notto Thelle refers to the NBF as &ldquo;the most consistent effort to propagate and organize the New Buddhism as a radical alternative to traditional Buddhism.&rdquo; Just <em> how </em> radical is a question I explore here via an analysis of the life and work of Watanabe Kaikyoku (1872&ndash;1933), a founding member and leading figure within the NBF who, in contrast to the majority of his peers, elected to remain within a traditional (Pure Land) Buddhist institution. Along the way, this chapter explores the New Buddhist construction of (Buddhist) &ldquo;modernity&rdquo; in light of a distinctively modernistic understanding of the place of &ldquo;society,&rdquo; one that has clear affinities with contemporaneous developments in Western progressive thought and some forms of liberal Christianity, especially the Unitarian movement.</p>