Jōdo Shinshū in Europe and the Americas

Abstract Jōdo Shinshū is one of the most prevalent Buddhist traditions practiced in Japan and within the global Japanese diaspora. Beginning in the late 19th century, “the eastward transmission of Buddhism,” or Bukkyō tōzen, reached the shores of the Americas and Europe. Despite the shared point of origin from Japan, the development of Jōdo Shinshū in Hawai’i, the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe proceeded along remarkably divergent paths due to a variety of factors unique to each region, including discourses of modernization, imperialism, government policies, mass migration, and the material consequences of entrenched racism. Japanese immigrants (nikkei) to the Americas brought with them Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism and established an impressive array of religious organizations including temples and educational institutions largely associated with the two largest denominations, the Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha (colloquially known as Nishi Hongwanji) and Shinshū Ōtani-ha (or Higashi Honganji). These sanghas, or Buddhist communities, have been indelibly shaped by the intense racism targeted at the nikkei that culminated in their removal, incarceration, deportation, and in some cases, torture, during World War II. To this end, Jōdo Shinshū temples have served as vital bulwarks against prejudice and sites to maintain cultural traditions for generations. Consequently, multigenerational Japanese have made up the majority of these sanghas well into the 21st century . In stark contrast, the European sangha is comprised almost entirely of converts and, to a much lesser extent, Japanese citizens living abroad. This historical development is due to the lack of large-scale Japanese immigration to Europe. Though Jōdo Shinshū priests ventured to Europe to study Western religions at the same time their working-class contemporaries sailed to the Americas, they never intended to establish religious communities. Rather, Jōdo Shinshū grew in Europe largely after World War II through the efforts of converts and were aided by direct funding from the Kyoto-based headquarters of the Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha. Jōdo Shinshū competes with a variety of other schools of Buddhism in the West yet remains a central pillar of many diasporic Japanese communities and offers fascinating insights into the relationships between race and religion, dynamics between so-called “ethnic” Buddhists and their convert counterparts, and the potential for Engaged Buddhism, among other topics.