2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Hirai Kinza and the Globalization of Japanese Buddhism of Meiji Era, a Cultural and Religio-Historical Study
| Project/Area Number |
16520060
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Religious studies
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| Research Institution | Maizuru National College of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
YOSHINAGA Shin'ichi Maizuru National College of Technology, Humanities and Social Sciences, Lecturer, 人文科学部門, 講師 (90271600)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
AKAI Toshio Kobe Gakuin University, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Professor, 人文学部, 教授 (00192873)
HASHIMOTO Yorimitsu Yokohama National University, Faculty of Education and Human Sciences, Associate Professor, 教育人間科学部, 助教授 (80334613)
SHORE Jeff Hanazono University, Career Development Center, Professor, 教養課程, 教授 (50196648)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2006
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| Keywords | World's Parliament of Religions / Buddhism / Theosophy / Unitarian / Psychical Research / pluralism / Japonism / culture |
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| Research Abstract |
Hirai Kinza was a scholar of English, a Zen Buddhist, a Unitarian, a psychical researcher, and a liberal religious thinker of the Meiji era. In his early days he tried to promote anti-Christianity movements with the help of Henry Steele Olcott of the Theosophical Society, whom Hirai invited to Japan in 1889. But, after that, he took more pluralistic points of view, creating a kind of meta-religious theory called "synthetic religion." He made speeches at the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. In his speeches Hirai blames the inhumanity of the treaty between Japan and the U.S and spoke about the pluralistic idea of synthetic religion. His speeches turned out to be a great success, and he became the first Japanese to give lectures on Buddhism in the U.S. In spite of such achievements, his biography and thoughts have been rather unknown to the researchers. But his personal documents are still kept by his granddaughter. The Hirai documents consist of letters from foreign friends, papers about the Parliament of Religions, his own writings, and so on, which are of great historical importance. In this research project, (1)we have taken microfilm records of the Hirai documents to preserve them. (2)We digitalized the images of the documents and have done research using the digital files. (3)We have done extensive research of Buddhist and Unitarian journals from the Meiji era to which Hirai contributed articles. (4)As Hirai played important roles in many historical contexts, we tried to approach his life and thoughts through an interdisciplinary perspective. (5)We have published the report with DVD, which contains some of the digital images of the Hirai documents and their metadata written according to the Dublin Core standard.
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