Beyond Postcolonial Buddhist Studies: Imperial Entanglements, Decolonial Possibilities, and Metamodern Futures

Calls to decolonize Buddhist Studies are growing, but what decolonization means remains contested. This paper argues that dismantling Orientalist legacies is not enough. The field’s epistemic foundations must be rethought. Starting from the history of Buddhists Studies in Japan, this paper will show how the field was co-produced through transnational entanglements, shaped as much by Japanese intellectuals as by European Orientalists. Indeed, Japanese scholars reframed Buddhism to resist Western hegemonic classifications, yet in doing so, they also helped construct the categories that continue to define the field—often in ways aligned with Japan’s imperial ambitions. This history complicates default postcolonial critiques. Drawing on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s cosmopolitan ecology of knowledges and a metamodern approach, this paper proposes an alternative: a Buddhist Studies that integrates Buddhist epistemologies as generative theoretical resources rather than mere objects of study, opening new methodological possibilities for the discipline and religious studies at large.