Translating Amida: Transpacific Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Religio-Linguistic Translation

Scholars of Japanese American Buddhism have long recognized the various ways that Japanese Pure Land Buddhism assimilated to American cultural and Protestant religious norms and standards. However, certain developments of linguistic translation from Japanese to English are usually only briefly mentioned or tangentially analyzed in these accounts. Consequently, there remains ample opportunity to explore the specific translation decisions of Japanese Pure Land Buddhists, as well as the contexts and consequences thereof. Therefore, the present essay theorizes and analyzes the multiple contexts and imperial influences on Pure Land Buddhist translations between Japanese and English in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century period. In so doing, I argue and seek to demonstrate that Japanese American Buddhist translation decisions are responses to dynamics of Japanese and American imperial projects of secularization, developing and legislating competing definitions of religion. As such, I explore the location and experience of Japanese American Pure Land Buddhists, especially those associated with the Buddhist Mission of North America (later known as the Buddhist Churches of America), at the intersection of transpacific imperial power and governance. This project builds off the recent works by Scott Mitchell and Michael Masatsugu in exploring the unique contextual construction (and reorientation) of transnational Japanese American Pure Land Buddhism.

In order to do this, I explore developments of religious translation in Japan, Hawaii, and the United States, demonstrating the conflux of multiple influences when considering religious translation decisions. Indeed, especially after the Kanagawa Convention (1854) and the Meiji Restoration (1868), Japanese governmental officials and intellectuals often appropriated Western philosophical paradigms and colonial strategies in the latter-19th century into the 20th century. However, it is important to note that such appropriations were not incorporated wholesale into Japanese governance, ideology, and cosmology; rather, Meiji-era modernizations operated syncretically in order to blend modern scientific methods and technological advancements with existent Japanese culture, tradition, and history. As Jason Ananda Josephson-Storm has demonstrated, this method of ideological syncretism originated as early as the 17th century through the development of _kokugaku_, or National Learning, which sought to cultivate a modern, scientific cosmology rooted in Japanese history and identity, specifically and intentionally divorced from Western, particularly Christian, cosmological centrality and supremacy. In this context, Japanese Pure Land Buddhists were required to negotiate changing definitions of religion (_shuhō_, _shinkyō_, _shukyō_) and their relationship to Shinto-state secularism. Such developments in definitions of religion also functioned to legislate religious organization and expression, especially in response to the presence of Christian missionaries, churches, and youth organizations, such as the YMCA.

At the same time, Buddhist priests and missionaries to Hawaii and the United States were required to translate their religion to make themselves legible to state institutions and cultural observers in order to assert the religiosity of their tradition. English translations of Japanese Buddhist terms were necessary to be recognized and legitimized as religious terms, which consequently recognized and legitimized Japanese Buddhist communities as religious communities. For example, some of the earliest Buddhist missionaries from Japan often referred to themselves as reverends, ministers, or priests; Buddhist communities (_bukkyōkai_) were first called churches in 1905; and, the leader of the BMNA was changed from director (_kantoku_) to bishop (_socho_, which might be better translated as “president”) in 1918. Additionally, there were significant translation decisions concerning Pure Land doctrine that raised some controversy, such as translating _shinjin_ as “faith” and likening Amida Buddha to the Christian God. I argue that such translation decisions and transformations of Pure Land Buddhism in North America are consequences of transpacific negotiations of Japanese and American definitions and administration of religion.

In order to demonstrate this, I highlight three key translation decisions: 1) _kyoukai_ as church, 2) Amida as God, and 3) _shinjin_ as faith. In the first case, I trace the historical etymology of the word “church” and its translation as “_kyoukai_” in Japan, connecting this to the various ways that early Buddhist communities in Hawaii and the United States decided to call their communities. The Japanese imperial government also appropriated and refashioned the legal definition of “church” as religious organizations in the early 1870s, notably around several significant developments of the Ministry of Religion and the Ministry of Education. The translation of Amida Buddha as an equivalent of the Christian God is perhaps best exhibited in the dramatic dismissal of Kagahi Sōryū, the first recorded Pure Land priest to Hawaii, but it is further evidenced in other BMNA documents. Indeed, American legal statutes and judicial precedence often framed religion as a personal belief and individual commitment to a monotheistic god for the propagation of moral principles that uphold the good order of society. Consequently, translations of “god” and “faith” were evidently an expedient assimilation to American legal definitions of religion. However, such translation decisions were controversial since they seemingly controverted essential Pure Land Buddhist doctrines and were inconsistent with Japanese imperial developments of religious administration.

In addition to the historical exploration of such translation decisions, I utilize the writings of several translation theorists, especially postcolonial linguistic theorists, to analyze the politics and problems of religious translation. In this way, I stress the significance of linguistic translation as a mechanism of secular governance that seeks to domesticate foreign traditions and worldviews into dominant discursive categories and values. By situating Japanese American Buddhist translation decisions at the intersection of Japanese and American legal definitions and administration of religion, I explore the unique experience of Pure Land Buddhists in between distinct religio-linguistic empires.