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Abstract
From 1915–1916 there was in Kyoto a trans-national group of Buddhists named the Mahayana Association, which published an English Buddhist periodical, Mahayanist. Two members of the Mahayana Association, William Montgomery McGovern and M. T. Kirby, were among the earliest cases of Westerners ordained in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism in Japan. Kirby explored the temples of Jōdo Shinshū and the monastic life of Rinzai Zen and Theravada Buddhism in search of salvation. McGovern, on the other hand, had been searching for an alternative to Christianity, which he found unscientific and dissatisfying. He finally found Jōdo Shinshū, which he held to be the essence of Mahayana Buddhism. His understanding of Buddhism was influenced by D. T. Suzuki's version of Mahayana Buddhism. Utsuki Nishu, who helped McGovern and Kirby run the Association, joined the Theosophical Society (Adyar, India) while he was studying at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles and later helped Beatrice Suzuki run the Mahayana Lodge of the Theosophical Society. Drawing on forgotten documents discovered only recently in a Japanese temple, this paper offers a progress report on research into these documents and explores a significant but hitherto unknown side of the history of modern Japanese Buddhism.
Acknowledgements
The initial version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘SE Asia as a Crossroads for Buddhist Exchange: Pioneer European Buddhists and Asian Buddhist Networks 1860–1960,’ hosted by the Study of Religions Department, University College Cork, Ireland, from September 13–15, 2012. The conference was funded by the Dhammakaya International Society of the United Kingdom as part of the 2012 postdoctoral fellowship, ‘Continuities and Transitions in Early Modern Thai Buddhism’. The research in Shōtokuji temple has been done with the help of Ohsawa Koji, Nakagawa Mirai and Dylan Luers. It has been supported by two projects funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science's Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (20320016 and 23320022). I am also grateful to the colleagues of the Shin Bukkyō Research Group (now Modern Religions Archive Research Group) and the ‘translocative’ exchanges with the Dhammaloka Research Group.
Notes
1. The set of copies found at Shōtokuji Temple is incomplete, lacking at least Vol. 1, No. 11. Whether they continued to publish after Vol. 2, No. 1 is uncertain.
4. Carol McGovern Cerf's e-mails to the author dated February 28, 2010 and March 2, 2010.
5. In his letter to Jisōji Tetsugai dated June 24, 1917, Utsuki Nishū wrote that McGovern introduced him to A. P. Warrington when he was in Taiwan.
6. Mahayanist 2 (1).
7. Kyokai Ichiran no. 585 (May 7, 1915). This article says McGovern was British and 23 years old.
8. From the 1891 England Census. I thank Professor Bocking for this information.
9. The name list of Sanmaji Kai (privately owned). Beatrice Suzuki also joined Sanmaji Kai on October 22, 1915.
10. Hirai Kinza (1859–1916) was a teacher of English at several schools and a secular practitioner of Zen Buddhism, though nominally he was ordained as a monk of Rinzai Zen. Reports on him which this author has edited are available. http://www.maizuru-ct.ac.jp/human/yosinaga/hirai_report.pdf
11. Mahayanist (August 1915), 1 (2), 1. But this is rather difficult to believe, as Beatrice Suzuki who was on the site did not mention it (B. Suzuki Citation1919).
12. Samuel L. Lewis (1978) Incense from Roshis, pp. 3, 4. http://murshidsam.org/Documents/Papers/Level1/Incense_From_Roshis.pdf. Lewis wrote about the hardship with which Kirby attained ‘satori’. Lewis later studied Zen with Senzaki Nyogen and Sokei-an.
13. Professor Richard Jaffe (Duke University) has suggested that a famous priest-scholar of the Jōdo sect, Watanabe Kaigyoku (1872–1933) might have introduced Kirby to Nyanatiloka (1876–1957), founder of the Island Hermitage, because the latter stayed in Japan from 1921–1926, helped by Watanabe.
14. This part is based on the statement of Ernest Hunt to Louise Hunter, on November 4, 1965.
15. Mahayanist (July 1915), 1 (1), 2.
16. Mahayanist, (July, 1915), 1 (1), 5.
17. Jisōji Tetsugai wrote that McGovern was born in England, and was 23 years old as of May 5, 1915.
18. Suzuki wrote in a letter to Beatrice dated April 4, 1916 that he had met McGovern in Osaka.
19. Mahayanist (January 1916), 1 (6), 2.
20. Mahayanist (July 1915), 1 (1), 18–19.
21. Mahayanist (July 1915), 1 (1), 19.
22. Mahayanist (May 1915), 1 (4), 4.
23. See Daisetsu's letter to Beatrice dated August 4, 1930. Suzuki Daisetsu (Citation2003, 547).
24. Setti Line Hibino was the wife of Hibino Shin'ichi (1888–1968), a botanist and a professor of Tohoku Imperial University.
25. Beatrice's letter to the president of the Theosophical Society dated November 28, 1928 (Algeo Citation2005, 12–13).