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Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898-1941

Online ISBN:
9780824871727
Print ISBN:
9780824834388
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press
Book

Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898-1941

Michihiro Ama
Michihiro Ama
University of Alaska, Anchorage
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Published:
31 January 2011
Online ISBN:
9780824871727
Print ISBN:
9780824834388
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press

Abstract

Religious acculturation is typically seen as a one-way process: The dominant religious culture imposes certain behavioral patterns, ethical standards, social values, and organizational and legal requirements onto the immigrant religious tradition. This investigation of the early period of Jōdo Shinshū in Hawaii and the United States sets a new standard for investigating the processes of religious acculturation and a radically new way of thinking about these processes. The use of materials spans the Pacific as the book draws on never-before-studied archival works in Japan as well as the United States. More important, it locates immigrant Jōdo Shinshū at the interface of two expansionist nations. Because Jōdo Shinshū’s institutional history in the United States and the Pacific occurs at a contested interface, the book defines its acculturation as a dual process of both “Japanization” and “Americanization.” It explores in detail the activities of individual Shin Buddhist ministers responsible for making specific decisions regarding the practice of Jodo Shinshu in local sanghas. By focusing so closely, the book reveals the contestation of immigrant communities faced with discrimination and exploitation in their new homes and with changing messages from Japan. The strategies employed, whether accommodation to the dominant religious culture or assertion of identity, uncover the history of an American church in the making.

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