Today I completed my recent project of adding old brochures found in the Sacramento Nichiren Buddhist Church classroom to the church website’s collection of brochures. This final brochure is entitled Save the Earth. The roughly 4-inch by 6-inch pamphlet unfolds into a seven panel brochure with comic-book-like illustrations on one side and a text-only article on the other.
Japanese postwar pacifism is one of the things I find very foreign, especially as it relates to Nichiren Buddhism. After all, my father fought in Europe in World War II, earning a bronze star for valor for holding his position during the Battle of the Bulge. My wife’s father served in counterintelligence in Tokyo during Gen. McCathur’s post-war occupation of Japan. That’s where he met my wife’s mother, a translator who had been a teenager in Tokyo during the war. I served in the US Navy in the Vietnam War, although that was mostly because I was going to be drafted into the Army. Being a self-proclaimed anti-war Christian at the time, I toyed with flight to Canada or principled jail time, but ended up joining the Navy. While I thought that would keep me out of the war, I ended up spending 11 months in and out of the Gulf of Tonkin on the aircraft carrier USS Midway. I worked in squadron maintenance administration, shuffling papers related to the maintenance of F4 Phantom jets.
Anyway, the thought of teaching children that war is bad, especially in our current age of endless war in Afghanistan, seems both inspiring and naive.
The Save the Earth brochure concludes:
To realize peace we must abandon greed and make the “principle of thankfulness” the basis of civilization. Buddhism teaches that “all phenomena are produced by causation.” This means that nothing—be it living or non-living things, natural or artificial phenomena—can exist by itself. The existence of anything is dependent on the existence of others. When we become thankful for others, we learn to be contented. Here arises dialogue, mutual understanding, the spirit of tolerance and friendship.
In his writings Nichiren repeatedly stresses the importance of peace. He says,
“You must be awakened promptly to the true teaching of Buddha Sakyamuni. Then the world will become the land of the Buddha. How can the Land of Buddha decline or be destroyed? If the nation does not decline and the land is not destroyed, we can be safe and calm:”
Uphold Righteousness and Bring Peace to the CountryWe are promoting the “Rissho Peace Movement” in accordance with Nichiren’s teachings. Peace will never be realized while we are standing idly by. Let’s join hands and speak out worldwide for the realization of peace.
My Google search for background on “Rissho Peace Movement” failed to turn up any references to Nichiren Shu activities. However, it did point me to Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historial Cases, a collection of essays published by Syracuse University Press in January 2000. In this book, Jacqueline Stone writes in an article entitled Japanese Lotus Millennialism: From Militant Nationalism to Contemporary Peace Movements:
During Japan’s modern imperial period, intense nationalism, militarism, and war were assimilated to new millennial visions of a world harmoniously united under Japanese rule. Certain elements in the teachings of the medieval Buddhist teacher Nichiren were appropriated to these visions. His discourse about Japan as the place where a new Dharma would arise to illuminate the world was given an imperialist reading; his advocacy of assertive proselytizing or shakubuku—which for Nichiren had meant preaching and debate—was adopted as a metaphor for armed force; and his emphasis on giving one’s life for the Lotus became a celebration of violent death in the imperial cause. Such millennialist appropriations inspired not only extremists committed to political assassination or coups but also broadly legitimated the violence that pitted Japan as a whole against other Asian countries and the West.
A World Without War
It is little exaggeration to say that ultranationalistic Lotus millennialism died in August 1945 in the flames of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But even before these ruined cities had been rebuilt, a new Lotus millennialism had risen to take its place. Postwar Lotus millennialism envisions a time when, by awakening to the universal Buddha nature, people everywhere will live in harmony and with mutual respect. Different Nichiren-and Lotus-related religious groups offer variations on this basic theme, but on one point they all agree: in that future time, there will be no war. Nuclear weapons, in particular, will be abolished.
I suppose the use of Nichiren’s writings to take both sides of the question of war shows the universality of his message. Or, perhaps more to the point, it shows how the one True Dharma is subverted by innumerable meanings.