Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast.

Episode 154, Zen at War.

In Tokugawa, Japan, it was good to be a Buddhist.

Though Japan had no official religion per se, the Buddhist establishment was well

protected by the Tokugawa through a combination of policies.

Mandatory registration at a local temple for all Japanese, originally a program to sniff out Christians,

meant that Buddhist organizations enjoyed support from the entire population,

regardless of whether that support was freely given.

State support for Buddhist institutions, especially the large temple complexes

of Edo and Kyoto, was constantly forthcoming, and Buddhist institutions dominated the education

of most Japanese with the system of Terakoya or temple schools. The official philosophy of Tokugawa

Japan was Chinese derived in Neo-Confucianism, but in a very

real sense, the Buddhists were actually stronger than the Confucians.

Buddhism certainly was much more a presence in the lives of average Japanese than Confucianism

was.

But then the West came to Japan, and the Tokugawa regime collapsed,

and institutional Buddhism found itself in something of a rough spot.

For a modernizing Meiji regime dedicated to the creation of a unitary Japanese national culture,

Buddhism was suspicious for the same reason Christianity was.

It was foreign.

After all, Buddhism had existed in Japan for 1,500 years, but its origins lay 2,500 years in the murky

past in the far-off land of India.

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