Here are links to two articles online that I found very helpful in researching my paper:
Women’s Image and Place in Japanese Buddhism, by Haruko Okano
A History of Women in Japanese Buddhism, by Toshie Kurihara
{July 12, 2009}
Relevant Articles (Katherine)
{July 12, 2009}
Misogyny in Japanese Buddhism (Katherine)
Misogyny in Japanese Buddhism
Many Japanese today see Buddhism not as a source of enlightenment, but as a conservative institution of discrimination. Women especially have reason to reject Japanese Buddhism because of a long history of misogynic beliefs, practices, and participation in the oppression of women for the last thousand-plus years. Some Buddhist women, like Noriko Kawahashi, believe that Japanese Buddhism is at heart a religion of equality and can be saved through feminist reinterpretation of doctrine and banning of discriminatory practices; others say it is inherently misogynic in nature and therefore beyond salvation.
What I think neither of these groups of women have considered is this: how much of the misogynic beliefs and practices in Japanese Buddhism are Buddhist, and how much are Japanese? If there is one thing we have learned this semester, it’s that the Buddhism practiced in Japan is highly unique from all other brands of Buddhism in many different ways, just as Japanese culture is unique not just in the world, but in Asia. So it stands to reason that the discrimination evident in Japanese Buddhism does not just come from Buddhist doctrine, but may also originate in Japanese society. The purpose of my paper is to examine how much of four chosen areas of discrimination come from Buddhist doctrine and how much from pre-existing Japanese culture.
The first topic I will discuss is the disenfranchisement of nuns, whom began as the leaders of Buddhism in Japan but were slowly marginalized thanks to government policies. The second is an investigation into the idea of blood impurity which, though already inherent in Japanese culture, was exploited by Buddhist doctrine to subjugate women to a variety of discriminatory practices. Another topic is how Buddhism robbed women of their agency through doctrine about women’s place in society and their salvation. Closely related to these is the subject of women’s inability to attain buddhahood due to their inherent sinfulness and to doctrine which contradicts the policy of Mahayana Buddhism that all people are salvable.
