Karma and Punishment : Prison Chaplaincy in Japan, by Adam J. Lyons

Book reviewThis is an intriguing book that casts light not only on the hidden world of chaplaincy in Japanese prisons, but also on the history of the interaction of religion and the Japanese state over some one hundred and fifty years.The book is the product of extensive research and draws on a wide range of sources including historic texts, photographs, and artifacts, as well as interviews with those involved in contemporary Japanese prison chaplaincy.At the heart of the history presented is the development of a model of chaplaincy based on doctrinal admonition of prisoners for their correction.Even today, "the formal goals of doctrinal admonition remain tethered to the state's purposes of correctional rehabilitation and promoting inmate docility" (p.262).This model has its roots in Japanese Buddhist understandings of the complementarity of the rule of the sovereign/state and dharma, with religion being seen as both a private matter and a contribution to the public good.In the case of prison chaplaincy, "Teaching the dharma can promote a change of heart and encourage people to be good citizens" (p.10).The book traces the development of this model and the particular contribution of Shin Buddhist groups and clerics.Chapter 1 notes the contribution of temple-state relations in Tokugawa Japan to the maintenance of social order as the root of the Buddhist response to the later Meiji government's choice of Shinto over Buddhism.Lyons argues in chapter 2 that the approaches developed by Shin Buddhist clerics to converting Christians, in the period before and after the Meiji restoration of 1868, demonstrated the utility of Buddhism for the state, and also provided the prototype for prison chaplaincy in the Meiji period.The term for such admonition, kykai, became, in due course, the name for prison chaplaincy.The practice was consolidated in the period of the "Great Promulgation Campaign" in the early 1870s, as Shin Buddhists sought to join the campaign to offer the Japanese people a "great way," as national instructors alongside Shintoists.The basis for the Buddhist approach was the ideal of the law of the state being in harmony with the dharma, and the dharma therefore offering a contribution to social order.