Seeking Sakyamuni: Travel and the Reconstruction of Japanese Buddhism

The reconstruction of Japanese Buddhism in Meiji, Taisho, and Showa Japan involved not only interchanges with Europe and the United States. A central but overlooked catalyst for change was increased travel to and exchange with other Buddhists in Asia. An examination of travel accounts and other writings of three Meiji-era Japanese Buddhist travelers to South and Southeast Asia—Kitabatake Doryu, Shaku Kozen, and Shaku Soen—reveals how contact with Buddhists in those regions stimulated Japanese Buddhists to rethink the role of the historical Buddha in their tradition and demonstrates the importance of these contacts for Buddhism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.