by Rev. Masao Kodani (Senshin Buddhist Temple)

Originally Published In: Senshin Buddhist Temple, Prajna: Light of Compassion, Vol. 41, No. 4, April 1995 [edited for Dharma Rain]

This paper is a short presentation of the history of the Jodo Shinshu Honganji-ha temples in the continental United States, its current problems, and a projection for the future. Because the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) has remained a predominantly Japanese-American based institution, this paper will discuss the history of the BCA in terms of a generational chronology; that is to say, into the periods of Issei (First Generation), Nisei (Second Generation), and Sansei (Third Generation).

The Issei Period:

The Issei period can be divided again into two periods. The first period, from 1885 to about 1907, is characterized by Japanese immigration to the US following the pattern of dekasegi immigration. The idea of dekasegi was to leave one's native place to find work else where and return with accumulated wages. The first large overseas dekasegi was to the kingdom of Hawaii in the period 1885 to 1894. This was followed by immigration to the continental US The Japanese government, not wanting to present a picture of "uncivilized Japanese laborers," was very careful in limiting the number and "quality" of these overseas Japanese laborers. These immigrant laborers were, for example, required to have proof of contracted labor and a guarantee of return passage. The attitude that the Japanese government showed towards these laborers was at best ambivalent. The problems of these laborers was not a concern of the Japanese government so long as the Japanese government or Japan more generally was allowed to look good. This attitude was not missed by these early immigrant workers who coined the phrase kimin, which literally means "an abandoned people," to describe themselves (see "The Issei," Ichioka, Yuji, The Free Press; p. 4).

Because the majority of Japanese immigrating to the continental United States (as well as to the Kingdom of Hawaii) came from areas of Japan that are traditional strongholds of Jodo Shinshu Honganji-ha (Nishi Honganji)--Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Northern Kyushu, and Kagoshima prefectures--a petition was sent to the Honganji-ha mother temple (Honganji) for permission to establish a temple in San Francisco and request that a priest from the Honganji be sent. A similar petition had been sent by the Japanese Buddhists living in the Kingdom of Hawaii ten years earlier. One of the reasons for this official request may have been due to the experience of bogus priests swindling money from the Japanese workers saying they were collecting funds to build temples. The petition was approved by the Honganji and two missionary priests, Rev., Dr. Shuye Sonoda and Rev. Kakuryo Nishijima, were sent to San Francisco. They arrived on September 1, 1899. This is the date officially recognized as the beginning of the BCA.

From about 1908, the second Issei period began. This second period saw a switch from labor in services, agriculture, railroads, mining, lumber, and fishing industries to farming and small businesses. Perhaps motivated by the ambivalent attitude shown by the Japanese government towards them, this was a conscious effort on the part of the Issei to become permanent residents of America and to set down roots. In addition, the Japanese government also facilitated this shift in labor by allowing only businessmen and farmers to bring wives from Japan. Laborers were not permitted to bring wives. Between 1910 and 1920 many women entered Issei society in America, establishing a settled family life. Although family life in America began during this period, this was also a period of intense anti-Japanese activity in the west coast states, and especially California. In the greater San Francisco area, attempts were made to segregate Japanese and Japanese-American school children. Segregated schools also existed in communities in the Sacramento delta area. In 1913, California passed its California Alien Land Act which forbade ownership of land by aliens "ineligible to citizenship." This group included all Asians. In 1922 the US Supreme Court ruled that Japanese and other Asians were ineligible for naturalization by reason of race. This ruling was followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 which prohibited immigration by aliens ineligible to citizenship.

It was within this social atmosphere that these immigrants from Japan tried to establish families in America. An important part of this was the growing Buddhist temples and Christian churches. Following the example of the Young Men's Christian Association, the Buddhists formed the Young Men's Buddhist Association. Buddhist gatherings took the form of the chanting of sutras followed by sermons, informal talks, or more formal lectures. Study classes were conducted on Saturday nights with services and more formal lectures on Sunday. With growing non-Japanese interest in Buddhism, services and lectures for "non-Asians" were conducted on Monday nights. From its very beginnings, Jodo Shinshu Buddhism was purposely adapted to Christian America. This can be seen in the format of its "services," its lectures, and in the name of its temples as "Buddhist Associations (bukkyokai)" or "Buddhist Churches (bukkyo kyokai)" rather than the more proper title of temple. This ambiguity would have greater implications in the future when later generations, whose understanding of Jodo Shinshu was not as great and whose inability to access the Japanese language resources that helped explain the doctrine, would take over. It was not, for example, until the 1970s and the growing publication of English materials explaining the doctrine of Jodo Shinshu that these Buddhist Churches began to change their names to Buddhist Temples.

Although the identity of the temple as a temple did not really begin until the 1970s, these Jodo Shinshu temples quickly grew in areas of heavy Japanese concentration throughout the west coast states of Washington, Oregon, and most especially in California. During this first half of the Issei period temples were affiliated under the organization known as the Hokubei Bukkyodan (North American Buddhist Mission) which included temples in Canada.

The early decades of the Issei were made up almost entirely of young single men or men who came alone to America to work and return to Japan with money (dekasegi). It was a segregated society of young men working long hours of mostly physical labor. Many of the Japanese women in America in the early years of the 20th century were prostitutes brought to America by Japanese procurers called pejoratively "Ameri-goro" or "American thugs." Nevertheless, a common Issei saying of the time was to enjoy the weekend of one's paycheck with the three "hei" or "sanpei" of "nombei" (drinking), "sukebei" (womanizing), and "bakappei" (a form of Chinese gambling). Chances to get together socially were few and far between and such occasions as funerals and memorial services became very important social as well as religious occasions. It was, for example, common practice during this period for Issei members of a temple to attend a funeral at the temple even if the deceased was not known to them. They would take their "koden" (the custom of giving the mourning family money to help pay for the expenses of the funeral) in the spirit of assuring that any Japanese who died in America would have a proper funeral. In this society of males, the money left over from the Koden donations went to provide food and drink after the funeral. The party which ensued was fondly looked forward to by those attending the funeral. Funerals became events of great social importance.

In the second period of the Issei, men brought their wives or arranged for "picture-bride" marriages from Japan. With the coming of Japanese women and the establishing of family life, the sometimes raucous parties after the funeral came to an end. Gifts of tea, cakes, manju (Japanese confectionery), dishes, postage stamps, etc., and donations to the temple were made from the money left over from the received Koden. The attitude that un-used Koden money should not be used for the personal use of surviving family members remains strong to this day.

Because this period was marked by an intense anti-Japanese sentiment, the Issei and their children were not generally permitted to mix with other races socially. In many cases, Asians were segregated into separate public schools. Those who were allowed to attend "mixed" public schools were typically not encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities such as dances and parties. Because of this fact, the temple became the center of all activity other than work or school. To meet the social needs of the Nisei children temples and churches began to create their own social and athletic programs which most notably included Japanese cultural and language classes. Although classes in Ikebana, Chanoyu, Shuji, Shigin, Shamisen, Biwa, Koto, Shakuhachi, Gagaku, Noh, Tanka, Haiku, Judo, Kendo, Karate, Kyudo, Naginata, Japanese cooking, Sumie were taught at both the Japanese Christian churches and Buddhist Temples, this was especially true for the Buddhist temple. At the Buddhist temple, Japanese language classes for Nisei children were typically held every day after public American school and all day Saturday. Sunday was spent at the temple observing religious services. The Nisei children of the Issei knew only school, Japanese school, home chores, farm work, evening homework, Japanese school on Saturday, and temple services and activities on Sunday. The few social activities available to these children were all found at the temple.

Although some of these early temples were built by the membership, the original temples tended to be converted Christian churches or other building that was purchased. Money to purchase and maintain these buildings were collected through membership dues, donations, and fundraising events. A resident priest was hired to serve that temple and was paid a monthly salary generally supplemented by honorariums. During the Issei period, the temple was run by an all male board of directors who annually chose a cabinet of President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer to lead them. The board met monthly to conduct the business of the temple in conjunction with the resident priest. Affiliated organizations grew and proliferated as Nisei children grew older and began to have children of their own.

By the early 1940s, the majority of Nisei were teenagers, many entering college and the American mainstream, at least educationally if not socially. The temples still remained important centers for socializing where one could meet a future marriage partner at an athletic meet, conference, seminar, fund raising event, Bon Odori, etc. The Buddhist temples were flourishing with the first Japanese-American students being sent to Japan to study for the Buddhist priesthood. The need for and emphasis on English as the language of instruction was clearly seen, and the recruiting and training of English-speaking priests became a priority.

The Nisei Period:

All this came to a sudden end with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Because of their association with traditional Japan, many Buddhist priests living in the Pacific Coast states were arrested and imprisoned by the FBI. Their families did not know of their whereabouts for many months, and in some cases years. In this atmosphere of fear and rumor, anything which might connect you with Japan was hidden or destroyed for fear of arrest by the FBI. For Buddhists especially, the very "Japaneseyness" of the temples made them suspect. Japanese books, sutras, butsudan (family altars), gagaku and other musical instruments, Girl's Day and Boy's Day dolls, martial arts gear, etc. were either buried or destroyed. Those that survived were in warehouses that survived pilfering or put in the safekeeping of American friends until after the war.

The leadership of the Buddhist temples was removed almost overnight, leaving inexperienced but English-speaking Nisei youth to deal with the government authorities. The leadership of the Japanese-American community was suddenly taken out of the hands of the largely non-English speaking Issei and fell into the hands of the young Nisei who could communicate in English with the government authorities. The transition of leadership and authority was abrupt and one-sided and caused splits between generations and between Buddhists and Christians which remain to this day.

By late Spring of 1942, all Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California were imprisoned in ten camps scattered in isolated areas throughout the United States. Only the barest of necessities could be taken to the camps. Japanese-Americans virtually lost everything. For Buddhists, valued Butsudan, sutra books, and other religious articles were lost. All of the camps were in isolated areas of the country. Some 110,000 men, women, and children were imprisoned, housed in barracks which held 3 to 4 families in single rooms. Unlike the Japanese Christians, the Buddhists had no help from outside the camps. Indeed, the Buddhists were considered more "suspect" than their Christian counterparts as anti-American and pro-Japanese, even by their fellow Japanese-Christians. Emotionally, the ancient and beloved Buddhist symbol of the swastika did not help matters much when it was adopted as the symbol of the Nazi party. The Dharmachakra (Wheel of Dharma) has replaced it as the symbol of American Buddhism.

Faithful Buddhists however, continued to practice their religion, starting from scratch: re-transcribing the sutras, making Butsudan, juzu (meditation/counting beads), oko (incense powder) from scraps of wood and other materials found in the camps, printing service books and bulletins, etc. Most Nisei affirmed their American loyalty by joining segregated units in the American army, becoming the most decorated unit in American history. A small number affirmed their Americanness by refusing to join the army of a country which denied them their civil rights as American Citizens.

By 1945, the Japanese and Japanese-Americans were permitted to return to the Pacific Coast states to start their lives again, with the vast majority opting to do so. During this period, many of the temples that had not been lost during the evacuation were quickly converted into hostels for families returning from the camps. As soon as these families found work and housing, they left the hostel for the next incoming family. Issei and Nisei couples found it necessary for both to work. Nisei men, many of whom had college graduate and higher educational degrees from American Universities had great difficulty finding employment in a still hostile society. Many resorted to struggling with their own small businesses or working as gardeners, plumbers, and other service jobs. Their wives tended to find employment more easily, many finding work in banking, secretarial, and management positions in American companies. Their jobs often brought in more money than did their husbands and provided them with more contact with the society at large. This greater accessibility allowed Nisei women to be more flexible and broader in their social views than their husbands.

Throughout this time, the temple remained the social, cultural, as well as the religious center for the Japanese-American Buddhist. Dances were now permitted and became an important part of all Nisei and Sansei gatherings. Nisei and later their Sansei children met, dated, and later married each other as a result of having attended conferences, dances, athletic events, seminars, and retreats. Nisei women, however, still tended to defer to their men, who in turn deferred to the Issei men. The Issei were thus able to reestablish their hold on governing the workings of the temple and generally not passing it down to their children until after their death. The Nisei accepted this state of affairs as natural, respecting and observing the Confucian ethic of filial piety ("Oyakoko" Jpz.) to a degree unequaled by their parents and to a degree not approachable by their children. Coming of age during the war years, many Nisei women and men sacrificed their personal lives, giving up marriage and family of their own, to care for their now aging Issei parents.

The priest or minister, as they were more commonly called by this time, tended to have three services every Sunday in addition to whatever private family memorial services, weddings, funerals, etc., that had to be performed. All these "other" services tended to cluster around the weekends. In addition to the religious services that the priest was expected to conduct, the minister was also expected to attend all the different meetings held by each of the auxiliary organizations of the temple as well as participate in the district and national organizations. Because of all the different expectations of the minister's time the membership had, some programs had to be abbreviated, curtailed, postponed, or canceled. Unfortunately, the programs that tended to be abbreviated were the English programs including the Sunday School and the English adult class: the Japanese language services and activities took precedence over the English language services and activities. An unfortunate consequence of this emphasis was the creation of a large group of Nisei followers who only have a sketchy notion of what Jodo Shinshu Buddhism is about because their understanding of the Japanese language did not allow them to fully understand what was being explained to them.

The language of temple life remained Japanese, even though the Nisei and Sansei were increasingly unable to speak, write, or understand it. This was to become the seed of a subtle exclusion of younger Nisei and Sansei participation at board meetings, and by extension from positions of responsibility and leadership in temple life. At age 40, for example, one is still thought to be "too young" to carry on the responsibilities of temple president, even though the Issei became temple presidents at much younger ages. The main services conducted at the temple were the weekly services in Japanese which took place in the early afternoon on Sunday. Sunday School and English service took place on Sunday morning. This emphasis on the Japanese language service could be seen even in the adornments of the altar area, and the formal nature of the Japanese service. It was acceptable, for example, for the English language service to be an abbreviation of the Japanese service in both display and formality. The secondary status of the English language was further reinforced by statements such as "English cannot convey Buddhist principles and understanding." Unfortunately, if this statement were true, then the universality of Jodo Shinshu would be clearly negated.

These problems notwithstanding, the temples were able to re-establish themselves, building new temples by the 1950s and 1960s. The teaching of Jodo Shinshu in the English language was concentrated in the weekly Sunday School, primarily in the education of Sansei children. This was done by a large voluntary staff of Nisei members, many of whom were public school teachers. Teaching methods, curriculum, even the value systems of the public schools were imitated in the Sunday Schools. The vague understanding of Jodo Shinshu by many Nisei teachers resulted in the emphasizing of "general Buddhism" in Sunday Schools. Adult education in the English language was largely non-existent except for periodic national and district conferences and periodic publications by individual priests. The confusion between general Buddhism and Jodo Shinshu gave rise to many questions about such topics as "jiriki versus tariki," "God and Amida," "karma and soul," etc., questions which teachers and ministers were unprepared to answer in English, or indeed in Japanese.

By the 1970s and 1980s, however, the attendance of junior high and senior high school aged students at these Sunday Schools continued to drop to alarming figures. What and how to teach the upper grades became a chronic problem. What had been taught to children in these Sunday Schools was no longer enough to keep young adults interested in the temple.

The Sansei and the Present:

With dropping attendance by the young adult population, many Nisei and Sansei adults gathered to emphasize adult education with an increased interest in the meaning of traditional Jodo Shinshu ritual practices and teachings. This coincided with the renewed interest among the Sansei, in general, in things with a Japanese and Japanese-American identity.

The coming of age of the Sansei generation is characterized by the American social phenomenon of third-generation Americans returning to the culture of their immigrant grandparents. Among Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, this expressed itself in a renewed interest in and a return to more traditional ways as well as providing the foundation for the creation of uniquely Japanese-American expressions of these traditions. For example, this renewed emphasis on traditional ritual allowed many Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temples to remove many of the Congregational Christian elements of service worship that found their way into the Sunday service while maintaining the "Sunday go to meeting" custom of American religion to remain. Furthermore, this "return to tradition" also provided the groundwork for the creation of uniquely Japanese-American Buddhist forms of culture such as Taiko, a unique form of the Bon Odori, the communalizing of such activities as Mochi-tsuki (pounding rice cakes), food sales, and the creation of fusion musical groups as examples.

This return to tradition, however, has constantly been counter-balanced by the increasing number of intermarriages outside the Japanese-American community; in Los Angeles, this rate is estimated at 50% The increasing "outside" cultural influences on the children of temple families is a growing challenge to the Jodo Shinshu temple. For example, even within the Buddhist community, until the 1960s Japanese Buddhism was the only form of Buddhism in sizable numbers in America. The overwhelming majority of these Japanese-American Buddhists was Jodo Shinshu Honganji-ha. Since the 1960s, however, other Asian groups have immigrated to the United States bringing with them their own tradition of Buddhism. In Los Angeles, for example, the Sangha Council is made up of Buddhist traditions from Burma, Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam. With the increasing number of options available even within the Buddhist community, Sansei Japanese-Americans have found no difficulty in becoming Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Tibetan monks and nuns, Hindus and Bahai, but have found it extremely difficult to understand the religion into which they were born, or Jodo Shinshu.

With the coming of age of the Sansei generation, the general consensus is that there is an urgent need for adult education in the English language. Although the transition to English is slowly being accomplished, the transition is being hampered by the history of the temple. The temple began as the Hokubei Kyodan (North American Sangha) and was an organization of the Issei modeled after Japanese religious institutions. From this grew the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) which was born rather abruptly in the concentration camps during World War II. The birth of the Nisei organization was accomplished, ironically, partly because of the incarceration of the Buddhist community in the camps where the Japanese-speaking Issei leadership was replaced by their English speaking children. However, because this new institution was created under these circumstances, the BCA made it a point to emphasize its "Americanness" by copying Christian models for religious services and organizations. The imitation of the Christian churches was especially evident in the use of the term "church" versus "temple" in referring to the parent organization. This imitation of the Christian churches was on a broad scale with little understanding of or regard for the Buddhist position in such matters, much less the Jodo Shinshu position. Because of this history, there is a need to re-evaluate and explain the function of a temple and the temple ritual in English if the temple is to have any real religious meaning in the lives of Jodo Shinshu Buddhists in America.

This need for explanation in English, however, comes at a time when an extreme shortage of priests from Japan and America has also been identified. The Jodo Shinshu Honganji-ha temples in the Continental United States with a resident minister number 49 temples. Full time priests number 56. There are a handful of part-time ministers who serve temples on weekends. In addition there are 14 temples who have no resident minister and are being serviced by ministers from nearby temples. BCA temples are incorporated as non-profit, charitable, religious organization, and are owned and operated by the members of that organization. Ministers are employed by the temple and are assigned by the Bishop of the BCA who has traditionally negotiated between the temple board of directors and the minister. The majority of Nisei and Sansei priests are from non-priest families and the creation of a hereditary line is generally not a concern.

Problems and Projections:

Although still in its infancy, adult level propagation of Jodo Shinshu in our temples have produced a small but deeply concerned and informed laity. The priests in general have not kept up, nor encouraged this small but growing group. We as priests have not presented Jodo Shinshu, as an important religious tradition in American life, in a clear and systematic manner. We have not, for example, dealt with the place and function of ritual in our temples, the participation rather than observation of the laity in these rituals, and what the function of the priest should be during these rituals or other temple activities more generally. Instead, we have simply maintained what has been without, perhaps, even knowing why any of these things are done in the first place.

In order to address some of these issues, and especially the need for adult education in English, the clergy will need to be better trained than in the past. This will include a better grasp of the Japanese written language on the part of American born priests, and more fluency of the spoken English language by Japanese born priests who come to America. American born priests will have to expand their study time in Japan in terms of learning how to read and understand the Japanese of Jodo Shinshu literature and to experience living examples of that tradition. Understanding and appreciating Japan is not as important as understanding Jodo Shinshu, Japan's most important religious contribution to the world. Both American born and Japanese born priests, however, will have to present a Jodo Shinshu point of view to the many social ails that afflict our society today. These discussions will include but are not limited to the social problems of law and order, ethics and morality, marriage and family, and the constant problems of race relations that seem to have reached crisis proportions in America. The Jodo Shinshu clergy needs to discuss and discover what the Jodo Shinshu point of view to these and other problems are, and critique American society from that point of view. We should not be so much interested in the Americanization of Jodo Shinshu as in the Jodo Shinshuization of America. In order to do that, we must sit down and seriously discuss what the essential point of Jodo Shinshu is, and what is peripheral to that expression. In this regard, hands on experience at a temple in Japan for our students and at a temple in America for Japanese students would be extremely helpful if the student gets the opportunity to talk to priests and lay members about Jodo Shinshu and problems in its propagation and understanding, instead of merely observing how things are done in each context.

More and deeper contact between the various Jodo Shinshu international groups is something greatly to be desired. International conferences and exchanges have done the groundwork. It is now time to meet for more in-depth exchanges about what Jodo Shinshu is all about, how it affects and can affect our daily lives, what kind of changes we need to make in order to facilitate propagation, and how best to effect those changes. More than any time in our past, we are now ready to take that next step. Let us hope that we will take advantage of this great opportunity. It is more than auspicious that it coincides with the 500th memorial observance of Rennyo Shonin, the great interpreter of Jodo Shinshu to the people of his age.

 

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