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The Establishment of Chinese Ordination Platforms in Taiwan during the Japanese Period 1895-1945

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The Establishment of Chinese Ordination Platforms in Taiwan during the Japanese Period 1895-1945

A paper presented at the conference “Bordering the Borderless: Faces of Modern Buddhism in East Asia” held at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, on October 4-5, 2013.

Charles B. Jones, M.T.S., Ph.D.

Associate Professor

School of Theology and Religious Studies

The Catholic University of America


Abstract:


From the earliest period of Han Chinese immigration to 1895, Buddhist temples existed in Taiwan, but men and women aspiring to ordination were required to go to southeastern coastal China. When China ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895, what had been a domestic journey from one part of China to another now involved crossing an international border, and travel to mainland China became more difficult. At the same time, the Japanese viceregal government (sōtokufu 總督府) instituted a policy of assimilation, hoping to convert the people of Taiwan into full Japanese citizens. In response, the Chinese population established the first ordination centers in a handful of temples in order to keep Chinese monastic lineages and practices alive. During the “Japanization Movement” (kōminka undō 皇民化運動), instituted by the viceregal government after 1937 in order to speed assimilation and instill loyalty during the war on mainland China, Chinese-style ordinations ceased. This article examines the evolution of Japanese-Taiwanese relations during the fifty years of Japanese rule in order to contextualize the Chinese ordination system and to find out why it flourished only during the middle years of this period.


I. Introduction


As noted in my book Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660-1990, no one can really tell when Buddhism first arrived in Taiwan, but records of its presence can be found starting from the late Ming dynasty (roughly the 1580s to 1644), and many of its oldest temples date from that period. However, Taiwan had always been something of a backwater, a haven for refugees, pirates, and opportunists of all stripes, and so the most eminent monks of the Ming-Qing period never found their way there. Neither did government officials, for whom even a brief posting to the island constituted a kind of internal exile to be endured for as short a time as possible. None of these conditions were conducive for the development of any kind of infrastructure, whether industrial, political, or religious.


Nevertheless, there were temples, and they did have monks and a few nuns in them. Like the population of Han Chinese on Taiwan taken as a whole, such monks as there were all migrated in, and seem not to have represented the cream of the crop. There were Ming loyalists who donned monastic robes in order to elude the Qing authorities, and they were typically remembered for achievements in pursuits generally valued by the gentry: calligraphy, painting, and playing chess. This pattern repeated with every rebellion and defeat; the leaders of the losing side fled to Taiwan and donned monastic vestments for disguise (Jiang 2006, p. 26). The rest were barely-educated caretakers who provided the local community with rituals (mostly funerals) and facilities. Those that had more than just the novice’s ordination were ordained on the mainland. Many of the earliest Buddhist temples built during the Ming, Zheng, and Qing periods were barely more than folk temples that just happened to have a Buddhist image enshrined within. (See Jiang 2006, p. 24 for the example of the Guanyin Ting 觀音亭, built in the area that is now Xinzhu 新竹 around 1781, which was no more than an average community temple with a Buddhist patina.)


Inhabitants of Taiwan who wished to become monks received training at one ordination site in particular: the Yongquan Temple on Drum Mountain in Fuzhou (Fúzhōu Gǔshān Yǒngquán sì 福州鼓山湧泉寺). This was in accordance with a Qing imperial decree, since Taiwan was then officially part of the Fujian circuit (xúnfǔ 巡撫) and this was the officially-recognized ordaining temple in that jurisdiction (Huang 2005, p. 205; Jiang 2006, p. 28). This temple was not typical of ordaining temples in China at the time, though. As Holmes Welch has documented, the usual practice was to separate the initial tonsuring ceremony (tìdù 剃度) from full ordination (jùzú jiè 具足戒) in order to keep tonsure lineages from gaining too much influence over a public monastery (shífāng cónglín 十方叢林). The Yongquan Temple did not follow this practice, and intermingled tonsure and ordination lineages, and it was from this aberrant practice that the monastic community of Taiwan came (Welch 1967, p. 138-139).


However, things changed in 1895. In that year, China ceded Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki (gladly, according to China’s chief negotiator). At this point, what had been an uncomplicated passage to the homeland now involved the crossing of an international border. Taiwan’s Buddhist community now found itself sharing territory with a growing cadre of Japanese Buddhist missionaries, who, while numerically a minority, dominated politically. Japanese Buddhism also displayed considerable differences when compared with the Chinese variety. Chinese Buddhism (rhetorically and ideally if not always in actuality) maintained a system of ordained monks and nuns who received extensive training in monastic life, practice, and ritual, and they were expected to be celibate and refrain from meat and wine. Japanese Buddhism, on the other hand, had long since abandoned clerical celibacy as a normal practice, and most Japanese clergy were family men who functioned more like Protestant ministers than like Buddhist monastics. (For a study of Japanese clerical marriage, see Jaffee 2010. Many scholars therefore use the term “priest” in reference to Japanese Buddhist religious functionaries rather than the terms “monk” or “nun.”)


During the first twenty years of Japanese viceregal rule, there were uprisings and attempts to throw off the foreign yoke, several of them planned in religious halls and couched in religious rhetoric, a circumstance that caused the Japanese to undertake a thorough investigation of religion on the island. (The results were published in Marui 1919.) For Buddhists, cooperation with and even subordination to Japanese Buddhist schools such as Sōtō or Rinzai Zen became the primary means for avoiding suspicion. At the same time, Chinese Buddhists in Taiwan were proud of their tradition and wished to keep it alive as much as possible. Yet too open an expression of that pride, too overt an attempt to enact an authentic Chinese monastic practice, might very well bring increased scrutiny or even confiscation and destruction of property. In no area was this problem more keenly felt than in ordination, because there a clear choice had to be made; to ordain in a fully Chinese fashion, celibacy and all, or to subscribe to the Japanese practice. In what follows I shall try to show how the Chinese Buddhist community negotiated this dilemma.


II. Japan’s Assimilation Policies in Taiwan


If we are to understand Buddhist ordinations as (at least in part) a response to the imposition of Japanese suzerainty over Taiwan, then we must first understand Japan’s own perplexities in formulating a policy for dealing with the Taiwanese. In an excellent article by Ching-chih Chen, we learn that the Japanese government itself was not quite sure how to regard their relationship with this island that they had gained through cession and not conquest and its indigenous people, nor did they know at first how they should strive to shape this relationship over time. I shall summarize Chen’s argument briefly. (Chen 1994 passim)


From the start, the Japanese did not see themselves as a colonial power in Taiwan. They studied the British and French styles of colonialism, and understood that the enterprise involved efforts to keep themselves separate from the colonized people, allow them to preserve their own languages and cultures, and manifestly not turn them into proper citizens or their territories into integral parts of the colonizing nation. The Japanese, in contrast, always wanted the Taiwanese to assimilate to Japanese language and culture, and their end goal was to make Taiwan a part of the Japanese homeland (naichi 內地). All inhabitants of Taiwan would eventually become citizens, send delegates to the National Diet, and enjoy the full protections of the Japanese constitution. In pushing toward this goal, the Japanese authorities tended to emphasize the similarities between the two lands and their cultures rather than their differences: same race (donshū 同族), same script (donbun 同文), and same religion (donkyō 同教).


Even during the first twenty years of Japanese rule, when the viceregal government (sōtokufu 總督府) was challenged by numerous religiously-inspired uprisings, the debate was not between assimilation versus non-assimilation, but between quick and gradual assimilation. During the 1920s, several consecutive governors-general even suggested replacing “assimilation” with “ethnic fusion,” suggesting intermarriage as a means to the full integration of Taiwan into the Japanese body politic. Buddhism, along with Confucianism, was part of the “same religion” component of their narrative. When one compares this with Edward Said’s description of colonial domination in his book Orientalism, wherein the colonizing power develops a narrative emphasizing the inferiority and radical otherness of the colonized, then it becomes clear that this was a different kind of colonialism. (Said 1978) During the middle period from 1915 (when the last uprising was put down; see Katz 2005) to 1928-29, the governors-general carried out their policies in a deliberate way; even the radical-sounding policy of “ethnic fusion” was carried out with caution. However, in the late 1920s, the necessities of Japan’s southward expansion made Taiwan an attractive staging area, and the need for greater cooperation from indigenous islanders made the task of assimilation more pressing.


The outbreak of war with China in 1937 made the need for assimilation even more critical as the government needed the young men of Taiwan to serve with loyalty on mainland battlefields against the Chinese army. Thus, the government promulgated a “Japanization Policy” (kominka undō 皇民化運動) which stipulated that only Japanese be spoken in public, required natives to adopt Japanese names and customs, don Japanese clothes, renovate their dwellings in Japanese style, and in all respects become culturally Japanese. One component of the policy was the “temple restructuring movement” (jibyō seiri undō 寺廟整理運動), in which many traditional temples were razed and their properties taken over and repurposed as State Shintō shrines. This latter policy evoked several strategies of resistance: one tactic by which Chinese Buddhists could avoid this fate was to subordinate themselves to Japanese Buddhist lineages and obtain their protection. (See Cai 1994, chapter seven) This movement, though unevenly applied around Taiwan, was so drastic in its conception that liberal voices in the National Diet decried it as a persecution of Buddhism, and the viceregal government in Taiwan finally called it off under pressure from the homeland. (Cai 1994, p. 237)


Thus, we see that Japan’s assimilationist agenda evolved in three phases. The first, from 1895 to 1915, saw the viceregal government establishing its control, putting down rebellions, creating new transportation and communication infrastructures, and debating possible policies of assimilation. The second period, roughly from 1915 to 1935, represents a period of relative calm and cooperation during which the authorities allowed assimilation to take place at a natural pace. The last period, from 1935 to 1945, began with Japan’s rising levels of military adventurism in mainland China leading up to the invasion of 1937. Needing the Taiwanese to become loyal Japanese citizens quickly, and worried that Taiwanese soldiers would identify too much with the enemy, the government implemented harsher policies to speed assimilation. Consequently, their tolerance for overt expressions of traditional Chinese culture fell rapidly and disappeared. Immediate “Japanization” became the goal.


During the first two periods, the Japanese authorities expressed appreciation and support for the Confucian and Buddhist traditions, while doing their best to control folk religions and the set of millenarian faiths that they lumped together as “vegetarian religion” (zhāijiào; Jpn. saikyō 齋教). These commonalities lost some of their luster during the third period, when native forms of religion, Buddhism included, came to be perceived as impediments to union rather than bridges, and the impetus shifted from support of native traditions to an attempt to move people toward Japanese Buddhist schools, Japanese family rituals, and State Shintō. Keeping all this in mind will help as we see the timing of traditional Chinese Buddhist ordinations, which took place mainly in the 1920s and early 1930s, and the strategies by which the ordaining temples and masters straddled the line between preserving a pure, unassimilated tradition while trying to remain on good terms with the Japanese viceregal government. Let us now look at these ordination lineages.


III. Buddhist Ordination in Taiwan, 1895-1940


As mentioned in the first section, Taiwan had no ordination venues prior to the island’s cession to Japan in 1895. Travel to the mainland was relatively easy and involved crossing no international borders, and by law the Yongquan Temple in Fuzhou provided the service for nearly every ordained monk and nun on the island. Even during the first decades after 1895, however, I have found no records of ordinations taking place in Taiwan. In fact, for the first decades of the Japanese period, almost all the monks whose records have come to my attention continued to travel to the Yongquan Temple for full ordination. It does appear from their biographies, though, that the novice ordination or tonsuring (tìdù 剃度) was available in Taiwan. (Tonsuring is a novice’s ordination available even to very young boys; full ordination, the topic of this article, takes place after the novice reaches the age of twenty and involves the ritual acceptance of the full range of monastic discipline.)


Nevertheless, it was these monks who eventually began the practice of monastic ordinations on the island. These monks, and the temples they founded, are as follows:

1. Ven. Shanhui 善慧法師 (1881-1945) and the Lingquan (“Spirit Spring”) Chan Temple (Lingquan Chansi 靈泉禪寺) in Jilong 基隆 (often spelled Keelung),

2. Ven. Benyuan 本圓法師 (1883-1946) and the Lingyun (“Soaring Clouds”) Chan Temple (Lingyun Chansi 凌雲禪寺) on Guanyin Mountain 觀音山 in Taibei County, and

3. Ven. Jueli 覺力法師 (1881-1933) and the Fayun (“Dharma Cloud”) Chan Temple (Fayun Chansi 法雲禪寺) in Miaoli 苗栗.


These three, along with the Chaofeng Temple (Chaofeng Si 超峰寺) in Gaoxiong County (Gāoxióng xiàn 高雄縣), are sometimes referred to as the “Four Great Ancestral Daochang” (sì dà zǔshī dàochǎng 四大祖師道場) of Taiwan since each of them gave rise to networks of affiliated temples founded by disciples of the “ancestral master.” While the Chaofeng Temple was not an active ordination center, its founders came from one of the older temples in Taiwan, the Kaiyuan Temple (Kāiyuán sì 開元寺), founded in 1692 in the old southern capital city of Tainan 台南 which did serve as an ordination center several times during this period.


In the lives of all of these men and institutions, we see a similar pattern: During the early phase of the Japanese period, they perceived the difficulties that Taiwan Buddhism experienced because of the lack of a local ordination platform, and they began building up the religious, social, personal, and monetary capital to construct both a prestigious temple and the transportation infrastructure necessary to make it accessible. Then, during the middle phase described above, their efforts paid off as they hosted ordination sessions mostly during the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, during the third period, the rate of ordination fell off, with the result that, as a report in The South Seas Buddhist (Ch: Nanying fojiao or Jpn: Nan’e Bukkyō 南瀛佛教) pointed out; the monastic population of Taiwan had gone into a decline (Li Tianchun 1940, p. 17).


Let us look at the life and activities of Ven. Shanhui first. Born Jiang Qingjun 江清俊 fourteen years prior to Taiwan’s cession to Japan, he originally took refuge in the Longhua 龍華 sect of zhaijiao in 1896 after receiving a Confucian education. Soon thereafter, two Buddhist monks from Fujian 福建 named Shanzhi 善智 and Miaomi 妙密 awakened his interest in monastic Buddhism, and he accompanied them back to the mainland for training. He went to the Yongquan Temple in 1902 and received monastic ordination there. Upon his return to Taiwan with Ven. Shanzhi, the two decided to establish a temple in Shanui’s hometown of Jilong in order to propagate the dharma.


They obtained a donation of land on Yuemei (Moonbrow) Mountain (Yuemei shan 月眉山), and between 1903 and 1906 (the year of Shanzhi’s death), they worked to raise the funds to build the temple. Shanhui, as a native son, appealed to the elite of Jilong, who tended to favor Buddhism over zhaijiao. The Japanese authorities supported him for two main reasons: they viewed Buddhism as a bridge between themselves and the native population, but more particularly, Jilong was the port city where incoming Japanese dignitaries and VIPs disembarked, and they liked the prospect of having a grand Buddhist temple for receptions and rest after travel. Finally, local Chinese authorities trusted him as a known quantity and an educated, literate monk. With these three bases of support, the project moved along quickly, and the Great Shrine Hall was ready for dedication by 1908. Even after its opening, the Lingquan Temple gained more support, and it expanded several times. Shanhui held the first lay ordination in 1910, conferring the lay precepts upon thirty people.


All this support created many social obligations. Shanhui traveled tirelessly to build networks and consolidate support. Significantly, he aligned his temple officially with the Sōtō school of Zen, which required him to travel to the Japanese homeland once a year to pay respects to the new superior, and Japanese Sōtō priests attended all the major events and celebrations at the Lingquan Temple. At the same time, he maintained close contact with Chinese Buddhism, and he brought two of the most eminent Chinese monks of his day to Taiwan to lecture and tour: the Ven. Taixu 太虛, who came in 1917 and who kept Shanhui involved in his reformist efforts, and the Ven. Yuanying 圓瑛, then president of the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC, Zhongguo fojiao hui 中國佛教會), who visited in 1931.


He also worked to promote Chinese-style ordinations. As we have already seen, he conferred the lay precepts beginning in 1910, and many of the temples that constituted the Lingquan Temple network were founded by his tonsure disciples. In addition, the South Seas Buddhist of June 1, 1924 reports that he returned to the place where he was ordained, the Yongquan Temple in Fuzhou, to serve as the ordaining master (kāijiè héshàng 開戒和尚) during one of their monastic ordination sessions (South Seas Buddhist 2/3, June 1924, p. 28). The April 1932 issue has an announcement of an ordination session to be held at the Lingquan Temple (p. 59), and the June issue reproduces Shanhui’s speech at this event. The speech indicates that it was, again, a lay ordination conferring the Three Refuges, the Five Lay Precepts, and “the twelve rules of deportment” (shíèr wēiyí 十二威儀, p. 15-19). It is not until the March 1940 issue that we see an announcement of an ordination session that includes monastic ordinations (both monks and nuns), an announcement that is careful to specify that one of the ordination’s purposes is to “assist in the Japanization (kōminka皇民化,) of the monks.” (p. 33). Historian Jiang Canteng 江燦騰 records no other ordination activity in his extensive report on Shanhui and the Lingquan Chan Temple lineage (Jiang 1996, p.128-147).


Thus, in Shanhui we see a monk working between two worlds. He maintained close ties with Chinese Buddhism and conducted Chinese-style ordinations, though infrequently. He also knew that his ability to function depended very much on the continued good will of the Japanese, and so he cooperated closely with the Sōtō school of Zen in many areas, made the obligatory visits to Japan as needed, and ensured that Japanese Sōtō priests were on hand to observe all his activities. In 1940, when Japan was actively at war with China, Shanhui conducted monastic ordinations (by definition something not shared with Japanese Buddhism), but was careful to specify that the purpose of the ceremony was to help make the new monks and nuns better Japanese citizens.


Ven. Benyuan’s story mirrors Shanhui’s in most respects. He also worked in the northern part of the island, and in many ways competed with Shanhui. For example, while Shanhui aligned himself with the Sōtō Zen school, Benyuan chose to associate with Rinzai. Therefore, in the interest of space we will not consider Benyuan separately, except to note that he held his first ordination session in November, 1923. This session attracted over 700 participants, and involved both Shanhui and Yuanying, assuring its strictly traditional Chinese character.. (See Jones 1999, p. 44-48)


It may be significant that, as we move farther south and away from the center of power where Shanhui (and Benyuan) operated, we find more frequent and overt efforts at instituting authentic Chinese ordinations. We will look at the cases of Ven. Jueli and of the Kaiyuan Temple in this regard.


Ven. Jueli was not a native of Taiwan, but of Xiamen (Amoy) not far away and within the same linguistic zone. Like Shanhui, he was well educated in Confucian schools as a youth but dropped out at age sixteen after hearing of a schoolmate’s sudden death. He went to Fuzhou, entered the Yongquan Temple, and was ordained there. In 1901, he went with his master on a tour of some southeastern Asian islands, including Taiwan, and stayed as a guest in Shanhui’s Lingquan Chan Temple. He returned to Fuzhou, and ten years later, a Taiwanese man named Ye Aming 葉阿銘 sought him out for teaching and then returned to Taiwan. While there, he and a group of laymen began planning for a new Buddhist temple. They chose the site and they chose the name Fayun, or Dharma-Cloud, temple. Once construction was underway, Ye asked Jueli to come and serve as abbot, and Jueli accepted.


As with the other monastic leaders of the time, Jueli became a missionary for the Sōtō school while seeking to improve monastic education (notably for nuns) and carrying out ordination services. He maintained ties with mainland China by inviting eminent monks to come and lecture in his educational institutions, sending disciples to study on the mainland, and traveling there himself. He also held seven ordination sessions at the Fayun Temple in 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1926, 1927, and 1928, in which over 200 individuals received the monastic precepts. Later writers hailed Jueli as a bulwark against the Japanization of Buddhism in Taiwan, but like Shanhui, he had to do so while not appearing to oppose the Japanese government in Taiwan, which he accomplished by operating as an official within a Japanese Buddhist school.


Even farther south, the Kaiyuan Temple dates from 1692, and, as the name implies, was the major Buddhist temple in the capital city of Tainan throughout most of the Qing dynasty period. Despite its antiquity and eminence, it did not conduct ordination but, like all the other temples in Taiwan, sent its novices to the Yongquan Temple in Fuzhou for ordination. Its monastic population consisted of several different sublineages from within the Yongquan tradition. An article posted in The South Seas Buddhist in October 1934 notes this connection and provides a sample ordination certificate, indicating that this connection was still salient even at this late date. (South Seas Buddhist 12/10, 1934, p. 21)


I have found one reference to a “four-assembly ordination” (sìzhòng shòujiè huì 四眾授戒會) held at this temple December 17-23, 1934, first announced in The South Seas Buddhist 12/8, May 1934, p. 51. According to a report on the session found in The South Seas Buddhist 13/2, p. 41-43, 31 monks and 83 nuns were ordained, along with 30 upasakas and 106 upasīkas. People came from all over Taiwan, including representatives of the Japanese viceregal government and the Japanese Buddhist schools on the island. The ordination was done in Chinese style, however, and included instruction in the Vinaya in Four Parts (Sìfēn lǜ 四分律), the traditional code of Chinese monastic conduct and etiquette.


IV. Changing Times


The 1940 ordination session at the Lingquan Temple is the last instance I have been able to locate of a Chinese traditional Buddhist ordination in Taiwan during the Japanese period. As noted above, the political and military situation between Japan and China became more tense through the 1930s, and when war erupted in 1937, the Japanese initiated new policies aimed at transforming the population of Taiwan into full Japanese citizens. These policies included religious components, like the “temple restructuring movement.” The South Seas Buddhist changed its editorial policies and began publishing its articles solely in Japanese. It is little wonder, then, that an ordination noted in the pages of The South Seas Buddhist during this time frame took place at a temple not previously used for this purpose, and was conducted in the Japanese style with a Sōtō Zen priest as the officiant. (The South Seas Buddhist 14/9, Sept. 1936, p. 43) The ceremony included expressions of gratitude to the emperor for his great kindness. As I noted when reporting on the ordinations held at the Lingquan Chan Temple in Jilong, the last ordination reported there in The South Seas Buddhist was held after a series of lectures it held on Sōtōshū were to “assist in the Japanization (kōminka皇民化) of the monks.”


Yet there are indications that the Buddhists of Taiwan continued to look to China as their model for ordination, and sometimes as their chosen site. An article in the March 1934 issue of The South Seas Buddhist reports on an ordination session held at the Yongquan Temple in Fuzhou earlier in the year, and notes that of the 108 participants who received monastic precepts, several were from Taiwan. (South Seas Buddhist 12/6, March 1934, p. 29) The ceremony followed that of the “Baojing Huashan ceremony from Nanjing,” (Nanjing baojing huashan yishi 南京寶京華山儀式), emphasizing its Chinese character. In addition, the January issue of 1937, the year that war broke out between Japan and China, the magazine ran an article reporting the founding of the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (Zhongguo fojiao hui 中國佛教會, BAROC), and included the full text of the BAROC’s regulations on ordination. (South Seas Buddhist 15/1, Jan. 1937, p. 39-47) These rules, which stipulated a full 150 days per ordination session, must have made Taiwan’s four-to-seven day ceremonies seem quite lax by comparison. While this article may have been no more than a news story of interest to the Buddhist world in Taiwan, it still seems to show some nostalgia for the Chinese way of monastic ordination, something that by this time had disappeared in Taiwan.


The Japanese, for their part, still regarded Buddhism as a possible path to acceptance and assimilation right to the end, even in the arena of ordination in which the Japanese and Chinese traditions differed so much. In 1938, the South Seas Buddhist reported on a lay and monastic ordination to be held at the Tōdaiji 東大寺 in Japan. This notice emphasizes that this is the ordination altar built by Jianzhen / Ganjin 鑒真 (688-763) as a corrective to errors in ordination practice during the Tang dynasty period. (South Seas Buddhist 16/1, Jan. 1938, p. 76) This appears to be an attempt to demonstrate the propriety of Japanese-style ordinations by invoking the Chinese master who established the vinaya tradition and corrected ritual errors in the ordination ceremony early in the history of Japanese Buddhism. Thus, at the same time that Chinese-style ordinations were coming to an end, we see the Japanese asserting the adequacy of Japanese ordinations (and by that token the legitimacy of the Japanese construction of Buddhist priesthood) in the pages of the government-sponsored Buddhist magazine.


V: Conclusion


In this paper we have focused on the practice of monastic ordinations as a vehicle for keeping a characteristically Chinese form of Buddhism alive in Taiwan during the Japanese viceregal period. This is not to say that they did not have other means for preserving tradition. All of the monks and institutions we have examined above also established a variety of educational institutions in order to preserve Chinese Buddhist learning. However, carrying out monastic ordinations was the riskier move, since it took place in a very public way with Japanese government and Buddhist dignitaries present, and could be read as an implicit criticism of the Japanese tradition, which had given up such things as clerical celibacy and the traditional precepts long before. We shall shortly argue that this was a form of resistance to the Japanese viceregal government, and the reader may or may not find the argument convincing, but it is clear that such ordinations could at least appear to be a kind of resistance to the authorities and so had to be managed carefully.


Despite the risks, the monks discussed above were successful in holding their ordination sessions. One reason was their willingness to acknowledge Japanese sovereignty over Taiwan in tangible ways: belonging to the officially-sponsored South Seas Buddhist Association, taking office within Japanese Buddhist orders, and so on. It also helped that the Japanese favored Buddhism over other forms of Chinese religion since it could be used as one of the three bridges between the two communities, both on Taiwan itself and in Japan’s growing designs on the mainland. Finally, the Japanese ambivalence over the status of its newly-acquired island led to a period of great tolerance for Buddhism. Rejecting the option of holding Taiwan as a colony in the British or French modes, the viceregal government attempted over time to assimilate the Taiwanese as full citizens of the Japanese empire.


All this cooperation notwithstanding, I shall argue that Chinese ordinations constituted as great a level of resistance to Japanese pressure as was practical for a people who, as far as they knew, were going to be part of the Japanese empire in perpetuity. First, let us recall that the Japanese project in Taiwan was not colonialism as we conceive it following Said’s model. Taiwan had been ceded to Japan, and the Japanese intended to assimilate the local population and make them politically, and even culturally, Japanese. They did not intend to keep them in perpetual otherness and exploit them. Therefore, it was assimilation that posed the threat to local culture. Thus, keeping Chinese Buddhist traditions alive was one way to stave off assimilation and counter the Japanese assimilationist rhetoric of donkyō.


Second, muted traces of resistance surfaced from time to time even in The South Seas Buddhist, a government-sponsored journal. For example, in section nine of an article on the Buddhist system in Taiwan, the author, Zeng Jinglai (曾景來) described abuses in the monastic ordination system and asked that standards be tightened, ordaining masters be more discerning and demanding, and the number of ordinations reduced. (South Seas Buddhist 8/1, April 1929, p. 18) We have already seen another issue that raises the BAROC’s very strict standards for ordination on the Chinese mainland to the reader’s attention. While not open calls for resistance by any means, they certainly serve as contrasts to the Japanese Buddhist system. Never did I find an endorsement f the Japanese system in any issue of The South Seas Buddhist.


As we saw in section two, Japanese attitudes toward the assimilation of the Taiwanese evolved over time, and the evidence presented herein shows that the moves toward monastic ordination occurred largely during the middle period, when the Japanese were in less of a hurry and held more hope that full assimilation would come at a natural pace. We see no Chinese ordinations during the first phase, when the Japanese were consolidating their control, putting down religiously-based uprisings, and conducting surveys of the island’s religious scene. Ordinations began in the late 1910s and peaked during the 1920s and early 1930s, after Buddhist organizations had been set up that could help mediate between native Buddhists and the government, and during a time when the government most welcomed cooperation. However, we see ordinations ceasing during the mid- to late-1930s and into the 1940s, the time when the invasion of the Chinese mainland required that assimilation occur at a more rapid pace so that the Taiwanese would serve loyally against Chinese on the mainland. Ordinations in the Chinese tradition came to a halt in this atmosphere, and the Japanese government instead instituted the “Japanization movement” and the “temple restructuring movement.” I would submit that this trend demonstrates less tolerance on the part of the Japanese for even the mild resistance offered by Chinese precept ceremonies.


By the time the Japanese returned Taiwan to China in 1945, the leaders of the ordination movements had all passed away, and with the migration of the Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1949, a new influx of mainland monks entered Taiwan with their own agenda for erasing both the Japanese effects and the native southeastern Chinese cultural character of Buddhism in Taiwan. That is another story for another time.



WORKS CITED


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Periodical:

The South Seas Buddhist (Ch: Nanying fojiao or Jpn: Nan’e Bukkyō 南瀛佛教): Journal of the Nanying fojiao hui/Nan’e Bukkyō kai 南瀛佛教會 (South Seas Buddhist Association), 1922-1942. Digitized archives here: http://www.chibs.edu.tw/ch_html/projects/taiwan/tb/index.htm




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