Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition

by Judith Snodgrass

Japanese Buddhism was introduced to a wide Western audience when a delegation of Buddhist priests attended the World's Parliament of Religions, part of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In describing and analyzing this event, Judith Snodgrass challenges the predominant view of Orientalism as a one-way process by which Asian cultures are understood strictly through Western ideas. Restoring agency to the Buddhists themselves, she shows how they helped reformulate Buddhism as a modern world religion with specific appeal to the West while simultaneously reclaiming authority for the tradition within a rapidly changing Japan.

Snodgrass explains how the Buddhism presented in Chicago was shaped by the institutional, social, and political imperatives of the Meiji Buddhist revival movement in Japan and was further determined by the Parliament itself, which, despite its rhetoric of fostering universal brotherhood and international goodwill, was thoroughly permeated with confidence in the superiority of American Protestantism. Additionally, in the context of Japan's intensive diplomatic campaign to renegotiate its treaties with Western nations, the nature of Japanese religion was not simply a religious issue, Snodgrass argues, but an integral part of Japan's bid for acceptance by the international community.

368 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

Reviews

[lys · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a disappointment. The larger point Snodgrass makes is that Orientalism was the product not only of Western discourses imposed on the Orient, but also of the Other's own agency through "Occidentalism," the employment of the West's discourses against their master. In short, a sort of self-Orientalization, except with the "Other" in some control of its own destiny, all the while accepting the supremacy of the dominant epistemology.

The issues with this text are multiple. The style of writing, with short chapters divided into short sections, is unsatisfying to read. Contrary with how the title suggests, Snodgrass writes about not the Columbian Exposition, but the auxiliary World's Parliament of Religions, and in an unsatisfying fashion at that. Her text is overwhelmingly exegetical, citing more from the texts and speeches than the reader needs to understand her point. Furthermore, much of the text deals with neither the Parliament nor presenting Buddhism to the West. Her chapters on Henry Olcott and Paul Carus, Orientalists whose status was taken advantage of or influenced by Japanese Buddhist leaders, are as much about presenting Buddhism to the West as to fellow Japanese, if not more. The book as a whole lacks organization and a clear theme.