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Ernest Fenollosa
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Accessed: 11/9/19

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Fenollosa in 1890


Title page of Cathay, poems by Ezra Pound, 1915, based on translations by Fenollosa.


Fenollosa's grave

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (February 18, 1853 – September 21, 1908) was an American art historian of Japanese art, professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University. An important educator during the modernization of Japan during the Meiji Era, Fenollosa was an enthusiastic Orientalist who did much to preserve traditional Japanese art.

Biography

Fenollosa was born in 1853 as the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa, a Spanish pianist,[1] and Mary Silsbee. He attended public schools in his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts before studying philosophy and sociology at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1874.

He studied for a year at the art school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, during which time he married Elizabeth Goodhue Millett. In 1878 he was invited to Japan by American zoologist and Orientalist Edward S. Morse. Fenollosa taught political economy and philosophy at the Imperial University at Tokyo. There he also studied ancient temples, shrines and art treasures with his assistant, Okakura Kakuzō.

During his time in Japan, Fenollosa helped create the nihonga (Japanese) style of painting with Japanese artists Kanō Hōgai (1828–1888) and Hashimoto Gahō (1835–1908). In May 1882 he delivered a lecture on "An Explanation of the Truth of Art", which was widely circulated and quoted.[2]

After eight years at the University, Fenollosa helped found the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and the Tokyo Imperial Museum. He served as director of the latter in 1888. In this period, he helped to draft the text of a law for the preservation of temples and shrines and their art treasures.[3]

Deeply influenced by living in Japan, Fenollosa converted to Buddhism; he was given the name Teishin. He was also granted the name Kano Eitan Masanobu, placing him in the lineage of the Kanō school, who had served as painters to the Tokugawa shoguns. While resident in Japan, Fenollosa conducted the first inventory of Japan's national treasures. This resulted in the discovery of ancient Chinese scrolls, which had been brought to Japan by traveling monks centuries earlier. He was able to rescue many Buddhist artifacts that would otherwise have been destroyed under the Haibutsu kishaku movement. For these achievements, the Emperor Meiji of Japan decorated Fenollosa with the Order of the Rising Sun and the Order of the Sacred Treasures.

Fenollosa amassed a large personal collection of Japanese art during his stay in Japan. In 1886, he sold his art collection to Boston physician Charles Goddard Weld (1857–1911) on the condition that it go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1890 he returned to Boston to serve as curator of the department of Oriental Art. There Fenollosa was asked to choose Japanese art for display at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also organized Boston's first exhibition of Chinese painting in 1894. In 1896, he published Masters of Ukiyoe, a historical account of Japanese paintings and ukiyo-e prints exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Building.

But he divorced his wife. His immediate remarriage in 1895 to writer Mary McNeill Scott (1865–1954) outraged Boston society. Fenollosa was dismissed from the Museum in 1896.

He returned to Japan in 1897 to accept a position as Professor of English Literature at the Tokyo Higher Normal School at Tokyo. Lafcadio Hearn considered Fenollosa a friend; and Hearn almost believed that he visited the professor's home too often.[4]

In 1900, Fenollosa returned to the United States to write and lecture on Asia. His 1912 work in two volumes concentrates on art before 1800. He offers Hokusai's prints as a window of beauty after Japanese art had become too modern for his own taste: "Hokusai is a great designer, as Kipling and Whitman are great poets. He has been called the Dickens of Japan." Arthur Wesley Dow said of Fenollosa that "he was gifted with a brilliant mind of great analytical power, this with a rare appreciation gave him an insight into the nature of fine art such as few ever attain".[5]

After his death in London in 1908, Fenollosa's widow entrusted his unpublished notes on Chinese poetry and Japanese Noh drama to noted American poet Ezra Pound. Together with William Butler Yeats, Pound used them to stimulate the growing interest in Far Eastern literature among modernist writers. Pound subsequently finished Fenollosa's work with the aid of Arthur Waley, the noted British sinologist.[6]

Fenollosa's body was cremated in London. By his request, his ashes were returned for burial to the Hōmyō-in chapel of Mii-dera (where he had been tonsured), high above Lake Biwa. His tombstone was paid for by the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.[7]

Criticism

At a Harvard lecture of 2011, Benjamin Elman refers to the Epochs of the Chinese and Japanese Art (1912) where Fenollosa compares "degeneration" of the late imperial Chinese art to that which befell the high antique art of Europe in Byzantium ("the poorest of the Byzantine mosaics"; "the only hope for the hopeless is to perceive itself to be hopeless"). According to Elman, Fenollosa's perception was influenced by the political and military defeats of the Qing empire.[8]

See also

• Modernist poetry in English
• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• Imagism

Notes

1. Foreword
2. Marra, Michael F. (2002). Japanese hermeneutics, pp. 97–98., p. 97, at Google Books
3. "Ernest F. Fenollosa" in Encyclopædia Britannica
4. Bisland, pp. 412–414.
5. Dow, Arthur Wesley, Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, Boston: Doubleday, p. 1913
6. "Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character", Yale Literary Magazine 126.5 (1958): 24–36. Reprinted: Pinyin.info (2010) [1]
7. "Asleep Under the Maples at Homyo-in", The Detroit Free Press, 30 January 1910, p. 3.
8. Reischauer Lectures, Harvard University 2011 00:52 ff.

Bibliography

• The Masters of Ukioye: a Complete Historical Description of Japanese Paintings and Color Prints of the Genre School, New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1896
• Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, London: William Heinemann, 1912
• "Noh" or Accomplishment: A Study of the Classical Stage of Japan, with Ezra Pound, London: Macmillan and Co., 1916
• The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, composed by the Ernest Fenollosa, edited by Ezra Pound after the author's death, 1918.

Further reading

• Bisland, Elizabeth. (1906). The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
• Brooks, Van Wyck, Fenollosa and His Circle, with Other Essays in Biography, New York: Dutton, 1962
• Chisolm, Lawrence W., Fenollosa: the Far East and American Culture, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963
• Fenollosa, Mary McNeill. "Preface." Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: an Outline History of East Asiatic Design, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912. Reprint by ICG Muse, 2000. ISBN 4-925080-29-6
• Kurihara Shinichi, Fuenorosa to Meiji bunka, Tokyo: Rikugei Shobo, Showa 43,1968
• Marra, Michael F. (2002). Japanese hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 9780824824570; OCLC 237578040
• Tepfer, Diane, "Enest Fenollosa," in The Dictionary of Art, 10: 887
• Warner, Langdon, "Ernest Francisco Fenollosa," in the Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 6. New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1931, pp. 325–26
• Ezra Pound, Cathay: For the Most Part from the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of Ernest Fenollosa, and the Decipherings of the Professors Mori and Ariga, London: Elkin Mathews, 1915.

External links

• Works by Ernest Fenollosa at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Ernest Fenollosa at Internet Archive
• Works by Ernest Fenollosa at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Read Fenollosa's Epochs of Chinese & Japanese Art on line

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Buddhist Revival and Japanese Nationalism, from "Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition"
by Judith Snodgrass

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Chapter 6. Buddhist Revival and Japanese Nationalism

Meiji Buddhist revival and Japanese nationalism were united in the work of Inoue Enryo (1858-1919). His widely read and influential book, Bukkyo katsuron joron (1887),1 did much to promote interest in Buddhism among the Western-educated elite of the Meiji Twenties, bringing a new interpretation of Buddhism, the product of two decades of Buddhist reform, out of specialist circles and linking it to the surge in nationalist sentiment of this time. Although Buddhism entered the Meiji period under attack, the foreign heresy against which Shinto was defined, by the 1890s, through the efforts of Inoue and others, it had become a major resource for defining modern, national identity. The apparent paradox is that to promote Buddhism, Inoue gave up his status as a Buddhist priest and took the title of philosopher (tetsugakusha). The word tetsugaku had been introduced into the Japanese language around 1870 by materialist philosopher Nishi Amane. It specifically denoted Western philosophy and carried the post-Enlightenment European connotation of the opposition between religion and philosophy.2 Philosophy was a secular activity.

The previous chapter showed how Buddhist reformers, including Inoue, used the West as a resource in the formation of shin bukkyo [new buddhism]. They adapted the methods of Orientalist scholarship and biblical criticism to their needs. They domesticated Christian institutions in the formation of a local Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), in instigating a Buddhist marriage ceremony, in using Christianity as a model of the role of religion in modern society. They used Western constructs of scholarship to present Meiji Buddhism as the religion of the modern nation. In Bukkyo katsuron joron, Inoue elaborated on the theme of pro-Buddhist Western scholars who promoted Buddhism as a religion compatible with science and modern thought. He adapted Western philosophical theory to present an analysis of Buddhism. He reinterpreted evolutionary theory to show that Christianity needed Buddhism to reach its full development. This chapter investigates Bukkyo katsuron joron to reveal an additional function of the West in Buddhist revival, Inoue’s deployment of the authority and prestige of Western philosophy in support of Buddhist revival.

Given the reality of Western dominance at this time and the overriding concern to revise Japan’s treaties with the West, Japanese modernity would be measured against the West, and the treaty powers negotiating the terms of revision would be the ultimate assessors of what was acceptable. Consequently, in the battle for the “possession and guidance of social development in the empire,” as the Japan Weekly Mail described the religious debates of the time,3 the important issue was convincing the Western-educated class of Japan of what the Buddhist religion could offer the modern nation. Evidence of this had to stand scrutiny in the terms of the modern West. Inoue used the authority of Western philosophy to argue the case for Buddhism.

By speaking for Buddhism as a philosopher, Inoue assumed the voice of universal rationality. He distanced himself from his Buddhist affiliations and attached the authority of impartial reason (kohei mushi in his terminology) to his speech. He used this claim to unbiased and objective authority to continue the imperatives of Buddhist reform: to denounce Christianity, but also to argue that Japanese Buddhism was the Buddha’s teaching, that Buddhism was not irrational, not otherworldly, not an anachronistic vestige of the past, but the one religion in the world compatible with science and modern thought.[/b]

Because Inoue was a founding member of both the Seikyosha [Society for Political Education]...

Miyake Setsurei (1860-1945), a journalist, was one of the leading nationalists of the late Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods. In 1888 he and others founded the Seikyosha [Society for political education], which published a magazine called "Nihonjin". The magazine was renamed "Azia" in 1891 after ceasing publication because of censorship, renamed "Nihonjin" [Japanese] in 1893, and ceased publication again in 1895. It was reincarnated as "Nihon oyobi Nihonjin" [Japan and Japanese] in 1907 and folded in 1944 on the eve of Miyake's death.

-- Becoming Japanese in the Meiji period: Adopted sons, incoming husbands, and naturalization, by William Wetherall

... and the Sonno hobutsu daidodan,....

In 1889, shortly after the founding of the Seikyosha, Inoue Enryo, Ouchi Seiran, Shimaji Mokurai, Ashitsu Jitsuzen, and others concerned about the impact of the constitutional government on Buddhism formed the more specifically Buddhist organization Sonno hobutsu daidodan (The Great Society for Revering the Emperor and Worshiping the Buddha). The society was "a union of all those who wish to protect our land and our religion from the contempt of the foreigner," principally by excluding Christians from public office and installing Buddhists in positions of influence. Its policy statement declared that by "selecting our representatives to the national parliament, to provincial assemblies, to town councils, or local offices, in the distribution of honors, in appointing school teachers, officials of societies and business companies, etc., we pledge ourselves to carefully exclude all those who are disloyal to our Emperor or untrue to Buddhism."66

-- Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, by Judith Snodgrass

... his work links Buddhist revival with Japanese nationalist sentiment and the political issues of the Meiji Twenties. Most important, the Manifesto, an open letter to the Buddhist community calling for support for the delegation to Chicago, was an echo and a summary of the arguments he presented at length in Bukkyo katsuron joron. The delegation to the Chicago World’s Parliament of Religions emerged from the same stream of Buddhist activity.4 Summarizing Inoue’s arguments can map the field of Buddhist revival discourse at this time. Inoue’s Bukkyo katsuron joron located the various initiatives of revival – the need to win the support of the new generation, the need for Buddhists to undertake social and philanthropic work, the refutation of Christianity, the reestablishment of Buddhism’s links with the state – within the nationalist program for the future of Japan.

Inoue Enryo

Inoue Enryo (1858-1919), born the son of a Jodoshinshu priest, was ordained at an early age and received a Buddhist education. From 1878 until he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tokyo Imperial University in 1885, his education was funded by the Higashi Honganji as part of its revival program for educating its most able priests. At Tokyo University Inoue studied under the young [url=http://survivorbb.rapeutation.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=3938&start=526]American professor Ernest Fenollosa[/url], who taught classes in the history of modern Western philosophy, specializing in Hegel and in Herbert Spencer’s theories of social development and evolutionary sociology.5 Such was the interest in Western philosophy among the Japanese elite at this time that Fenollosa was nicknamed daijin sensei (teacher of great men),6 a recognition that many who attended his classes already held positions of responsibility and others were later to become leaders of the nation. Through his study of philosophy Inoue came into contact with this influential elite, and from 1882 he actively worked to promote contact and understanding between Buddhist and secular intellectuals.

Inoue’s period at Tokyo Imperial University coincided with indications of a growing interest in Buddhism among intellectuals. In 1881, Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of the foremost popularizers of Western studies, declared his support for Buddhism and called upon “priests who were amenable to reason” to defend their religion.7 Two years earlier Fukuzawa’s colleague in the Meirokusha (Meiji 6 society, formed to promote Western learning), Kato Hiroyuki, then president of Tokyo University, had appointed Soto Zen priest Hara Tanzan to lecture on Buddhism, thereby setting the precedent of teaching Buddhism as an academic subject within a secular institution, as a system of thought divorced from its ritual and practice. Buddhist philosophy was extracted from Japanese religion and placed in context with Western philosophy and science as a branch of knowledge. It was endowed with the prestige of university recognition.

Although Westernization continued strongly throughout the 1880s, the beginnings of a change of mood, a swing away from adulation of all things Western, at least among the elite, was evident from the early years of the decade. One sign of this was the immediate and generous response to Fenollosa’s plea in 1882 for the preservation of Japanese art. His speech, delivered to the aristocratic Ryuchikai, apparently crystallized an already existing sentiment. Fenollosa received both financial and official support that allowed him to access and catalog surviving collections and train Japanese to continue the work. The emperor showed his personal support by bestowing official court rank on Fenollosa and awarding him several imperial decorations, including the Order of the Sacred Mirror. By 1886 this promotion of Japanese heritage had been officially sanctioned.8

One of the consequences of this revival was the establishment of the Tokyo Fine Art Academy under the direction of Okakura Kakuzo.9 The art this institute promoted was not the result of a nostalgic revival of the past, but a modern application of long-established Japanese expertise. Traditional styles were studied for their universal principles, and the techniques of past eras were applied to make objects suited to contemporary lifestyles. The revival of art, like that of Buddhism, exemplified the Seikyosha ideal of adapting aspects of Japanese heritage to enhance the modern nation. The movement to revive Japanese art indicated both the changed attitude to Westernization and also the functional value of Western authority in validating and promoting the project. Fenollosa led the campaign testifying to the universal value of Japanese art from the perspective of, and in the vocabulary of, Western aesthetics. Invoking the authority and prestige of Western philosophy and his own academic rank as philosopher was the nearest approximation to this voice of Western authority available to Inoue in his revival of Japanese Buddhism.

Inoue the Philosopher

Inoue had established his identity as a philosopher not only through scholarship but also through his activities at university. The Tetsugakkai, the Philosophy Society (1884), developed out a society Inoue formed in 1882 for the study of Kant, Hegel, and Comte, bringing together progressive leaders of both the Buddhist and secular worlds. Core members of this society included Buddhist reform leaders familiar from the previous chapter (Ouchi Seiran, Shimaji Mokurai, Hara Tanzan, Kitabatake Doryu, Kiyozawa Manshi) and other such prominent Meiji intellectuals as Inoue Tetsujiro, Shiga Shigetaka, Miyake Setsurei, Tanabashi Ichiro, and Kato Hiroyuki. A number of these people would later become prominent in the Seikyosha.10 In 1886 the group began publishing a journal, Tetsugaku zasshi (Philosophy magazine), and in 1887 founded the publishing company Tetsugaku shoin (Philosophy Press). This same year Inoue founded his school of philosophy, the Tetsugakkan (later to become Toyo University), teaching Western philosophy but also Chinese and Japanese thought, resuscitating the “pale shadow of Eastern philosophy.”11 In 1889 Inoue traveled to Europe and America to investigate means of teaching Eastern thought there.12 Inoue diligently cultivated his image as philosopher through this constant repetition of the term in his activities.

Inoue made the decisive statement in 1885 when he gave up his Buddhist robes and distanced himself from institutional Buddhism. This in no way diminished his effort to propagate Buddhism, but from this time he worked as an independent citizen. He thereby became an example of the ideal he espoused in Bukkyo katsuron joron, the educated layman committed to Buddhism as a personal philosophical religion, studying Buddhism in the intellectual pursuit of truth and reviving Buddhism to preserve this truth and defend the nation. He worked without the restrictions of a conservative institutional bureaucracy,13 free to emphasize the nonsectarian aspects of shin bukkyo and to criticize the existing state of Buddhism. The greatest advantage, however, was the authority and objectivity of the title “philosopher.” The author’s preface to Bukkyo katsuron joron explained that as a philosopher his discussion of Buddhism was essentially different from that of a priest. The title allowed him to proclaim that his preference for Buddhism and rejection of Christianity was not based on prejudice but on a rational consideration of the issues. He would “judge on the basis of philosophy which is just and takes no sides.”14 This in no way moderated his criticism. Part 2 of Bukkyo katsuron was entirely devoted to denouncing the “evil religion.” But by denouncing it from the supposedly impartial stance of philosopher, Inoue enlisted the support of an audience beyond Buddhists. He did not simply dismiss it as evil but analyzed it as irrational, conceptually untenable, prescientific, deleterious to Japan.15 By taking the title “philosopher” Inoue was able to promote Buddhism and undermine Christian influence from a pedestal of rationality and objectivity. His arguments were made more palatable, he believed, “because my discussion of Buddhism is based on the impartial judgements of philosophy it is essentially different from the explanations of priests in the world.”16

Hosui, the Paradigmatic Meiji Intellectual

Inoue wrote Bukkyo katsuron joron under the pen name Hosui and opened with an account of his search for truth, which positioned Hosui, the autobiographical subject, as the paradigmatic Meiji intellectual.17 He recalled how, prior to the Restoration of 1868, he, like the nation in general, had followed Buddhism as a matter of course with little knowledge of its doctrines and little commitment, “secretly believ[ing] that there was no truth in Buddhism,” and had seized the opportunity offered by the incoming government’s attack on Buddhism (haibutsu kishaku) to “put aside his clerical robes” and seek truth elsewhere.18 Hosui described how he then turned to Confucianism and even Christianity but this brought him nothing more than the conviction that all the traditional religions were inadequate. Hosui, like so many of the Meiji generation, rejected religion because, as he perceived it then, it was not “in accord with the principles of truth.” He was still at the vanguard of intellectual trends in 1873 when he took up Western learning – 1873 was Meiji 6, the year of the formation of the Meirokusha, the society for the promotion of Western learning – and again in the early 1880s when he rejected religion altogether and came to the conclusion that “[t]he truth that I had been struggling for for over ten years was not in Confucianism or Buddhism, nor was it in Christianity; it could only be found in the philosophy that was being taught in the West.”

Unlike others who had followed this path, however, Hosui did not rest here. He turned again to Japanese Buddhism and, with his mind sharpened by his training in philosophy, was finally able to see and understand the truth he had previously failed to notice. “Having discovered the truth within the world of philosophy, when I made one more review of the various religions of the past, it became increasingly clear that the truth is not within Christianity. It was also easy to prove that the truth is not within Confucianism. Only the Buddhist religion is largely in accord with philosophical principles. Then I reviewed the Buddhist scriptures again, and gradually came to know the truth of their theories; I was overjoyed. Who would have thought that the truth that was the product of thousands of years of study in Europe already existed three thousand years ago in the East.”19

The year of this revelation was 1885, the year of Inoue’s graduation, three years after Fukuzawa’s call for the protection of Buddhism, and the year that Ernest Fenollosa, Inoue’s professor of philosophy at Tokyo University, took Buddhist ordination. Whether this is purely coincidental, Fenollosa’s commitment to Tendai, which he described as offering “all the color and texture that Hegel lacked,” would have reinforced Inoue’s confidence in the appeal of Buddhist philosophy to modern Western intellectuals.20 Bukkyo katsuron joron, the record of Inoue’s discovery of the preeminence of Buddhism, was published in 1887. Inoue’s timing coincided with growing reaction against excessive Westernization, and Hosui’s search for the truth mapped the path for patriotic Meiji intellectuals. Inoue vowed to “reform Buddhism and make it a religion for the enlightened world.”

The realization of the preeminence of Buddhist truth was the cornerstone of Inoue’s project. Buddhism alone was in accord with the teachings of modern philosophy and with modern scientific principles. Inoue argued that the Buddha’s highest teaching, the truth of the Middle Way, existed only in Japan because it had died out in India and China. Consequently Japanese Buddhism is the sole source of the truth that Western philosophy has taken “thousands of years to study” to realize. More than this, Japanese Buddhism contains the truth that Western philosophy is only now approaching but does not yet possess. Inoue therefore believed that Western scholars would now welcome Japanese Buddhism and that Buddhism was the one great and unique contribution Japan could made to the modern world. Because of this Buddhism was a source of national pride and potential international prestige. Together these arguments formed his strategy for the revival of Buddhism by attracting support among the educated elite under the slogan gokoku airi, the defense of the nation through the love of truth.

Gokoku Airi

Gokoku airi united the fundamental sentiments of patriotism, intellectual reverence for the truth, and a Confucian sense of duty. The opening lines of Bukkyo katsuron joron asked, “[W]ho has been born that does not care about his country? Who has studied and does not love the truth?” It was the scholar’s patriotic duty to study became “when a nation has no scholarship it cannot progress”; it was his obligation to study because a scholar owed his existence to the nation. “When a scholar has no nation he cannot sustain his existence.” Because the nation must be independent to produce wisdom and scholarship, Japanese scholars had a duty to work for the preservation of Japan’s independence. Because scholars were also citizens and “it is a citizen’s duty to defend the nation …. it is the duty of scholars to carry out, at the same time, both the great principles of defense of the nation and love of the truth.”21

This apparently secular formulation was transformed into a revitalization of Buddhism by Inoue’s Buddhist definition of truth. His term, shinri no ri, was emphatically not restricted to a positivist, empiricist truth of Western philosophy, which was, in his view, “appropriate for experiential study of concrete objects but useless for the investigation of the intangible truth.”22 The truth for scholars to pursue was not the truth that forms “the basis of the branches of study and the arts … which are allowed to change along with the progress of the world.” It was rather “the unchanging and immutable truth,” “the truth that forms the basis of religion.” It was the truth that is the nature of Buddhism.23 “The underlying principle of the truth is not bounded by the world nor by the universe, and there is nothing in heaven or the cosmos to which it does not penetrate. It is truly ubiquitous, extensive, unfathomable and profound. It is truly without beginning, without end, immeasurable and innumerable. Therefore, to limit all ideas of it to this earth … is … the mistaken view of a scholar”24

The scholar was called upon to defend the nation through the study of Buddhist philosophy because this was the highest expression of truth. Inoue’s formulation of gokoku airi also linked patriotism with the more specifically Buddhist concern of reestablishing the relationship between Buddhism and the state, the concern that led Inoue and his colleagues to form the Sonno hobutsu daidodan (Great Society for Revering the Emperor and Worshiping the Buddha). The interdependence between a scholar and his nation that was basic to this scheme can be read as a reformulation of the traditional relationship between the religion and the state familiar in South and Southeast Asia as the reciprocally beneficial interdependence of the sangha (community of religious specialists) and the state: the security of the nation is essential for the sangha to pursue dharma, and the production of dharma is essential for the prosperity of the state. In Japan the concept was embodied in the expression obo-buppo, the inseparability of imperial law and the Buddha’s law. In Inoue’s scheme the sangha and its pursuit of dharma was replaced by the lay community pursuing philosophic truth. Because this truth was equated with Buddhist truth, the lay community was in effect to take on the duty of the sangha. Gokoku airi was a reformulation of Buddhist polity adapted to a modern democratic and secular state, a polity based on the interdependence of the scholar and the nation rather than of the state and the community of religious specialists.

Deploying Western Philosophy

The study of Western philosophy was not excluded by gokoku airi but seen as essential, if preliminary, training. As Hosui, the authorial subject of Bukkyo katsuron joron confessed, he had initially failed to recognize the truth in Buddhism because “my scholarly abilities were meager then and I was incapable of making that discovery”25 He was only able to recognize the truth that had always existed in Buddhism after the study of Western philosophy had increased his intellectual capability. For Inoue, Western philosophy, unlike Christianity, was a source of truth, but its truth was not as complete or profound as the truth of Japanese Buddhism. It occupied a position similar to the preliminary teachings of the Buddha (hoben), the teachings that provided the mental development that is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the more profound truth.26 Inoue left no doubt that Buddhist thought surpassed Western philosophy. “The only thing in which present day Western philosophy excels is providing theories as a foundation of scientific experimentaion.”27 Proving this was one function of the survey of Western thought and its comparison with the various teachings of the Buddha which constitute the body of the work.28

In Bukkyo katuson joron Inoue summarized the history of Western philosophy, showing how it developed through the dialectical resolution of oppositions. Locke’s empiricism, followed by Leibnitz’s naturalism, had been integrated by Kant; the materialism of Hume and the idealism of Burke had produced Reid’s dualism; Fichte’s subjectivity and Schelling’s objectivity had been harmonized by Hegel’s idealism. Post-Kantian German Idealism and Scottish common sense were reconciled by the Frenchman Cousins. Spencer reconciled intellectual and nonintellectual extremes. Inoue’s point was that the development was not yet complete: “[A]ll these theories contain some sort of excess which would in turn require resolution. Although the scholars have striven to maintain impartiality they have not been able to do so.” The teaching of Sakyamuni, on the other hand, embraced and reconciled these oppositions in the teaching of the Middle Way. “Unlike modern philosophers, Sakyamuni lived three thousand years ago, and yet was aware of the dangers of leaning toward extremes.”29 Because it resolved this excess, the Middle Way is greater than any Western philosophy, “unparalleled in all the world and throughout the ages.”30 The point of the survey of Western philosophy was to prove Buddhist superiority. The various sects of Buddhism contained all the knowledge of Western philosophy, but Western philosophy had not yet reached the stage of evolution of Japanese Mahayana.

Inoue validated this claim by conditionally identifying each of the theories of Western philosophy with the teaching of sects within Buddhism. This “identification” of Western philosophy and Buddhism is exemplified by his discussion of the Hinayana sect, Kusha. Inoue began by equating Kusha with Western materialism on the grounds that it is also based on the constant existence of elements of matter. These are the Five Aggregates (goun in Japanese; panca skandha in Sanskrit), which Inoue explained at some length.31 The explanation then led to the qualification that Kusha was essentially different from materialism because among these five Buddhist elements, only one was matter in the Western sense of the word. The other four were perception, conception, volition, and consciousness, which are classified in the West as mind. Hence, Inoue concluded, Kusha differed widely from materialism. “Seen in this light, it [Kusha] is a philosophical theory of dualism.”32 In the space of a few paragraphs he had overturned his original equation, but the tentative identification had served its purpose by providing an opportunity to expound Buddhist doctrine. He had introduced the reader to a fundamental Buddhist concept. By a similarly qualified and partial identification of the Buddhist concept of “storehouse consciousness” (Japanese araya shiki, Sanskrit alaya vijnana) with the absolute subjectivity of Kant and Fichte, Inoue equated the Hosso sect with Western idealism, and the Tendai concept of ri with Hegel’s absolute reason.

Inoue’s scheme was to present Buddhist thought as both encompassing all of Western philosophy and, following the dialectical pattern of the West, having preceded it to its final development. Unlike Western philosophy, however, Buddhist teaching did not gradually evolve through the trials and error of men. It had all been taught by the Buddha Sakyamuni during his lifetime. According to the Tendai doctrine of goji (Five Periods) the apparently diverse sects of Buddhism are related as graded and partial revelations of the one truth of the Mahayana Middle Way.

The Buddha’s teachings are divided into five periods. In the first, immediately after his Awakening, the Buddha revealed the Middle Way of the Avatamsaka Sutra.33 However, he realized that this was beyond the comprehension of those in his audience. “They simply could not hear what was being explained to them” because they were “clinging to the belief in the distinction of self and non-self.”34 So he then explained the superficial doctrines of the Hinayana, “simply explaining the vanity of believing in the self.” This accomplished, he was then able to teach the Vaipulya sutras and then, by these degrees of the truth adapted to the audience’s ability to comprehend, to progress toward the Mahayana sutras. The message was that the Mahayana teaching of the Middle Way had been his original teaching, his last teaching, and the only complete teaching of his truth. The other teachings were expedients. As such, they were not false but incomplete. They were stepping-stones to the truth. The Middle Way of Japanese Tendai Buddhism was, Inoue explained, a more perfect expression of the conclusions reached thousands of years later by Hegel. By this scheme Inoue not only established Sakyamuni’s priority over Hegel but also answered the charge that the Mahayana was not the Buddha’s teaching.

Throughout the argument, Inoue’s identification of Buddhist concepts with Western philosophical terms was always qualified and, as in the claim of the identity of the teachings of Hegel and Tendai, was always drawn from isolated examples, the coincidence of isolated principles rather than of coherent systems. Nowhere does he give an explication of any Western philosophy. Western names and categories appear rather as signposts within an introductory explication of Buddhist thought – guides to familiarize the territory to his Western-educated audience. Inoue used the prestige of Western philosophy to draw attention to, create interest in, and then expound Japanese Buddhism.

Buddhism and Patriotism

The strong patriotic concern for the welfare and independence of the nation embodied in gokoku airi pervaded Bukkyo katsuron joron. The first step for scholars was to become better equipped to serve the nation through the study of philosophy.35 Next, Inoue called upon them to revive Buddhism because it was the highest form of philosophy. “The doctrines of Buddhism are truly unparalleled in the world and peerless throughout eternity. Should we not offer our strength for this truth? Should we not offer our hearts for the sake of this truth?”36 The intellectual passion for truth was to be justification enough for its preservation. There were, however, more explicitly patriotic reasons for reviving Buddhism, and in 1887, the time of the publication, treaty revision and its implications of Western imperialism were the focus of patriotic concern.

In Bukkyo katsuron joron Inoue introduced the basic Seikyosha premise that defense against Western imperialism depended on developing a strong national spirit. This would win the respect of foreign powers as well as assist in building a strong nation, one that was capable of making a distinctive contribution to international welfare and progress. It was only by maintaining a distinctive national identity that Japan could expect to deal with the world as an equal, and this was the basic aim of treaty revision.

Inoue challenged the belief that adopting Christianity would assist revision with a pragmatic statement of the reality of international relations. Japan’s present inability to establish relations of equality with Westerns was not because of any difference in religion or language but a matter of strength: “If a nation creates both financial solvency and strong military power, the people of that nation will have the necessary strength for instantly forming equal friendships with the West and revising unequal treaties, no matter what religion they are practicing.”37

The role of religion in strengthening the nation lay in its direct relationship with the spirit of man. The advantage of Buddhism was its long connection with Japanese culture. For more than a thousand years, he wrote, it had permeated the hearts and minds of the Japanese. Adopting Christianity would harm the spirit of the country and forfeit the independence of Japan. Progress, he continued, depended on maintaining a balance between heredity and adaptation. Therefore, adapting Japanese Buddhism to modern requirements would be more conducive to progress than following the early Meiji trend of adopting the completely foreign Christianity. “To unseat Buddhism and replace it with Christianity would surely have a negative influence on the spirit of independence.” It would result in “the loss of Japan’s inherited nature, and would unquestionably impair its development”38 He simply could not explain “why anyone believes that by abandoning Buddhism and accepting Christianity we will be obtaining a more satisfactory means for establishing international relations, promoting a national constitution, or realizing the goal of treaty revision”39

The intimate connection between religion and the spirit of man was also an argument against conversion to assist modernization. Because “the West has a nature peculiar to the West,” there was no reason to believe that any benefits that Christianity did bestow on the West would be transferred to Japan.40 Inoue also confronted the assumed association between Western progress and Christianity, arguing that, even within the West, Christianity obstructed progress, it “oppressed men’s spirits and impeded the development of scholarship.”41 Western progress has been achieved in spite of Christianity. Nevertheless, he observed, in Japan Christianity had attracted young men of talent. In a passage of Bukkyo katsuron joron that may well have been addressed to the Doshisha Christians, typical of the talented and ambitious men who converted to Christianity, Inoue wrote: “It is said that the talented men, who should have ambitions for the future, are converted early in life to Christianity …. When I hear about this, I am deeply grieved…. If they have the intention of loving the country how can they not promote their country’s traditional religion? If they know that the clergy’s ignorance and lack of intelligence make it unfit to map out the revival of Buddhism, why do they not plan for the revival of the religion without the clergy?”42

A Secular Sangha

The question Inoue posed was particularly pertinent because these converts rejected all traditional religion equally. The Christianity they had originally adopted was a liberal theology, elaborated upon by their own reading of contemporary criticism. By the late 1880s, the time of Inoue’s publication, they had distanced themselves from missionaries and were developing their own rationalized, demythologized interpretation of the Christian doctrine. Why, Inoue suggested, invoking the reform ideal of koji Buddhism, did they not carry out a similar exercise on Japanese religion? Why not redirect their considerable intellectual effort to making the Japanese religion meet their ideals rather than the foreign one?

Inoue did not attempt to deny that Buddhism as it could be observed in contemporary Japan was in a degraded state and in dire need of reform. Rather, in the mode of all rhetoricians attempting to stir outrage and action, the picture he painted was exaggerated. “Present-day Buddhism is practiced among foolish laymen, it is handed down by foolish clergy, and it is full of depravities; in short it is not free of becoming a barbaric doctrine.”43 This was “nothing intrinsic to Buddhism”; Buddhism simply reflected the “corrupt customs of society.”44 Inoue’s own efforts to effect change included promoting Buddhist philanthropy and campaigning against non-Buddhist superstition, folk belief in ghosts and the supernatural.45

Another passage of Bukkyo katsuron joron that might have been directed at the Doshisha converts confronted the belief of the Min’yusha (Friends of the Nation) that social evolution justified their assiduous Westernization. As they saw it, because social evolution was universally applicable, all societies must pass through the same stages. Therefore, for Japan to outstrip the West it must therefore follow the same path. They believed Japan would be able to overtake the West because of the superiority of the Japanese spirit. Inoue recognized that the intention of “our countrymen in accepting the West and studying English and German is not to make Japan an imitator and follower of other countries, but to make it a competitor and rival that will someday surpass the West.”46 Nevertheless, he warned, Japan would never overtake the West by following in its footsteps, or by discarding its strong points and adopting the shortcomings of the West. This could only be achieved by building a strong national identity, which, as he had already argued, depended on reviving and preserving Buddhism. Buddhism, in spite of its present state, was one of the strengths of Japan. In an argument that paralleled that of his Seikyosha colleague Shiga Shigetaka, Inoue argued that imitation was poor political strategy. It would lead the West to despise the Japanese as lacking energy, strength, and an independent spirit. Imitation was the behavior of slaves and flatterers: “[T]hey may regard us as a vassal state … but never, by any stretch of the imagination, look upon us as equals”47 In the Nihonjin a year later he would be even more explicit. “The best way Japanese can be made Japanese and Japan can remain independent was to preserve and propagate Buddhism.”48

Buddhism and International Prestige

Inoue believed in the necessity of projecting Japanese achievement in indigenous terms, not as an imitation of the West. For him Buddhism was the means by which Japan could gain the respect of the world and contribute to international welfare. Buddhism is Japan’s “special product”, its “strong point,” a source of national identity and international recognition and prestige. The proposal carried the nationalistic appeal of Japanese superiority and offered hope for the practical result of gaining recognition as a “civilized” nation and thereby effecting treaty revision. On top of all this, Inoue offered the altruistic appeal of contributing to the benefit of the world as a whole.

First, he argued Japan’s responsibility to Asia. Buddhism is the basis of Eastern civilization and has greatly influenced its scholarship, language, customs, and even the sentiments of its people.49 However, “the good strain” of Buddhism, the Mahayana, had died out elsewhere; it was virtually extinct in its country of origin and the little that did remain “is only the shallow doctrine of the Hinayana.”50 Japan, therefore, as the sole repository of the Buddha’s highest teaching, had a particular duty to preserve and propagate it. “Only in our country, Japan, do we have these sacred sects and texts, as well as people who know the profundities of the one vehicle [Mahayana]. If this is not maintained in Japan today, and if the people leave, the writings perish, and the sects are destroyed, in what land will Buddhism rise again? This is why the support of Buddhism is our most pressing urgent need today.”51

Inoue did not miss the opportunity to suggest that the survival of the Mahayana teachings in Japan was also evidence of the racial superiority of the Japanese. Mahayana Buddhism had died out elsewhere because of the deterioration of the races. His botanical metaphor of the “strains” of a plant emphasized that, though deriving from a common ancestral seed, the Mahayana Buddhism of India and China was not the same as the Mahayana Buddhism of Japan. The “good strain” was “the special product of the country that nurtured it.” There was, however, “absolutely no reason why it cannot be transplanted to other lands.”52

The next step was a pragmatic recognition of the superiority of Western achievement: that there was very little that Japan could produce that was not already available in the West, that the West was also ahead in its social and public institutions, the model for “government, law, the military system, education, the physical sciences and technology.” The one advantage that Japan had, he argued, was religion, and because “this fine product of ours excels those of other countries”53 it was “the one thing that Japan might transmit to foreign countries and thereby win fame.”54

Inoue then appealed to the sense of duty of his Confucian-educated readers. Just as it is the duty of Japan’s farmers to make agriculture flourish and to export food to foreign countries, and the duty of merchants to increase trade and to compete with the foreigners, it is the scholars’ duty to their country to make learning and religion prosper and to propagate them abroad.55 He assured his readers that the West would welcome Japanese Buddhism. “Western scholars have come to hate Christianity bitterly, and day and night, they are eagerly looking for a religion based upon philosophy.”56 Japanese Buddhism offered the evolutionary completion of Western philosophy, as well as philosophical Buddhism, a religion that accommodated the spiritual needs of the modern world. As a religion based on philosophical truth, far from being in conflict with philosophy as Christianity appeared to be, if offered an introduction to it. The fact that Western scholars studied Buddhism indicated an existing interest in Buddhism in the West, but this interest was not as great as it could be because the West only had very limited and biased access to its truth. Their scholars only investigated the Hinayana, “the most shallow of all Buddhism,” and Western understanding was further hindered by the fact that “the books about Buddhism sent to the West were all written by Christians.”57 Inoue’s message was clear. If the West was to realize the worth of Japanese Buddhism, able Japanese scholars must present it to them.

Fundamental to the whole argument was the evolutionary imperative for competition between species. Not only was Buddhism the most perfect expression of the truth that the Western world had been seeking for centuries, but it would provide the competition with Christianity that was essential if the West was to reach its full evolutionary development. The progress of man depended on competition between different cultures. Japan had a mission – a moral obligation – to develop its distinctive national characteristics to advance world civilization. History demonstrated the need for diversity. The prosperity of the West was a consequence of “competition among all the branches of learning and the arts,” but “when any kind of scholarship or religion is implemented as the sole ideology of that nation, progress is impeded.”58 The West had no religion except Christianity, which carried the additional burden of being “often guilty of obstructing the development of science and philosophy.” Introducing Buddhism would provide the competition essential to stimulate progress without which Christian civilization could not reach its full potential. “This is one more reason why the promotion of Buddhism in Japan is one of the most pressing needs of the day.”59

Though this may seem a particularly beneficent concern, Inoue, like Hirai at the World’s Parliament of Religions, believed that Christianity at its full development – when it had overcome its reliance on myth, mental props such as its concept of Deity, and unscientific doctrines – would not be different from Mahayana Buddhism. It was an expression of generosity not unlike that of the Christian missionaries who came to the East “not to destroy but to fulfill.” Summarizing his argument for the revitalization of Buddhism, Inoue concluded rhetorically, “[I]s it not Buddhism alone that can make our country’s scholarship independent in the East, and supersede that of the West? Is it not Buddhism alone that will make our country’s doctrines overwhelm the world and swallow the globe? Is it not Buddhism alone that can make Japan’s prestige shine throughout the world, and make Japan’s fame resound throughout eternity? Should we not defend this teaching for the sake of the nation? Should we not love this religion for the sake of truth?”60

Taking Buddhism to the West

Whether in response to Inoue’s plea or not, toward the end of the 1880s Japanese Buddhists, led by the Honganji institutions (both Nishi Honganji and Higashi Honganji), developed international contacts. Although there had been contact from earlier times the initiative was formalized with the founding of the Society for Communication with Western Buddhists (Obei bukkyo tsushinkai) [later reorganized as the Buddhist Propagation Society (Kaigai Senkyo Kai, literally Overseas Missionary Society), under the leadership of Akamatsu Renjo] in 1887 under the leadership of Akamatsu Renjo. Akamatsu, an associate of Inoue, had been one of the first Buddhists to travel to Europe and the first to write on Japanese Buddhism in English. A branch office was opened in London in 1890, and a journal, Bijou of Asia, was published.61 The arguments of Bukkyo katsuron joron explain the essential connection between the propagation of Buddhism overseas and the contest of religions within Meiji Japan. It was at least as much a strategy in the discourse determining the religious future of Japan as a missionary drive for expansion. In this context the invitation to the World’s Parliament of Religions was an outstanding opportunity. The Parliament provided a chance to speak directly to a select audience of religious specialists, to introduce them to Japanese Mahayana, and, moreover, offered the opportunity, through the publication of the proceedings, for the reform representation of Buddhism to enter into Western discourse.

Conclusion

The apparent paradox in Inoue Enryo’s career is that he broke his formal ties with Buddhism in order to promote it. Such was the authority of the West in Japan in the 1880s that even in a time of reaction against excessive Westernization, a time when many Japanese were looking to their indigenous heritage in search of a distinctive national identity, Japanese Buddhism had to be validated in the international currency of Western standards. To do this, Inoue adopted the title of philosopher – a distinctively Western title at that time – and, with it, the claim to speak on behalf of Buddhism with the voice of unbiased reason.

He used this claim to rational, objective authority to establish the superiority of Buddhist thought by comparison with the standards of universal reason. He used Western philosophical theory to present an analysis of Buddhism. He used the names of Western philosophy to attract the attention of the Western-educated elite and the terms of Western philosophy to signpost the less familiar concepts of Buddhist teaching. But Inoue’s identity as a philosopher offered more than this. Just as Fenollosa’s authority on Western art and aesthetics had been crucial in launching the revival of Japanese art, Inoue’s credentials in Western philosophy validated his promotion of Japanese Buddhism. This recourse to Western authority was also a factor in taking Japanese Buddhism to Chicago. Acceptance of Japanese Buddhism in the international, Western, and Christian event – or at least the appearance of acceptance – validated the revivalist project. However, regardless of the importance of Western philosophy in Inoue’s work, there is no question that what he taught in Bukkyo katsuron joron was Buddhism. I suggest that Inoue’s use of Western philosophy is best understood as a deployment of Western authority. What was important in this exercise was the authority that Western philosophy commanded among Inoue’s target audience. The term “deployment” points to a strategic purpose – in this case, Inoue’s related projects of recreating a role for Buddhism in modern Japanese society and establishing a relationship between Buddhism and the new Japanese state.

_______________

Notes:

I. BKJ (Introduction to revitalizing Buddhism).

2. The character for tetsu had been used in Chinese in association with Confucian thought.

3. Japan Weekly Mail, March 1893.

4. This is not surprising considering Inoue's association with delegate Ashitsu Jitsuzen in the formation of the Sonno hobutsu daidodan and the Seikyosha, and the number of Inoue's close associates and colleagues in Buddhist revival who were signatories to the document.

5. Chisolm, Fenollosa, 42.

6. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, 1:xiv.

7. Fukuzawa Yukichi, Chrysanthemum (October 1881): 393, translated by Walter Dening.

8. Chisolm, Fenollosa, 50, describes the Ryuchikai incident. The introductory essay by Mary Fenollosa in Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, xviii, lists his imperial honors.

9. The institute, under Okakura's direction, was responsible for the Hooden, the Japanese Pavilion at the Chicago Exposition.

10. Staggs, "Defend the Nation," 258. Shimaji Mokurai and Ouchi Seiran should need no further introduction. Kitabatake Doryu was a Honganji priest recently returned from study overseas, the first Japanese to visit Bodhgaya. Kiyozawa was also a Honganji student studying philosophy and later wrote on Hegel and Buddhism. His Hegelian-inspired lectures on Buddhism were circulated at the Parliament as the book Outlines of the Mahayiina. He was to become the founding president of Otani University. Inoue Tetsujiro studied philosophy in Europe. Miyake, Tanabashi, and Shiga were major Seikyosha spokesmen. Shiga was the editor of their journal Nihonjin.

11. Tsunemitsu, Meiji no bukkyosha, 174.

12. Staggs, "Defend the Nation," 154.

13. Although reform was supported at the highest levels the conservative opposition should not be underestimated. It is apparent in the refusal to endorse officially the delegation to Chicago, and in the absence of Honganji priests in the delegation in spite of the fact that invitations were originally extended to Nanjo, Shimaji, and Akamatsu as the Buddhists most well known overseas. See also Murakami Sensho's resignation from the Honganji over the controversy of his history of Buddhism. Ibid., 295-96. Kiyozawa Manshi mentions the factions in the Honganji, Inoue's institution. See Haneda, December Fan.

14. BKJ, 350 and 360. Part 2 of Bukkyo katsuron was entitled "Destroying Evil."

15. Staggs, "Defend the Nation," 154. The ploy apparently worked. Thelle, Buddhism and Christianity inJapan, 100-101, is generous in his praises for Inoue's rational approach. Inoue's earliest publications were anti-Christian: Haja shmron (A new refutation of Christianity) (1885); Shinri kishin (The guiding principle of Truth) (1886-87). Volumes 1 and 2 were a "point by point refutation of what Inoue deemed the erroneous and irrational tenets of Christianity." Staggs, "In Defence of Japanese Buddhism," 191-202. Inoue's publishing house, Tetsugaku shoin, published numerous anti-Christian works through the 1890s. Inoue warned, however, against taking Christianity too lightly. "It is much more profound than would be indicated by the foolish chattering of the missionaries we hear" (190).

16. BKJ, 350.

17. BKJ, 362-64.

18. In reality, Inoue (1858-1919) would have been only ten years old at this time and, contrary to the implication of this "autobiography," remained a priest until 1885.

19. BKJ, 363-64.

20. Chisolm, Fenollosa, 131. Inoue's Buddhist philosophy was based on Tendai teachings.

21. BKJ, 334-35.

22. BKJ, 397.

23. BKJ, 351 and 361.

24. BKJ, 358-59.

25. BKJ, 364.

26. The Buddhist term hoben (Sanskrit: upaya) refers to provisional truth used as a means of leading beings to greater understanding. It relates to the Buddha's skill in teaching according to the ability of the audience to comprehend. See the subsequent account of the Five Periods of the Buddha's teachings.

27. BKJ, 397.

28. BKJ, 397-98. Staggs's thesis provides a detailed analysis of this, "In Defence of Japanese Buddhism," 248-72.

29. BKJ, 398.

30. BKJ, 398-99·

31. BKJ, 399. See Inagaki, A Dictionary of Japanese Buddhist Terms, 83, for a definition of goun.

32. BKJ, 402.

33. Japanese Kegonkyo. This is a Mahayana sutra. For Inoue's account of this, see BKJ, 426- 28. The five periods are Kegonji, when Sakyamuni taught the Avatamsaka-sutra; the Agonji, when he taught the Agama-sutras; the Hodoji, when he taught the Vaipulya-sutras; the Hannyaji, when he taught the Prajnaparamita-sutras; and Hokeji or nehanji, when he taught the Saddharma-pundarika-sutra and Mahaparinirvana-sutra. The periods take their names from the Japanese names of the sutras.

34. BKJ, 427.

35. BKJ, 354; Staggs, "Defend the Nation," 274 n. 69.

36. BKJ, 365.

37. BKJ, 377.

38. BKI, 368.

39. BKJ, 377.

40. BKJ, 374.

41. BKJ, 375.

42. BKJ, 386.

43. BKJ, 351.

44. BKJ, 378.

45. Staggs, "Defend the Nation," 226-28.

46. BKJ, 370.

47. Shiga Shigetaka (1863-1927) published his Nanyo jiji (Conditions in the South Seas) in 1887, the same year as BKJ. His voyages in Australia and New Zealand, among other places, had convinced him of the danger of "naive and weak-willed association with Westerners and their culture." Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan, 56-58.

48. Inoue Enryo, Nihonjin 1 (April 1888).

49. BKJ, 368.

50. BKJ, 365.

51. BKJ, 365-66.

52. BKJ, 366.

53. BKJ, 370-71.

54. BKJ, 366.

55. BKJ, 371.

56. BKJ, 366.

57. BKJ, 366-67·

58. BKJ, 372.

59. Ibid.

60. BKJ, 372-73.

61. Thelle, Buddhism and Christianity in Japan, 110.

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Higashi Hongan-ji
東本願寺
Eastern Temple of the Original Vow
Higashi Hongan-ji
Religion
Affiliation Jodo Shinshu, Otani-ha
Status Head temple
Location
Location 754 Tokiwa-machi, north of Karasuma and Shichijō, Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture
Country Japan
Higashi Hongan-ji is located in JapanHigashi Hongan-ji
Shown within Japan
Geographic coordinates 34°59′27.66″N 135°45′30.44″ECoordinates: 34°59′27.66″N 135°45′30.44″E
Website
Ōtani-ha (Higashi Honganji)

Higashi Hongan-ji (東本願寺), or, the Eastern Temple of the Original Vow, is one of two dominant sub-sects of Shin Buddhism in Japan and abroad, the other being Nishi Honganji (or, 'The Western Temple of the Original Vow').

Jodo Shinshu (浄土真宗 "The True Essence of the Pure Land Teaching"[1]), also known as Shin Buddhism or True Pure Land Buddhism, is a school of Pure Land Buddhism. It was founded by the former Tendai Japanese monk Shinran. Shin Buddhism is considered the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan....

Early Shin Buddhism did not truly flourish until the time of Rennyo (1415–1499), who was 8th in descent from Shinran. Through his charisma and proselytizing, Shin Buddhism was able to amass a greater following and grow in strength. In the 16th-century, during the Sengoku period the political power of Honganji led to several conflicts between it and the warlord Oda Nobunaga, culminating in a ten-year conflict over the location of the Ishiyama Hongan-ji, which Nobunaga coveted because of its strategic value. So strong did the sect become that in 1602, through mandate of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main temple Hongan-ji in Kyoto was broken off into two sects to curb its power. These two sects, the Nishi (Western) Honganji and the Higashi (Eastern) Honganji, exist separately to this day.

During the time of Shinran, followers would gather in informal meeting houses called dojo, and had an informal liturgical structure. However, as time went on, this lack of cohesion and structure caused Jōdo Shinshū to gradually lose its identity as a distinct sect, as people began mixing other Buddhist practices with Shin ritual. One common example was the Mantra of Light popularized by Myōe and Shingon Buddhism. Other Pure Land Buddhist practices, such as the nembutsu odori[4] or "dancing nembutsu" as practiced by the followers of Ippen and the Ji School, may have also been adopted by early Shin Buddhists. Rennyo ended these practices by formalizing much of the Jōdo Shinshū ritual and liturgy, and revived the thinning community at the Honganji temple while asserting newfound political power. Rennyo also proselytized widely among other Pure Land sects and consolidated most of the smaller Shin sects. Today, there are still ten distinct sects of Jōdo Shinshū, Nishi Hongan-ji and Higashi Hongan-ji being the two largest....

Following the unification of Japan during the Edo period, Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism adapted, along with the other Japanese Buddhist schools, into providing memorial and funeral services for its registered members under the Danka system, which was legally required by the Tokugawa shogunate in order to prevent the spread of Christianity in Japan. The danka seido system continues to exist today, although not as strictly as in the premodern period, causing Japanese Buddhism to also be labeled as "Funeral Buddhism" since it became the primary function of Buddhist temples. The Honganji also created an impressive academic tradition, which led to the founding of Ryukoku University in Kyoto and formalized many of the Jōdo Shinshū traditions which are still followed today.

Following the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent persecution of Buddhism (haibutsu kishaku) of the late 1800s due to a revived nationalism and modernization, Jōdo Shinshū managed to survive intact due to the devotion of its monto. During World War II, the Honganji, as with the other Japanese Buddhist schools, was compelled to support the policies of the military government and the cult of State Shinto. It subsequently apologized for its wartime actions.[5]....

Shinran's thought was strongly influenced by the doctrine of Mappō, a largely Mahayana eschatology which claims humanity's ability to listen to and practice the Buddhist teachings deteriorates over time and loses effectiveness in bringing individual practitioners closer to Buddhahood. This belief was particularly widespread in early medieval China and in Japan at the end of the Heian. Shinran, like his mentor Hōnen, saw the age he was living in as being a degenerate one where beings cannot hope to be able to extricate themselves from the cycle of birth and death through their own power, or jiriki (自力). For both Hōnen and Shinran, all conscious efforts towards achieving enlightenment and realizing the Bodhisattva ideal were contrived and rooted in selfish ignorance; for humans of this age are so deeply rooted in karmic evil as to be incapable of developing the truly altruistic compassion that is requisite to becoming a Bodhisattva.

Due to his awareness of human limitations, Shinran advocates reliance on tariki, or other power (他力)—the power of Amitābha (Japanese Amida) made manifest in his Primal Vow—in order to attain liberation. Shin Buddhism can therefore be understood as a "practiceless practice", for there are no specific acts to be performed such as there are in the "Path of Sages"....

As in other Pure Land Buddhist schools, Amitābha is a central focus of the Buddhist practice, and Jōdo Shinshū expresses this devotion through a chanting practice called nembutsu, or "Mindfulness of the Buddha [Amida]". The nembutsu is simply reciting the phrase Namu Amida Butsu ("I take refuge in Amitābha Buddha"). Jōdo Shinshū is not the first school of Buddhism to practice the nembutsu but it is interpreted in a new way according to Shinran. The nembutsu becomes understood as an act that expresses gratitude to Amitābha; furthermore, it is evoked in the practitioner through the power of Amida's unobstructed compassion. Therefore, in Shin Buddhism, the nembutsu is not considered a practice, nor does it generate karmic merit. It is simply an affirmation of one's gratitude. Indeed, given that the nembutsu is the Name, when one utters the Name, that is Amitābha calling to the devotee. This is the essence of the Name-that-calls.[6]....

The receipt of shinjin comes about through the renunciation of self-effort in attaining enlightenment through tariki. It should be noted, however, that shinjin arises from jinen (自然 naturalness, spontaneous working of the Vow) and cannot be achieved solely through conscious effort. One is letting go of conscious effort in a sense, and simply trusting Amida Buddha, and the nembutsu.

For Jōdo Shinshū practitioners, shinjin develops over time through "deep hearing" (monpo) of Amitābha's call of the nembutsu. According to Shinran, "to hear" means "that sentient beings, having heard how the Buddha's Vow arose—its origin and fulfillment—are altogether free of doubt."[8] Jinen also describes the way of naturalness whereby Amitābha's infinite light illumines and transforms the deeply rooted karmic evil of countless rebirths into good karma. It is of note that such evil karma is not destroyed but rather transformed: Shin stays within the Mahayana tradition's understanding of śūnyatā and understands that samsara and nirvana are not separate. Once the practitioner's mind is united with Amitābha and Buddha-nature gifted to the practitioner through shinjin, the practitioner attains the state of non-retrogression, whereupon after his death it is claimed he will achieve instantaneous and effortless enlightenment. He will then return to the world as a Bodhisattva, that he may work towards the salvation of all beings....

Under the influence of Rennyo and other priests, Jōdo Shinshū later fully accepted honji suijaku beliefs and the concept of kami as manifestations of Amida Buddha and other buddhas and bodhisattvas.[10]....

The term honji suijaku or honchi suijaku (本地垂迹) in Japanese religious terminology refers to a theory widely accepted until the Meiji period according to which Indian Buddhist deities choose to appear in Japan as native kami to more easily convert and save the Japanese.[1][2]

Kami (Japanese: 神, [kaꜜmi]) are the spirits, phenomena or "holy powers" that are venerated in the religion of Shinto. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, as well as beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the spirits of venerated dead persons. Many kami are considered the ancient ancestors of entire clans (some ancestors became kami upon their death if they were able to embody the values and virtues of kami in life). Traditionally, great or sensational leaders like the Emperor could be or became kami.[1]

In Shinto, kami are not separate from nature, but are of nature, possessing positive and negative, and good and evil characteristics. They are manifestations of musubi (結び),[2] the interconnecting energy of the universe, and are considered exemplary of what humanity should strive towards. Kami are believed to be "hidden" from this world, and inhabit a complementary existence that mirrors our own: shinkai (神界, "the world of the kami").[3]:22 To be in harmony with the awe-inspiring aspects of nature is to be conscious of kannagara no michi (随神の道 or 惟神の道, "the way of the kami").[2]

-- Kami, by Wikipedia

The theory states that some kami (but not all) are local manifestations (the suijaku (垂迹), literally, a "trace") of Buddhist deities (the honji (本地), literally, "original ground").[1][3] The two entities form an indivisible whole called gongen and in theory should have equal standing, but this was not always the case.[4] In the early Nara period, for example, the honji was considered more important and only later did the two come to be regarded as equals.[4] During the late Kamakura period it was even proposed that the kami were the original deities and the buddhas their manifestations.

-- Honji suijaku, by Wikipedia

Branch lineages

• Jōdo Shinshū Honganji School (Nishi Hongan-ji) - Popularly spelled Hongwan-ji
• Jōdo Shinshū Higashi Honganji School (Higashi Hongan-ji)
o Shinshū Ōtani School
• Shinshū Chōsei School (Chōsei-ji)
• Shinshū Takada School (Senju-ji)
o Shinshū Kita Honganji School (Kitahongan-ji)
• Shinshū Bukkōji School (Bukkō-ji)
• Shinshū Kōshō School (Kōshō-ji)
• Shinshū Kibe School (Kinshoku-ji)
• Shinshū Izumoji School (Izumo-ji)
• Shinshū Jōkōji School (Jōshō-ji)
• Shinshū Jōshōji School (Jōshō-ji)
• Shinshū Sanmonto School (Senjō-ji)
• Montoshūichimi School (Kitami-ji)
• Kayakabe Teaching (Kayakabe-kyō) - An esoteric branch of Jōdo Shinshū

-- Jōdo Shinshū, by Wikipedia

It is also the name of the head temple of the Ōtani-ha branch of Jōdo Shinshū in Kyoto, which was most recently constructed in 1895 after a fire burned down the previous temple.[1][2] As with many sites in Kyoto, these two complexes have more casual names and are known affectionately in Kyoto as Onissan (お西さん, Honorable Mr. West) and Ohigashisan (お東さん, Honorable Mr. East).

History

Higashi Honganji was established in 1602 by the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu when he split the Shin sect in two (Nishi Honganji being the other) in order to diminish its power.[1] The temple was first built in its present location in 1658.[2]

The temple grounds feature a mausoleum containing the ashes of Shin Buddhism founder Shinran. The mausoleum was initially constructed in 1272 and moved several times before being constructed in its current location in 1670.[3]

At the center of the temple is the Founder's Hall, where an image of the temple's founder, Shinran, is enshrined. The hall is one of the largest wooden structures in the world at 76 m (250 ft.) in length, 58 m (190 ft.) in width, and 38 m (125 ft.) in height. The current hall was constructed in 1895.[4]

The Amida Hall to the left of the Founder's Hall contains an image of Amida Buddha along with an image of Prince Shōtoku, who introduced Buddhism to Japan. The hall is ornately decorated with gold leaf and art from the JapaneseMeiji Period. The current hall was constructed in 1895.[5]

Various parts of Higashi Honganji, including the Founder's Hall and Amida Hall, burned down 4 times during the Japanese Edo Period. Monetary assistance was often given to Higashi Honganji by the Tokugawa Shogunate in order to rebuild. The Great Tenmei Fire in Kyoto caused many temple buildings to burn down in 1788, and the temple was rebuilt in 1797. An accidental fire destroyed many of the temple buildings in 1823 and were rebuilt in 1835. After burning down once again in 1858, the destroyed halls were quickly and temporarily reconstructed for Shinran’s 600th Memorial Service in 1861. However, these temporary hall burned down in a city-wide fire caused by the Kinmon incident on July 19, 1864. The temple finally started to rebuild in 1879 after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and once conflict caused by the Meiji Restoration of 1868 had settled down. The Founder's Hall and Amida Hall were completed in 1895, with other buildings being restored by 1911. These buildings comprise the current temple.[2]

During the twentieth century, Higashi Honganji was troubled by political disagreements, financial scandals and family disputes, and has subsequently fractured into a number of further sub-divisions (see Ohigashi schism). The largest Higashi Honganji grouping, the Shinshu Otaniha has approximately 5.5 million members, according to statistics.[1] However within this climate of instability the Higashi Honganji also produced a significant number of extremely influential thinkers, such as Soga Ryojin, Kiyozawa Manshi, Kaneko Daiei and Haya Akegarasu amongst others.


Founder's Hall Gate (Goei-do Mon), built in 1911, width 31 m (103 ft) x height 27 m (90 ft), 59,387 roof tiles [6]


Founder's Hall (Goei-dō)


Amida Hall

See also

• Glossary of Japanese Buddhism.
• Shōsei-en
• Shinran
• Ōtani-ha
• Pure Land Buddhism
• Shin Buddhism

References

1. Popular Buddhism In Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion & Culture by Esben Andreasen, pp. 11, 38-39, 101 / University of Hawaii Press 1998, ISBN 0-8248-2028-2
2. "About Higashi Honganji". Higashi Honganji Shinsu Otani-ha. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
3. "Otani Mausoleum". Higashi Honganji Shinsu Otani-ha. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
4. "Founder's Hall (Goei-do)". Higashi Honganji Shinsu Otani-ha. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
5. "Amida Hall". Higashi Honganji Shinsu Otani-ha. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
6. "Founder's Hall Gate". Higashi Honganji Shinsu Otani-ha. Retrieved 8 October 2019.

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Part 1: The Meiji Restoration of 1868 and Buddhism, Chapter One: The Attempted Suppression of Buddhism [Excerpt] from "Zen at War", by Brian Daizen Victoria
Second Edition
© 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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CHAPTER ONE: THE ATTEMPTED SUPPRESSION OF BUDDHISM

Buddhism has a history of approximately 1,500 years in Japan, having first been introduced from Korea in the middle of the sixth century. By the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) Buddhism had, outwardly at least, reached the pinnacle of its power, functioning as a de facto state religion. Each and every household in the country was required to affiliate itself with a nearby Buddhist temple. The result was an explosive growth in the number of temples, from only 13,037 temples during the Kamakura period (1185-1333) to 469,934 during the Tokugawa.1

There were, however, a number of hidden costs associated with Buddhism's establishment as a state religion. First of all, mandatory temple affiliation effectively turned a large part of the Buddhist clergy into little more than government functionaries. Concurrently, membership in a particular sect often became a matter of political obligation rather than religious conviction. These developments are hardly surprising, since the catalyst for according Buddhism a privileged position in the first place was the Tokugawa regime's determination to expel Christianity, thereby reducing the danger to Japan of being colonized by one of the Western powers. Equally important, the regime wished to insure that indigenous religious institutions, like all other institutions in society, were firmly under its control.

The government exerted control over institutional Buddhism through such policies as dividing the powerful Shin (True Pure Land) sect into two branches, popularly known as the Nishi (West) Honganji and Higashi (East) Honganji after their respective head temples. The Tokugawa regime further made sure that every temple in the land, no matter how humble, was made subservient to a higher-grade temple in pyramidal fashion, with an all-powerful central temple (honzan) controlling each sect from the top. While sectarian differences were tolerated, the central temple of each sect was made responsible, and held accountable, for the actions of all of its subordinates, both lay and clerical.

A second and perhaps higher cost that institutional Buddhism paid for government support was what Robert Bellah described as the "general lethargy and uncreativeness of Buddhism in the Tokugawa period."2 Anesaki Masaharu was even less flattering when he wrote: "The majority of the Buddhist clergy were obedient servants of the Government, and in the long period of peace they gradually became lazy, or else effeminate intriguers."3

There were, of course, some clergy, living in richly endowed temples, who turned their energy to learning. There were also reformers and innovators who attempted with some success to revitalize their respective sects.4 Yet many if not most of the clergy took advantage of their prerogatives as agents of the government to suppress or economically exploit their parishioners. Joseph Kitagawa notes that "the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of established Buddhism inevitably brought criticism and rebellion from within and without."5 It was all but inevitable that institutional Buddhism would face a day of reckoning.

GOVERNMENT MEASURES DIRECTED TOWARD BUDDHISM

On January 3, 1868, the young Emperor Meiji issued a proclamation announcing that he was resuming the reins of government, although in fact only very limited power had actually been restored to the throne. Nevertheless, a scant three months later, on April 6, 1868, the emperor promulgated the Charter Oath, a document consisting of five articles that clearly expressed the antifeudal aspirations of the new government. The Charter Oath states:

(1) Councils widely convoked shall be established, and all affairs of State decided by public discussion.

(2) All measures, governmental and social, shall be conducted by the united efforts of the governing and the governed.

(3) The unity of the imperial and the feudal governments shall be achieved; all the people, even the meanest, shall be given full opportunities for their aspirations and activities.

(4) All absurd usages of the old regime shall be abolished and all measures conducted in conformity with the righteous way of heaven and earth.

(5) Knowledge shall be sought from all over the world, and thus shall be promoted the imperial polity.6

Though the Charter Oath was seemingly innocuous, Article 4 was a harbinger of the impending storm Buddhism would face. What, exactly, were the "absurd usages of the old regime" that were to be "abolished"?

The answer was not long in coming. Only a few days later the first of the "Separation Edicts" (Shimbutsu Hanzen Rei), designed to separate Buddhism from Shinto, were issued by a newly established government bureau known as the Office of Rites Oingi Kyoku). This first edict stated that all Buddhist clerics were to be removed from Shinto shrines throughout the nation. Henceforth, only bona fide Shinto priests were to be allowed to carry out administrative duties related to shrines.

In a second edict, issued less than two weeks after the first, the use of Buddhist names for Shinto deities (kami) was prohibited. Not only that, Buddhist statuary could no longer be used to represent Shinto deities, or, for that matter, even be present in a shrine compound. Whatever the authors' original intent may have been, these edicts were often interpreted at the local and regional levels as meaning that anything having to do with Buddhism could and should be destroyed.

In his excellent book on this period, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, James Ketelaar points out that these separation edicts "necessarily included as an integral part of their formulation a direct attack on Buddhism."7 This is because, first of all, nearly every member of the Office of Rites was an active proponent of National Learning (Kokugaku). This Shinto-dominated school of thought taught that while both the Japanese nation and throne were of divine origin, this origin had been obscured and sullied by foreign accretions and influences, especially those from China. Adherents of this school believed one of the first and most important jobs of the new government was to cleanse the nation of these foreign elements, Buddhism first and foremost.

Just how effective this "cleansing" was can be seen from statistics: over forty thousand temples were closed throughout the nation, countless temple artifacts were destroyed, and thousands of priests were forcibly laicized.8 Once again, however, the interpretation and enforcement of the Separation Edicts was, in general, left up to the regional authorities. Hence, those areas where there was the greatest support for National Learning among local and regional officialdom were also those areas where the greatest destruction occurred.

In the former Satsuma domain (present-day Kagoshima, southern Miyazaki, and Okinawa prefectures), whose leadership had played a leading role in the Restoration movement, Buddhism had almost completely disappeared by the end of 1869. Approximately 4,500 Buddhist temples and halls were eliminated.9 The priests housed in these temples were returned to lay life, and those between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were immediately drafted into the newly formed imperial army. Those over forty-five were sent to become teachers in domain schools, while those under eighteen were sent back to their families.

INSTITUTIONAL BUDDHISM'S RESPONSE

In the face of these very real threats to its continued existence, it did not take some elements of institutional Buddhism long to initiate a series of countermeasures. One of the first of these was undertaken primarily by the Higashi Honganji and Nishi Honganji branches of the Shin sect. On the surface, at least, it was a rather surprising measure: the sect lent substantial amounts of money to the then cash-starved Meiji government. In effect, these two branches hoped to bribe the government into ameliorating its policies.

The same two branches also took the lead in the summer of 1868 in forming the Alliance of United [Buddhist] Sects for Ethical Standards (Shoshu Dotoku Kaimei). This was an unprecedented action for institutional Buddhism, since under the previous Tokugawa regime all intrasectarian Buddhist organizations had been banned. The new organization pledged itself, first of all, to work for the unity of Law of the Sovereign and Law of the Buddha. Second, it called for Christianity to be not only denounced, but expelled from Japan.

Buddhist leaders were quick to realize that their best hope of reviving their faith was to align themselves with the increasingly nationalistic sentiment of the times. They concluded that one way of demonstrating their usefulness to Japan's new nationalistic leaders was to support an anti-Christian campaign, which came to be known as "refuting evil [Christianity] and exalting righteousness" (haja kensho).

As early as September 17, 1868, the new Ministry of State responded to these "positive actions" on the part of Buddhist leaders by sending a private communique directly to the Higashi Honganji and Nishi Honganji branches of the Shin sect. This letter contained a condemnation of those members of the imperial court who wrongfully, and in contradiction to Emperor Meiji's will, were persecuting Buddhism. The letter further notes that in so doing, these "foul-mouthed rebels ... antagonize the general populace."10

Just how antagonized the general populace had become is shown by the strong protest actions that arose in opposition to the repressive, anti-Buddhist measures of local authorities. These protests started in the Toyama region in late 1870 and were followed by two riots in Mikawa (present Aichi Prefecture) and Ise (present Mie Prefecture) in 1871. In each of the following two years there were also two major protests in widely scattered parts of the country.

The 1873 peasant protests in three counties of Echizen (present Fukui Prefecture) were so large that they had to be put down by government troops. It can be argued that it was the government's fear of these protests that finally forced it to pay serious attention to the plight of Buddhists. The government reached the conclusion that the wholesale suppression of Buddhism was neither possible nor safe. A solution had to be found.

RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT

The First Attempt

The first major change in the Meiji government's policy toward Buddhism came in early 1872. It was at this time that the Ministry of Rites was transformed into the Ministry of Doctrine (Kyobusho). The new ministry was given administrative responsibility for such things as the building and closing of both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, and the approval of all priestly ranks and privileges. By far its most important function, however, was to propagate the "Great Teaching" (Daikyo) that had been developed the previous year. The three pillars of this teaching were as follows: (1) the principles of reverence for the national deities and of patriotism shall be observed; (2) the heavenly reason and the way of humanity shall be promulgated; and (3) the throne shall be revered and the authorities obeyed.11 Charged with promulgating these principles, the Ministry of Doctrine created the position of Doctrinal Instructor (Kyodoshoku). These instructors were to operate through a nation-wide network of Teaching Academies (Kyoin) which would be established in both Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. The significance to Buddhism of this development is that for the first time Buddhist priests were given permission to serve in this state-sponsored position, together, of course, with Shinto priests and scholars of National Learning.

By establishing the position of Doctrinal Instructor, the state was creating a de facto state priesthood. Anyone uncertified by the state was barred from lecturing in public, performing ceremonial duties, and residing in either shrines or temples. Nevertheless, Buddhists saw this as a way to escape from their ongoing oppression and eagerly took advantage of this new opportunity.

How successful they were can be seen from the fact that eventually more than 81,000 of a total of some 103,000 officially recognized Doctrinal Instructors were Buddhist priests. Of this number, Shin sect-affiliated priests numbered nearly 25,000 and were the largest single group.12 But Buddhists paid a heavy price for their inclusion into the new state religion, for it was clearly Shinto inspired and controlled. All Doctrinal Instructors were expected to wear Shinto robes, recite Shinto prayers, and perform Shinto rituals. Further, although the Ministry of Doctrine selected the famous Pure Land sect temple of Zojoji in Tokyo as the "Great Teaching Academy." the administrative center for the national doctrine system, the ministry demanded that the temple be extensively renovated for its new role.

Zojoji's renovation included replacing the statute of Amida Buddha on the main altar with four Shinto deities and building a Shinto gate at the entrance to the temple. The Buddhist leadership was so anxious to support this new scheme that they even arranged to have their subordinate temples pay the renovation costs. Yet, despite this seemingly cooperative beginning, conflict inevitably arose between Buddhist and Shinto elements within the national doctrine system.

As the anti-Buddhist movement began to subside, the Buddhist leaders sought to free themselves from Shinto domination. An additional cause of friction was an announcement made on April 25, 1872, by the Ministry of State. This announcement, known as Order Number 133, stated that Buddhist priests could, if they wished, eat meat, get married, grow their hair long, and wear ordinary clothing. Although this decision neither prohibited nor commanded anything, it was seen by many Buddhist leaders as yet another attack on their religion. In their minds, Order Number 133 represented an extension of the earlier separation of Shinto and Buddhism. It represented the separation of Buddhism from the state itself.

The strong Buddhist opposition to this measure included numerous sectarian protest meetings and petitions criticizing the ministry's decision, at least one of which was signed by over two hundred Buddhist priests. Some angry priests even went directly to the ministry's offices to express their opposition. The irony of these actions is that Order Number 133 was a directive that had been taken at the request of a Buddhist, the influential So1O Zen sect priest Otori Sesso (1814-1904).

Otori was in a unique position to make his views known since, at the time the new Ministry of Doctrine was created, he had been asked to serve as a representative of Buddhist clerics (though he was required to return to lay life for the duration of his government service). Otori's overall goal was the ending of the government's anti-Buddhist policies, and like his Buddhist contemporaries he believed that the best way of achieving this goal was to demonstrate Buddhism's usefulness to the state, specifically through the promulgation of the Great Teaching.

Otori recognized that a large number of Buddhist priests were already married, in spite of regulations prohibiting it. This made them, at least technically, lawbreakers, and left them in no position to work for the government as Doctrinal Instructors or to effectively fight Christianity. In his mind, lifting the ban against marriage, eating meat, and wearing long hair would make it possible for the Buddhist clergy to more effectively render their services to the nation. Despite the protests, Otori was successful in this reform effort, and the new law remained.

In light of their defeat, Buddhist leaders realized that they had to free themselves not only from Shinto control but government control as well. Once again the Shin sect played a major role. Leaders of this sect, particularly Shimaji Mokurai (1838-1911), were at the forefront of the movement for change. Mokurai was particularly well suited to the challenge, not least because he had led troops in support of the Imperial Restoration movement.

As early as 1872, Shimaji wrote an essay critical of the three principles of the Great Teaching. His basic position was that there was a fundamental difference between government (sei) and religion (kyo), and he called for the separation of the two (seikyo bunri). While it took some years for Shimaji and those who agreed with him to make a discernible impact on the Ministry of Doctrine, eventually, at the beginning of 1875, the government gave the two Shin branches permission to leave the Great Doctrine movement, and shortly afterward the entire institution of the Great Doctrine was abolished. A new solution had to be found.

The Second Attempt

The Buddhists were not the only religious group to benefit from changing government policy. In 1871 a diplomatic mission sent to the West, headed by Senior Minister Iwakura Tomomi (1825-83), had recommended that if Japan were to successfully revise what it regarded as unequal treaties with the Western powers, it would have to adopt a policy of religious freedom.

The Western powers were, of course, most concerned about the ongoing prohibition of Christianity in Japan. As a result, in 1873 the government reluctantly agreed to abolish this prohibition, a decision which led to a rapid increase in the numbers of both Western Christian missions and missionaries entering the country. Even as they continued their own struggle to free themselves from government control, many Buddhist leaders took this occasion to renew and deepen their earlier attacks on Christianity. In so doing, they allied themselves with Shinto, Confucian, and other nationalist leaders.

Shintoists, too, were undergoing changes at this time. Shinto's strongest supporters, the proponents of National Learning, had demonstrated to Meiji political leaders that they were "too religious to rule."13 This, in turn, led to a reduction in their political power as evidenced by the 1872 changes in the government's religious policy toward Buddhism. Yet key members of the government were still dedicated to the proposition that one way or another the emperor system, as an immanental theocracy with roots in the ancient state, should be used to legitimatize the new government. The question was, in the face of earlier failures, how could this be accomplished?

Part of the answer came in 1882 when the government divided Shinto into two parts, one part consisting of cultic, emperor-related practices and the other of so-called religious practices. While the religious side of Shinto, or Sect Shinto (Kyoha Shinto), received nothing from the government, the cultic side of Shinto, which came to be known as State Shinto (Kokka Shinto), received both financial subsidies and various other political privileges.

The government maintained that this policy was justified because cultic practices relating to the emperor were patriotic in nature, not religious. Even today there are Japanese Buddhist scholars who continue to support this position. Professor Shibata Doken of Sow Zen sect-affiliated Komazawa University, for example, maintains that "given the fact that Japan is a country consisting of a unitary people, with shared customs and mores, the assertion that [State] Shinto was not a religion can be sanctioned, at least to some degree."14 Other contemporary scholars of that era, however, held a differing view. Joseph Kitagawa, for example, maintained that '''State Shinto' was essentially a newly concocted religion of ethnocentric nationalism." 15 Helen Hardacre provides a more detailed description:

State Shinto [was] a systemic phenomenon that encompassed government support of and regulation of shrines, the emperor's sacerdotal roles, state creation and sponsorship of Shinto rites, construction of Shinto shrines in Japan and in overseas colonies, education for schoolchildren in Shinto mythology plus their compulsory participation in Shinto rituals, and persecution of other religious groups on the grounds of their exhibiting disrespect for some aspect of authorized mythology.16

It is clear that the creation of State Shinto served as a mechanism to facilitate the government's recognition, or at least toleration, of a certain degree of ideological plurality within Japanese society. With a powerful nonreligious legitimization of the new order in hand, the leaders of the Meiji government could now address the question of religious freedom, something which was implicit in the call by Shimaji and others for the separation of government and religion.

The final, formal resolution of the religious question appeared in the Meiji Constitution of 1889. Chapter Two, Article Twenty-Eight read as follows: "Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy-freedom of religious belief."17 It appeared that within limits Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions would now be free of government interference or suppression. Appearances proved to be deceiving.


_______________

Notes:

1. See Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, p. 164.

2. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion, p. 51.

3. Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, p.260.

4. Two representative figures within the Rinzai Zen tradition are Bankei Yotaku (1622-93) and Hakuin Ekaku (1685- 1768). Hakuin is credited with having developed the practice of meditating on a series of koans, with the goal of attaining enlightenment. Within the Soto Zen tradition, Manzan Dohaku (1636- 1714) and Menzan Zuiho (1683-1769) are the two most notable figures. Manzan's primary goal was the elimination of dishonesty relating to temple succession, while Manzan was a noted scholar. For a detailed history of the Zen tradition during the Tokugawa period, see Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History; Volume 2: Japan, PP.270-399.

5. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, p.166.

6. Quoted in Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, p. 331.

7. Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, p. 9.

8. Ibid., p. 7.

9. Ibid., p. 65.

10. Ibid., p. 13.

11. Quoted in Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, p. 335.

12. See Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, p. 105.

13. Ibid., p. 130.

14. Shibata, Haibutsu Kishaku, p. 195.

15. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, p. 213.

16. Hardacre, Shinto and the State, 1868- 1988, p. 6.

17. Quoted in Matsunami, The Constitution of Japan, p. 136.

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Kokugaku
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/10/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Kokugaku (Kyūjitai: 國學, Shinjitai: 国学; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of research into the early Japanese classics.[1]

History

What later became known as the kokugaku tradition began in the 17th and 18th centuries as kogaku ("ancient studies"), wagaku ("Japanese studies") or inishie manabi, a term favored by Motoori Norinaga and his school. Drawing heavily from Shinto and Japan's ancient literature, the school looked back to a golden age of culture and society. They drew upon ancient Japanese poetry, predating the rise of medieval Japan's feudal orders in the mid-twelfth century, and other cultural achievements to show the emotion of Japan. One famous emotion appealed to by the kokugakusha is 'mono no aware'.

The word kokugaku, coined to distinguish this school from kangaku ("Chinese studies"), was popularized by Hirata Atsutane in the 19th century. It has been translated as 'Native Studies' and represented a response to Sinocentric Neo-Confucian theories. Kokugaku scholars criticized the repressive moralizing of Confucian thinkers, and tried to re-establish Japanese culture before the influx of foreign modes of thought and behaviour.

Eventually, the thinking of kokugaku scholars influenced the sonnō jōi philosophy and movement. It was this philosophy, amongst other things, that led to the eventual collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration.

Tenets

The Kokugaku school held that the Japanese national character was naturally pure, and would reveal its splendour once the foreign (Chinese) [BUDDHIST] influences were removed. The "Chinese heart" was different from the "true heart" or "Japanese Heart". This true Japanese spirit needed to be revealed by removing a thousand years of Chinese learning.[2] It thus took an interest in philologically identifying the ancient, indigenous meanings of ancient Japanese texts; in turn, these ideas were synthesized with early Shinto and European astronomy.[3]

Influence

The term kokugaku was used liberally by early modern Japanese to refer to the "national learning" of each of the world's nations. This usage was adopted into Chinese, where it is still in use today (C: guoxue).[4] The Chinese also adopted the kokugaku term "national essence" (J: kokusui, C: guocui).[5]

According to scholar of religion Jason Ānanda Josephson, Kokugaku played a role in the consolidation of State Shinto in the Meiji era. It promoted a unified, scientifically grounded and politically powerful vision of Shinto against Buddhism, Christianity, and Japanese folk religions, many of which were named "superstitions."[6]

See also

• Koshinto
• Japanese nationalism
• Keichū
• Mitogaku
• Nihonjinron
• Rangaku

References

1. Earl, David Margarey, Emperor and Nation in Japan, Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period, University of Washington Press, 1964, pp. 66 ff.
2. Earl, David Margarey, Emperor and Nation in Japan, Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period, University of Washington Press, 1964, pp. 67
3. Jason Ānanda Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. pp 110–1
4. Fogel, Joshua A. (2004). The role of Japan in Liang Qichao's introduction of modern western civilization to China. Berkeley, Calif: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies. p. 182. ISBN 1-55729-080-6. From these citations, we can see that the term "national learning" (J. kokugaku; C. guoxue) originated in Japan.
5. Center, Susan Daruvala. Publ. by the Harvard University Asia (2000). Zhou Zuoren and an alternative Chinese response to modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts [u.a.]: Harvard Univ. Press. p. 66. ISBN 0674002385.
6. Josephson, 108–115.

Further reading

• Harry Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
• Mark McNally, Proving the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2005.
• Peter Nosco, Remembering Paradise. Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth Century Japan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1990.
• Michael Wachutka, Kokugaku in Meiji-period Japan: The Modern Transformation of 'National Learning' and the Formation of Scholarly Societies. Leiden, Boston: Global Oriental, 2013.

Notable Kokugaku scholars

• Hagiwara Hiromichi
• Hirata Atsutane
• Kada no Azumamaro
• Kamo no Mabuchi
• Katori Nahiko
• Motoori Norinaga
• Motoori Ōhira
• Motoori Haruniwa
• Nakane Kōtei
• Ueda Akinari
• Date Munehiro
• Fujitani Mitsue
• Tachibana Moribe

External links

• The Kokugaku (Native Studies) School.
• Kokugaku — Encyclopedia of Shinto.

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Otani Kozui
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/10/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Ōtani Kōzui
Born October 27, 1876
Kyoto
Died October 5, 1948 (aged 72)
Other names 大谷 光瑞
Occupation Buddhist, Historian
In this Japanese name, the family name is Ōtani.

Count Ōtani Kōzui (大谷 光瑞, Buddhist name: 鏡如 Kyōnyo) (27 December 1876 – 5 October 1948) was the 22nd Abbot of the Nishi Honganji sub-sect of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan. He is known for expeditions to Buddhist sites in Central Asia, such as Subashi.

Career

Between 1902 and 1910, he financed three expeditions to Central Asia although his participation was stopped for his succession. Ōtani was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and played host to several of his fellow Central Asian explorers, such as Sven Hedin and Albert von Le Coq. His collection, often called "Ōtani collection" is still considered important in Central Asian studies, although it is today scattered in Tokyo, Kyoto, China and Korea. In addition to his spiritual responsibilities and his Central Asian activities, Ōtani wrote about China, Manchuria and Chinese porcelain. While playing the Great Game, British and Russian intelligence both suspected that his archaeological expeditions were little more than covers for espionage activities. Japan says they were solely investigations of the route along which Buddhism came to Japan, and had no political connections.[1]

After his father Myonyo's death, he succeeded as Abbot of the Nishi Honganji in 1903. While he continued to sponsor the expeditions, he devoted himself to the modernization of the Jōdo Shinshū sect. His sponsorship, however, brought huge amounts of debt to his sect. A financial scandal forced him to abdicate in 1914. His nephew Shonyo became 23rd Abbot.

See also

• 1902 Ōtani expedition

References

Notes

1. Information stand in the Tokyo National Museum.

Sources

• Hopkirk, Peter (1980). Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-435-8.

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Part 1 of 2

Sven Hedin
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/10/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Sven Hedin circa 1910
Born Sven Anders Hedin
19 February 1865
Stockholm, Sweden
Died 26 November 1952 (aged 87)
Stockholm, Sweden
Language Swedish
Nationality Swedish
Notable awards Vega Medal (1898)
Livingstone Medal (1902)
Victoria Medal (1903)


Hedin lived with family members in the upper three stories of this house in Stockholm, Norr Mälarstrand 66, from 1935 until his death in 1952

Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO,[1] (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer, and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan.[2] The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.[3]

Overview

At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia in order to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies in order to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.

Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.

Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.

As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.[4]

Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:

• 1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
• 1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
• 1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
• from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
• 1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
• 1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
• 1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
• 1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
• 1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
• 1910 by Pope Pius X
• 1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
• 1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
• 1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
• 1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.

Hedin was and remained a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.

Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.

After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.

With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.

Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.

Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.


A view of the entire area of Central Asia opened up for cartography and research by Hedin in his expeditions. Below the Himalaya and Transhimalaya ranges, in the middle the Tibetan plateau, above which is the Pamir Mountain range with the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert alongside.

In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.

Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.

At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.

Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.

From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.

On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation[5] established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.

Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.

Biography

Childhood influences

Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.[6] When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.


Stockholm on 24 April 1880

He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:

On April 24, 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. “That is how I want to return home some day,” I thought to myself.

First trip to Iran (Persia)

In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.

On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.

On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.

In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.

Studies

From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.

Second trip to Iran

On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.

Doctorate and career path

On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject:

I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.

Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age:

I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.

Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.

First expedition

Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered 26,000 kilometres (16,000 mi) on this journey and mapped 10,498 kilometres (6,523 mi) of them on 552 sheets. Approximately 3,600 kilometres (2,200 mi) led through previously uncharted areas.

He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the 7,546 metres (24,757 ft) high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket in order to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.[7]

According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.[8]

In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.

Second expedition

Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899-1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu[9] rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the 340 by 310 metres (1,120 by 1,020 ft) former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.

During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.

This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.

Third expedition

Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.

He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.


The explorations of Hedin 1886-1935. The routes of his colleagues during the Sino-Swedish Expedition of 1927-1935 are not included.

Mongolia

In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.

Fourth expedition

Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.

Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.

Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927-1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.


Envelope of a letter from Hedin to his sister Alma with Chinese stamps issued on the occasion of the Sino-Swedish Expedition

The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.

From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.

One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the “wandering lake” Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.

His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.

Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions.[10] Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.[11]

For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.

At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, 23,000 kilometres (14,000 mi) by train and 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.

Political views

Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.

He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.

He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.[12]

Wolfgang Kapp (24 July 1858 – 12 June 1922) was a Prussian civil servant and journalist. He was a strict nationalist, and a failed leader of the so-called Kapp Putsch.

-- Wolfgang Kapp, by Wikipedia

[admin]

Part 2 of 2

Hedin and Nazi Germany

Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.

Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.[13]

The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer."[14] They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin (German: Deutsch-Schwedischen Vereinigung Berlin e.V.) In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (German: Ehrenplakette der Stadt Berlin). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request[15] in order to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University.[16] On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.).[17] On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.

Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.

Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society,[18] "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".[19]

Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Jewish Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.[20]

Criticism of National Socialism

Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:

Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.[21]

In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:

When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.

My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.

So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.[22]

Hedin later published this book in Sweden.[23]

Efforts on behalf of deported Jews

After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 in order to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.

On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as “A-prominent” and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.

For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation):

My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….

Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation):

…It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….[24]

The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.

Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians

Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.

Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists

After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.

Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on August 2, 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon[clarification needed] on December 4, 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on July 13, 1953.[25]

Awards

Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility.[26] Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.

In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.

He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.

He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).

Numerous countries presented him with medals.[27] In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO).[1] In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.[1]

In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini; the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a “mammal-like reptile”) Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, “Hedinsgatan” at Tessinparken in Stockholm).

A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.

In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:

“ Asia’s unknown expanses were his world—Sweden remained his home. ”

The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.[28]

Research on Hedin

Source material

A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.

The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).


Memorial plaque with epitaph for Hedin by Liss Eriksson (1959) in the Adolf Fredrik church, Stockholm

• Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
• There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
• To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
• The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
• Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography[29] in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
• The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
• The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.

Hedin’s documentation

During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was likely the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.

He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.

Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.

This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.


Hedin's Gravestone in the cemetery of Adolf Fredriks church in Stockholm, Sweden

Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.

D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer:

He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.

Current Hedin research

A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).

Literature

Primary

Scientific documentation

• Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
• Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
• Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
• Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917-1922.
• Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
• Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
• Sven Anders Hedin, Folke Bergman (1944). History of the expedition in Asia, 1927-1935, Part 3. Stockholm: Göteborg, Elanders boktryckeri aktiebolag. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
• Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
• THROUGH ASIA
• Through Asia, Volume 1

German editions

a) Biography
• Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
• Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
• Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
• Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
• Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909-1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
• Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
• Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911-1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
• Bagdad - Babylon - Ninive, Leipzig 1918
• Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
• General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
• Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
• An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
• Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
• Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
• Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
• Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
• Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927- 1928, Leipzig 1929.
• Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928-1930, Leipzig 1931.
• Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
• Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
• Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
• Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
• "Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937

c) Political works

• Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
• Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
• Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
• Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
• Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942

d) Autobiographical works

• Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
• Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
• Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
• Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
• Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
• Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.

e) Fiction

• Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921-1923.

Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:

• Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.

Bibliography

• Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
• Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 - eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.

Biographies

• Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991. ISBN 3-499-50355-7
• Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
• Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
• Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978. ISBN 3-7653-0302-X
• Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).

Hedin and National Socialism

• Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
• Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.

References

1. Wennerholm, Eric (1978) Sven Hedin - En biografi, Bonniers, Stockholm ISBN 978-9-10043-621-6
2. Hedin, Anders Sven (1911) Från pol till pol: genom Asien och Europa, Bonnier, Stockholm OCLC 601660137
3. Sven Anders Hedin; Nils Peter Ambolt (1966) Central Asia Atlas, Statens etnografiska museum, Stockholm OCLC 240272
4. David Nalle (June 2000). "Book Review - Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia". Middle East Policy. Washington, USA: Blackwell Publishers. VII (3). ISSN 1061-1924. Archived from the original on 29 November 2008.
5. "The Sven Hedin Foundation". Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Retrieved 8 June 2009.
6. Liukkonen, Petri. "Sven Hedin". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 29 July 2014.
7. Bruno Baumann: Karawane ohne Wiederkehr. Das Drama in der Wüste Takla Makan. München 2000, pp. 113–121, 203, 303–307
8. Bernd Liebner: Söhne der Wüste - Durch Gobi und Taklamakan, Documentary film
9. Referred also as Konqi-, Kongque, Kontsche- or Konche-darja or Peacock River— see also note in Korla and Kaidu River
10. Sven Anders Hedin (1936). The flight of "Big Horse": the trail of war in Central Asia. E. P. Dutton and co., inc. p. 84. Retrieved 18 January 2012. amusing to listen to his outspoken but untruthful conversation... he said ...The whole country in that quarter, Tian-shan-nan-lu, acknowledged the rule of General Ma Chung-yin. General Ma Yung-chu had ten thousand cavalry under his orders, and the total strength of the Tungan cavalry was twice that number
11. Sven Anders Hedin (1940). The wandering lake. Routledge. p. 24. Retrieved 18 January 2012. their object had been to cut us off. A month had not passed since our motor convoy had been cut off by Tungan cavalry, who had fired on it with their carbines. Were we now to be stopped and fired at on the river too? They might be marauders from Big Horse's broken army, out looting, and
12. http://orient4.orient.su.se/personal/to ... kare_2.pdf[permanent dead link]
13. Verified sources: Sven Hedins in the Stockholm Riksarkivet archived correspondence with Hans Draeger, Wilhelm Frick, Joseph Goebbels, Paul Grassmann and Heinrich Himmler
14. Lubrich, Oliver, ed. (2012). "Sven Hedin". Travels in the Reich, 1933-1945: Foreign Authors Report from Germany (paperback). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-0226006451.
15. See letter from Hans Draeger dated 17 January 1942 to Sven Hedin from the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, file: Sven Hedins Arkiv, Korrespondens, Tyskland, 457 and the book by Michael H. Kater: Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS 1935-1945. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-486-56529-X
16. Elisabeth Kraus: Die Universität München im dritten Reich: Aufsätze. Herbert Utz Verlag GmbH, München 2006. pp. 494–502
17. See file R 135 of the Bundesarchivs, located in the Dienststelle Berlin-Lichterfelde
18. Oscar Luis Rigiroli (1017). Historias Secretas de Amor y Sangre (in Spanish). Oscar Luis Rigiroli. Archived from the original on 10 November 2018. Retrieved 10 November 2018 – via PublishDrive.. The present source is an historical-based fictional-novelist book, but he is the publisher of the '"Daurio 2018"'s reference, with a coherent content.
19. Cêdric Daurio (2018). The mystic warrior. Oscar Luis Rigiroli. Archived from the original on 10 November 2018. Retrieved 10 November 2018 – via PublishDrive.
20. Giorgio Galli. Hitler and the magic Nazism (Hitler e il Nazismo magico).
21. In: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise, p. 367
22. As yet unpublished letters from the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, file of Heinrich Himmler: Sven Hedins Arkiv, Korrespondens, Tyskland, 470. The orthography and punctuation were updated
23. On this matter there is a thorough investigation contained in the essay Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik by Astrid Mehmel loc.cit.
24. As yet unpublished letters from the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, file: Sven Hedins Arkiv, Korrespondens, Tyskland, 487
25. cf. Sven Hedin's German Diary 1935–1942, Dublin 1951, S. 204–217 und Eric Wennerholm, Sven Hedin 1865–1952, S. 229–230
26. "The Swedish Way". Swedish Heraldry Society. 23 March 2007. Archived from the original on 7 November 2009. Retrieved 31 March 2009.
27. cf. Christian Thorén: Upptäcktsresanden Sven Hedins ordenstecken i Kungliga Livrustkammarens samlingar. In: Livrust Kammaren. Journal of the Royal Armoury 1997-98. Stockholm. pp. 91-128. ISSN 0024-5372. (Swedish text with English picture captions and English summary, color illustrations of Sven Hedin’s medals and decorations, literature)
28. Sven Hedin Firn, Army Map Service, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Greenland 1:250,000
29. Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography

Further reading

• Meyer, Karl E.; Brysac, Shareen Blair (25 October 1999). Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-58243-106-2.
• Sven Anders Hedin, Folke Bergman (1944). History of the expedition in Asia, 1927-1935, Part 3. Stockholm: SLANDERS BOKTRYCKERI AKTIEBOL AG G6TEBORG. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
• Hedin, Sven; foreword by John Hare (2009). The Silk Road: Ten Thousand Miles through Central Asia. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-84511-898-3.
• Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ISBN 9789186621957) (Swedish)

External links

• Works by Sven Hedin at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Sven Hedin at Internet Archive
• Scanned works
• Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
• International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
• "Hedin, Sven Anders" . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
• British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
• Newspaper clippings about Sven Hedin in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

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Wolfgang Kapp
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/10/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Wolfgang Kapp
Born July 24, 1858
New York City, New York, United States
Died June 12, 1922 (aged 63)
Leipzig, Germany
Nationality Germany
Occupation Civil servant, politician
Height 171 cm (5 ft 7 in)
Spouse(s) Margarete Rosenow
Children 3
Signature
Wolfgang Kapp signature.svg

Wolfgang Kapp (24 July 1858 – 12 June 1922) was a Prussian civil servant and journalist. He was a strict nationalist, and a failed leader of the so-called Kapp Putsch.

Early life

Kapp was born in New York City where his father Friedrich Kapp, a political activist and later Reichstag delegate for the National Liberal Party, had settled after the failed European revolutions of 1848. In 1870 the family returned to Germany and Kapp's schooling continued in Berlin at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium (High School). Wolfgang Kapp married Margarete Rosenow in 1884; the couple would have three children. Through his wife's family, Kapp acquired a family connection with politically conservative elements. In 1886, he graduated at the conclusion of his law studies at the University of Tübingen and was appointed to a position in the Finance Ministry the same year.

Political activist

After an ordinary official career, Kapp became the founder of the Agricultural Credit Institute in East Prussia which achieved great success in promoting the prosperity of landowners and farmers in that province. He was consequently in close touch with the Junkers of East Prussia, and during the First World War made himself their mouthpiece in an attack on Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Kapp's pamphlet, entitled Die Nationalen Kreise und der Reichskanzler and published in the early summer of 1916, criticized German foreign and domestic policy under Hollweg. This pamphlet appeared about the same time as the attacks of "Junius Alter" and evoked an indignant reply from Hollweg in the Reichstag, in which he spoke of "loathsome abuse and slanders."[1]

In 1917, along with Alfred von Tirpitz, Kapp founded the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (Fatherland Party), of which he would briefly become chairman. He was one of a number of prominent figures of the right, including General Ludendorff and Waldemar Pabst, who set up in August 1919 the Nationale Vereinigung (de) (National Union), a right-wing think-tank which campaigned for a counter-revolution to install a form of conservative militaristic government. The Nationale Vereinigung did not, however, press for the restoration of the monarchy, the Kaiser having bowed to Army pressure and left for his exile in the Netherlands in November 1918. 1919, which saw the consolidation in Germany of the Weimar Republic, found Kapp a member of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People's Party).

Germany's defeat in the First World War was seen by nationalists such as Kapp as a humiliation and a betrayal. He became an exponent of the Dolchstoß legend and a vehement critic of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919 he was elected to the Reichstag as a monarchist.

Putsch

Main article: Kapp Putsch

"We will not govern according to any theory", Wolfgang Kapp, 13 March 1920[2]

In March 1920 Hermann Ehrhardt, the leader of the Freikorps known as the Ehrhardt Brigade, was authorized by General Walther von Lüttwitz (Commander of Reichswehr Command Group I) to proceed and use the Marine Brigade to take Berlin from the Weimar Government. The Weimar government fled to Dresden and then on to Stuttgart in order to avoid arrest by rebel Reichswehr troops.

Though proclaiming a new government and state administration, Kapp along with Lüttwitz failed to calculate the lack of support for such a coup. The majority of the old establishment, civil service, labour unions and general population did not side with the putschists and as a result the newly proclaimed state lasted for a mere two days before a General Strike was called by the SPD. The Reichswehr, under the command of Hans von Seeckt, failed to uphold their constitutional commitment by defending the Republican government against the rebellious Freikorps units. The Weimar regime was saved by the public by means of the strike, but the Putsch did not succeed for other reasons. These include the lack of outward and active support from the military elite, judiciary and civil service who were reluctant to commit to the Putsch from its beginning.

Hitler and Eckart's first joint political endeavor was a comic attempt to coordinate with the Kapp Putsch's incompetent instigators in March, 1920. General Walther von Luttwitz's Freikorps troops marched on Berlin and installed a minor official named Wolfgang Kapp as Chancellor. Eckart knew Kapp, who not only subscribed to Auf Gut Deutsch, but donated 1,000 marks to help it thrive. Some time during January, 1920 Kapp visited Eckart in Munich to seek his advice for the planned coup. In late February, Eckart traveled to Berlin for another meeting with his friend, counseling him to adopt stern measures against the Jews, who would surely rouse credulous proles to oppose a nationalist revolution. After the Putsch Kapp enforced only small sanctions, such as the impoundment of matzo flour -- which Eckart derided as not merely ineffective, but ludicrous.

Threats from Britain and France to bring criminal charges against the former Kaiser and 900 senior military officers provoked outrage toward the hated Weimar Republic, which most Germans viewed as the creature of Entente powers. In January, 1920 the leaders of Berlin's officer corps proposed to toss out President Friedrich Ebert's regime and install Kapp as chancellor. With the collusion of General Walther von Luttwitz, General Erich Ludendorff, and Colonel Max Bauer, Kapp occupied government offices on March 12 and proclaimed himself chancellor. Ebert absconded to Dresden. But things went down hill from there. No prominent men would accept cabinet appointments from Kapp. Berlin's civil servants staged a sick-out. The German Reichsbank refused to approve Kapp's signature on government checks, thus freezing the nation's assets. On March 17th Kapp tendered his resignation and fled to Sweden.

The new "chancellor" proposed to abolish the Weimar Republic and arrest all Jews suspected of stabbing Germany in the back during World War I. On Captain Mayr's recommendation Augsburg businessman Dr. Gottfried Grandel agreed to pay for Hitler and Eckart's expenses for a trip to Berlin. On March 17, 1920 the two emissaries took off in a three-seat sport plane piloted by air ace Robert Ritter von Greim, on a mission to enlist Kapp's aid in overthrowing Bavaria's Provisional Government. Red-faced Eckart, with double chin quivering under a tight leather cap, watched Hitler vomit over the side with goggles askew. Once on the ground Eckart posed as a paper merchant. The woozy Hitler clapped on a fake beard and pretended to be his assistant.

Upon reaching Kapp's headquarters in Hotel Adlon they encountered Hungarian Jewish conman Ignaz Thimotheus Trebitsch-Lincoln -- an amazing character who combined spying with the careers of an Anglican minister, British M.P., published author, and Chinese religious leader. He informed them that "Chancellor" Kapp had skipped town to avoid arrest. Eckart turned to Hitler and snapped: "Come, Adolf, we have no further business here." [6] Hitler subsequently remarked:

"When I saw and spoke to the press chief of Kapp's government I knew this could be no national revolution ... for he was a Jew." [7]

Six months later Trebitsch-Lincoln sold his account of the Kapp Putsch to the French Foreign office for 50,000 Czech crowns.

Refusing von Greim's offer of a return flight, Eckart and Hitler took the next train back to Munich. They learned from the Kapp Putsch's collapse that a rightist insurrection stood little chance of victory. This reinforced their strategy of courting blue collar workers and small business proprietors.

The Kapp Putsch gave Hitler an object lesson on how not to stage a coup against the Weimar Republic. A spur-of-the-moment military action without sufficient political organization would never succeed. The German Workers Party needed a coordinated action with military and civilian cooperation. Of course, Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer, and other timid Skat club members feared such risky designs.

-- Hitler's Mentor: Dietrich Eckart, His Life, Times, & Milieu, by Joseph Howard Tyson

When the coup d'état failed Kapp fled to Sweden.

That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.[12]

-- Sven Hedin, by Wikipedia

After two years in exile, he returned to Germany in April 1922 to justify himself in a trial at the Reichsgericht. He died in custody in Leipzig shortly afterwards of cancer.[3]

References

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "Kapp, Wolfgang" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). London & New York.
2. Kapp's proclamation as quoted in Waite R.,(1952) Vanguard of Nazism, Norton library, New York
3. Biography at the German Historical Museum (in German)

Authority control

• BNF: cb12237164m (data)
• GND: 118891502
• ISNI: 0000 0000 2314 5393
• LCCN: n82069829
• NTA: 073354198
• SUDOC: 03108656X
• VIAF: 47559868
• WorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 47559868

External links

• Newspaper clippings about Wolfgang Kapp in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

[admin]

German Fatherland Party
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/10/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

German Fatherland Party
Deutsche Vaterlandspartei
Chairman: Alfred von Tirpitz
Deputy Chairman: Wolfgang Kapp
Founders
o Heinrich Class
o Walter Nicolai
o Alfred Hugenberg
o Anton Drexler
[o Wolfgang Kapp] [In 1917, along with Alfred von Tirpitz, Kapp founded the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (Fatherland Party), of which he would briefly become chairman. -- Wolfgang Kapp, by Wikipedia]
Founded: 2 September 1917
Dissolved: 10 December 1918
Succeeded by None (de jure)
DNVP logo (basic) DNVP and NSDAP-Logo NSDAP (de facto)
Headquarters: Großes Hauptquartier (GrHQu), Kurhausstraße 28, Bad Kreuznach
(2 January 1917 – 8 March 1918) Rue de la Sauvenière n°8, Spa
(8 March – 11 November 1918) Schloss Wilhelmshöhe 3, Kassel
(11 November 1918 – 11 February 1919)
Newspaper: Supported by Alfred Hugenberg's media group
Policy institute: Pan-German League
Supported by: Oberste Heeresleitung
Membership (1918) 1,250,000
Ideology: Pan-Germanism; Lebensraum; German nationalism; Volksgemeinschaft; Monarchism; Militarism; National conservatism; Social conservatism; Antisemitism
Political position: Right-wing to far-right
Colors: Black, white, and red (German Imperial colours)

The German Fatherland Party (German: Deutsche Vaterlandspartei) was a short-lived far-right party in the German Empire, active during the last phase of World War I.

Political positions and influence

The party represented conservative, nationalist, antisemitic and völkisch political circles, united in their opposition against the Reichstag Peace Resolution of July 1917. It played a vital role in the emergence of the stab-in-the-back myth and the defamation of certain politicians as the November Criminals.

Foundation, leadership and funding

Backed by the Pan-German League, the party was founded in September 1917, helped by Heinrich Claß, a founder member.

The party's leaders were Wolfgang Kapp (of the Kapp Putsch fame) and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (a naval minister and post-war party leader). Walter Nicolai, head of the military secret service, was also supportive.[1] Media baron Alfred Hugenberg was also a prominent member.

The party's political influence peaked in summer 1918 when it had around 1,250,000 members. Its main source of funding was the Third Supreme Command. The party was officially dissolved in the German Revolution on 10 December 1918. Most of its members later joined the German National People's Party (DNVP), the major right-wing party of the Weimar Republic.

Subsequent influence

One member, Anton Drexler, went on to form a similar organization, the German Workers' Party, which later became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) that came to national power in January 1933 under Adolf Hitler.

Notes

1. Höhne and Zolling, p 290.

Bibliography

• Höhne, Heinz, and Zolling, Hermann (1972). The General Was a Spy. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc, New York. Published in Germany as Pullach Intern (1971). Hoffman and Campe Verlag: Hamburg.
• Historisches Lexikon Bayerns: Deutsche Vaterlandspartei, 1917/18 (Sarah Hadry).

External links

• Short overview