No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2025
This article discusses the activities of the Sino-Japanese Society of the Study of Esoteric Buddhism, which was active in North China from the early 1930s until the end of the Second World War. The organization was founded by Yoshii Hōjun, a young priest of the Japanese Shingon sect. It attracted the support of a wide range of actors, including a range of former Beiyang government politicians, Japanese diplomats, as well as prominent members of the Japanese community in North China. It had contacts in the Japanese military that have garnered the Society the reputation of having been a front for Japanese intelligence operations. This article critically investigates these claims and seeks to understand the relationship between religion and politics manifested in the Study Society for Esoteric Buddhism. Its history reflects the fraught relations between the two nations as well as between the various interest groups on both sides and thus provides a window into the complexities of pre-war North China in the 1930s.
1 Hereafter Study Society or Society.
2 ‘Seidai ni okonawareta Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai hakkaishiki’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 647, January 1933, p. 15.
3 Kiyomizu Dōjin, ‘Bukkyō doraigo no ichidai shijitsu Nisshijin kangeki kanki su’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1506, February 1932, pp. 6–7.
4 There is a lively debate around the definition of the concept of ‘esoteric Buddhism’ and the specific practices and beliefs surrounding it. For those interested, see Orzech, Charles D., Sørensen, Henrik S. and Payne, Richard K. (eds), Esoteric Buddhism and the tantras in East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar which provides a plethora of information on the subject.
5 While there are no exact numbers of the membership of the Study Society, a Japanese Foreign Ministry document states that in 1936, the Kongō Temple in Tianjin, of which Yoshii was the abbot, had 150 Chinese parishioner households and 60 Japanese parishioner households. See Japan Center for Asian Historical Resources (JACAR), file Ref. B (Foreign Ministry) 04012512200, ‘Manshū oyobi Chūgoku ni okeru jinja kyōkai byōu sono ta fukyō kankei ikken’, 3 September 1936. During the war, the Beijing branch of the Society was said to have had 200 Japanese as well as 87 Chinese members. Further, the Society’s youth division had 200 Chinese members. See kahoku renrakusho, Kōain, ‘Pekin shinai bukkyō oyobi dōkyō dantai chōsa (ge)’, Chōsa geppō, vol. 1, no. 9, 1940, p. .Google Scholar
6 Two publications that discuss the Society are: Kōmoto Yasuko, ‘Shōwaki no shingonshū to ‘ramakyō’—Tanaka Seijun wo chūshin ni’, Gunma daigaku kokusai kyōiku, kenkyū sentā ronshū, no. 11, 2012; and Hironaka Issei, ‘Chūnichi sensō shoki kahoku ni okeru bukkyō dōgankai no seiritsu to taiichi kyōryoku’, Tōyōshi kenkyū, vol. 77, no. 2, 2018. However, both publications are limited to a very cursory discussion of the organization and do not provide much in terms of deeper analysis.
7 See Tenshin chiiki kenkyūkai (ed.), Tenshinshi (Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1999), p. 122; and Kyōtoku, Nakano, Tennōsei kokka to shokuminchi dendō (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1976), p. .Google Scholar
8 See the description of the journal Chūnichi mikkyō published by the Study Society in the first volume of the Minguo fojiao qikan wenxian jicheng (Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan, 2006), p. 15.
9 I have been able to trace the source of this information back to a digest version of articles of the history journal Minguo chunqiu (Minguo yaowen tanmi, 1996, p. 20), which seems to have later provided the basis for an article on a website of the Tianjin city government on the activities of Japanese military intelligence in the area. See for instance, http://hhjyy.tjl.tj.cn/shwh/tjkzjs/918sb/tjdrbtwjg.htm, [accessed 19 July 2024].
10 Of the eight members of the leadership council of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China founded in December 1937, three to four were members of the Study Society.
11 Toyama Misao (ed.), Rikukaigun shōkan jinji sōran (Tokyo: Fuyō shobō shuppan, 1993), p. 314. In 1931 and 1932, when the inaugural ceremonies were held in Japan and Tianjin, Ishii was attached to the headquarters of the Fourth Division stationed in Osaka. See JACAR, file Ref. C (Army Ministry) 13070914300, in the archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies.
12 Seijun, Tanaka, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen (Shizuoka: Chikeidō insatsusho, 1933), pp. 61–62.Google Scholar
13 ‘Shizuoka Yoshii Hōjun daisōjō’, Rokudai shinpō, 25 January 1993, p. 13.
14 Tanaka Seijun, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen, p. 15.
15 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Omoide’, in Chibetto no bukkyō bunka (Kyoto: Benridō, 1984), p. 86.
16 This was stressed by Yoshii’s daughter in an interview I conducted on 5 August 2015. She suggested that China had almost sacred significance for her father as the place where the Japanese monk Kūkai had been initiated into esoteric Buddhism in the ninth century. The unusual nature of Yoshii’s wish to study in China is further illustrated by a 1934 source that mentions that he was the only member of the Kogi Shingon sect studying in China. Sugano Keizen, ‘Tenshin shisatsu’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 685, February 1934, pp. 8–9.
17 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Daiichi inshō’, Michi no tomo, no. 20, June 1926, p. 70.
18 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Pekin tayori’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 477, April 1928, p. 11.
19 Ibid., p. 12.
20 Tanaka Seijun, ‘Shizuoka yori Pekin yori’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1203, February 1927, pp. 13–14.
21 Tanaka Seijun, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen, p. 1.
22 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Toganoo hakushi to derugeban zōkyō’, Rokudai shinpō, 11 August 1953, p. 5.
23 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Toganoo hakushi to derugeban zōkyō’, Rokudai shinpō, 21 August 1953, p. 2.
24 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Fakanci’, Mandara, no. 1, 1930, p. 1. Concerning the notion of the disappearance of esoteric Buddhism and the need for its revival, also see Schicketanz, Erik, ‘Wang Hongyuan and the import of Japanese esoteric Buddhism to China in the Republican period’, in Buddhism across Asia: Networks of material, intellectual and cultural exchange, (ed.) Sen, Tansen (Singapore: Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, 2014), vol. 1, pp. 403–427.Google Scholar
25 ‘Kenkyūkai shōiki’, in Byakutō [a supplement to Mandara], Mandara, vol. 1, no. 2, 1930, p. 17.
26 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Omoide’, p. 102.
27 Hikita Tetsuichirō, ‘Kichō na kenkyū ni Nisshi no teikei Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai naru’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1483, August 1932, p. 14.
28 Hideo, Kiyama, Shū Sakujin ‘tainichi kyōryoku’ no tenmatsu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2004), p. .Google Scholar
29 Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai setsuritsu shui narabi setsumeisho, June 1931, pp. 1–2. Included in JACAR, file Ref. B 05016188300, ‘Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai ni kansuru ken ji Shōwa hachinen ichigatsu’.
30 ‘Fakanci’, Mandara, p. 1. Yoshii mentions the efforts made by Hashikawa Tokio and the Tōhō bunka jigyō sōiinkai, with which he seems to have had contact during his time in Beijing. This connection may account for the Pan-Asian intellectual influence in his work.
31 Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai setsuritsu shui narabi setsumeisho, pp. 8–9.
32 Ibid., pp. 10–11.
33 I infer this from the newspaper article by Hikita Tetsuichirō referenced in footnote 27, in which the quote attributed to Nozaki corresponds verbatim to passages in the charter. Of course, it could also be that Nozaki was merely quoting from the charter, but the link between the local Japanese community and the text seems quite strong to me.
34 Kobayashi Motohiro, ‘Tenshin jiken saikō—Tenshin sōrōyjikan, Shina chūtongun, Nihonjin kyoryūmin’, Nihon shokuminchi kenkyū, no. 8, 1996, p. 2.
35 See Brooks, Barbara, Japan’s imperial diplomacy (Honolulu: Hawai‘i University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
36 See, for instance, Kuwashima’s correspondence to the Foreign Ministry included in the David Nelson Sutton Papers that were part of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. These can be accessed in digital form at the website of the University of Virginia Law School. http://imtfe.law.virginia.edu/contributors-308, [accessed 22 July 2024].
37 Tanaka Seijun, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen, pp. 62–63.
38 See, for example, his dispatches from 22 October 1931, JACAR, file Ref. B 02030331500, ‘Tenshin/5 Shōwa rokunen jūgatsu hatsuka kara Shōwa rokunen jūgatsu sanjūichinichi’); and from 12 February 1932, JACAR, file Ref. B 02030331700, ‘Tenshin/7 Shōwa nananen shichigatsu jūkunichi kara Shōwa nananen nigatsu nijūsannichi’, in which he blames the Tianjin incidents for reducing economic activities and boycotts of Japanese products.
39 Tanaka Seijun, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen, pp. 62–63
40 ‘Nanbei Perū kōshi Yano Makoto shi Shizuoka Kiyomizudera ni sankei’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 665, July 1933, p. 16. ‘Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai Shizuoka shibu de Chibetto rama hōō tsuitōe’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1753, January 1938, p. 19.
41 Brooks, Japan’s imperial diplomacy, p. 74.
42 Tanaka Seijun, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen, pp. 22–23.
43 Ibid., p. 18.
44 Duan Qirui was requested by Chiang Kai-shek to leave the north and move to Shanghai, most likely in an effort to prevent him from moving closer to the Japanese. See, for instance, ‘Dan Kizui no nanka to Hokushi no keisei’, Kokusai hyōron, vol. 2, no. 3, March 1933.
45 Article 9 of the membership statutes (Zhongri mijiao yanjiuhui zhangcheng), JACAR, file Ref. B 05016021300, ‘Nisshi rengō kaiga tenrankai kaisai ni kansuru ken’.
46 See JACAR, file Ref. B 04012512200, ‘Manshkoku oyobi Chūgoku ni okeru jinja, kyōkai, byōu, sono ta fukyō kankei ikken’, vol. 3.
47 ‘Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai hōkoku’, Chūnichi mikkyō, vol. 1, no. 2, December 1934, p. 26.
48 An article from June 1936 states that to date the Study Society had sent 10 Chinese students to Japan. ‘Shina mikkyō ryūgakusei no tame ni “Chūmitsu” ga kishukusha wo kensetsu’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1623, June 1936, p. 15.
49 An application for funding assistance from the Foreign Ministry for the Study Society’s publication activities states that the magazine had a circulation of 2,000 copies per issue. See JACAR, file Ref. B 05015861500, ‘Chūnichi mikkyō kankō hojo shinsei Takaoka Ryūshin’. The latest issues I have been able to find date to March 1936 by which time the magazine had been reduced to a four-page pamphlet.
50 Nakano Gishō, Aiku hōō no seigyō (Tokyo: Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai shuppanbu, 1934).
51 Tōa mikkyō kyōkai shuisho (n.d.) included in JACAR, file Ref. B 05015869700, ‘Tōa mikkyō kyōkai josei shinsei’ from July 1938, p. 5.
52 ‘Riben dongya juzhang Sangdao Zhuji shi can Jinggang Qingshuisi’, Chūnichi mikkyō, no. 1, 1934, p. 22.
53 See, for instance, Liu Jie, ‘Zhongri zhanzheng qian de guanxi gaishan yu Zhonguotong waijiaoguan’, in Jindai Zhongri guanxishi xinlun, (eds) Huang Zijin and Pan Guangzhe (Xinbei: Daoxiang chubanshe, 2017).
54 ‘Ryū Hōyoku Shizuoka Kiyomizudera ni sankei’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 735, June 1935, p. 25.
55 ‘Shanhai Shina jitsugyōka jūnanamei Shizuoka Kiyomizudera Nikka shinzenden ni sanpai’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1705, January 1937, p. 20.
56 ‘Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai Hokuhei shibu hakkai seikai wo kiwamu’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 769, May 1936, p. 15.
57 It is not exactly clear when this move occurred. An article by Yoshii from 1938 mentions that the move was facilitated by Beijing mayor Qin Dechun, which would place it in the period preceding the outbreak of war in July 1937. Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Fūshinbyō made no jūnen’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1752, January 1938, p. 63. An article from October 1937 states that it was Jiang Chaozong who granted right of use of the facility to the Study Society after he became mayor of the city following the outbreak of war. ‘Shifu zuoling Zhongri mijiaohui zhunjie fengshenmiao wei huizhi’, Shijie ribao, 10 October 1937, p. 4.
58 Tanaka Seijun, I shūkyō Nisshi shinzen, p. 81.
59 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Fūshinbyō made no jūnen’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1752, January 1938, p. 63.
60 See his marching orders from 28 March 1933 included in JACAR, file Ref. C 01004134600, ‘Shina chūtongun shireikan junrei no ken’, in the archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies.
61 Matsumuro Takayoshi, ‘Mōkokoku kensetsu ni kansuru iken’, in Mōko ni kansuru shoruitei, 1934, Rikugun file, box 56, Sensō shidō, in the archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies.
62 Kōji, Ōzawa, Senjika no Nihon bukkyō to nanpō chiiki (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 2015), pp. 288–289.Google Scholar
63 This photo is reproduced in Fujii Shōjun (ed.), Hanzen rama hōō tsuitō yokō (Shizuoka: Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai Shizuoka shibu, 1938).
64 Honjō Shigeru, Honjō nikki (Tokyo: Hara shobō, 1966), pp. 37, 38, 43, 128.
65 An article in the Shingon journal Rokudai shinpō suggests that Honjō visited Rūychi Mitsuō at Kōyasan and was tasked by the former to strive for peace between China and Japan. Shiode Hideo, ‘Rūychi Mitsuō dai ōjō to Manshū jihen (Jō)’, Rokudai jihō, no. 3796, 5 November 1996, p. 2. Unfortunately, Honjō’s diary does not record such a visit, so it is impossible at this time to verify this visit.
66 See, for example, Yang Tien-kun, ‘Kindai Chūgoku ni okeru Nihonjin gunji komon kyōkan narabi ni tokumu kikan no kenkyū (1898–1945)’, PhD thesis, University of Tokyo, 2008, p. 158.
67 Among the Society’s prominent members, Zhang Shanzi eventually joined the Nationalist government in Chongqing and later moved to Kunming, where he dedicated himself to producing works that would foster patriotism and a spirit of resistance.
68 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Fūshinbyō made no jūnen’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1752, January 1938, p. 63.
69 Sōtōkutsu ‘Jiji gūgen’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 850, August 1938, p. 13.
70 Kōa shūkyō kyōkai (ed.), Kahoku shūkyō nenkan (Beijing: Kōa shūkyō kyōkai, 1941), p. 475.
71 ‘Kaikyō kyōmu hankōsho Kōyasan Pekin betsuin ha pekin hōkokuji ni oku’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 838, April 1938, p. 16.
72 ‘Shinyō shitsuda no Chūnichi Hokushi kaikyō no jūdai bunki ka Pekin Nisshi yōjin wo toburau ni kaikyō sōchō no kansō’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 847, July 1938, p. 14.
73 Sōtōkutsu, ‘Jiji gūgen’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 850, August 1938, p. 13.
74 ‘Pekin no Yoshii Hōjun shi tōzan’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 897, December 1939, p. 29.
75 ‘Shūkai dai sannichi Hokushi kaikyō mondai ni shitsumon shūchū—tsui ni mata himitsukai wo hiraku’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 867, February 1939, p. 18.
76 Jūgunsō Arii Shōzui, ‘Hokushi kaikyō jōkyō shisatsukan’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 870, March 1939, p. 6.
77 ‘Dai jūyonkai shūkai gijiroku’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 868, February 1939, p. 14.
78 ‘Pekin fūshinbyō no kari honden senzasai—Nisshi kanmin sanbyaku yomei sanretsu’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1827, July 1939, p. 19.
79 ‘Nisshi no yōjin wo atsumete Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai no daisankai Pekin, Tōkōrō nite’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1744, October 1937, p. 26.
80 ‘Chūnichi mikkyōkai ga daidō he shinshutsu Chūnichi mikkyō kenkyūkai deha chikaku, hokushi no yōshō daidō he shinshutsu suru koto ni natta’, Kōyasan jihō, no. 882, July 1939, p. 20. Yagi Yūma (n.d.), a Japanese member of the Study Society and an officer in the Japanese Army, was involved in setting up this new branch.
81 Xinminhui zhidaobu (ed.), Xinminhui nianbao (n.p.: Xinminhui zhidaobu, 1938), p. 448.
82 ‘Kōbō daishi to Chūgoku Tenshin, shinminkai kaki kōshūkai Tenshin toshokan kanchō Nakano Gishō no Tokubetsu kōen’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1781, July 1938, p. 15.
83 Hong Yanqiu, ‘Wo he guoyu ribai’, in Jiaoyu laobing tan jiaoyu (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1968), p. 232.
84 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Taigen sūzenji hakken no sasekihan zōkyō nit suite’, Mikkyō kenkyū, no. 18, 1941, pp. 81–82.
85 ‘Shiritsu hoppō chūgaku sotsugyōshiki’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 1782, August 1939, p. 15.
86 ‘Pekin shinai bukkyō oyobi dōkyō dantai chōsa (ge)’, Chōsa geppō, vol. 1, no. 9, September 1940, p. 366.
87 Juichi, Tsushima, Hōtō zuisō (Tokyo: Hōtō kankōkai, 1961), vol. 8, pp. 115–116.Google Scholar
88 ‘Shizuoka Kiyomizudera kigū no Rin Tōji takai’, Kōyasan jihō, 1 March 1972, p. 15.
89 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Are kore shū (Jō)’, Rokudai shinpō, 14 April 1951, p. 4.
90 Ibid., p. 4.
91 Yoshii Hōjun, ‘Heiwa nante?’, Rokudai shinpō, 27 April 1950, p. 3.
92 ‘Yoshii Hōjun shi ga kuyōtō wo konryū ikoku ni nemuru bunkotsu wo Kōyasan oku no in he osamu’, Rokudai shinpō, no. 3505, July 1987.
93 ‘Shizuoka Yoshii Hōjun daisōjō’, Rokudai shinpō, 25 January 1993, p. 13.
94 In his recollections, the scholar Wang Zhongmin states that during the 1930s, the Japanese imperialists ‘incessantly dispatched so-called China-hands’ and called the Japanese scholar-journalist and long-term Beijing resident Hashikawa Tokio (1894–1982) ‘head of the Beijing special service’ (Ch. Beijing de Riben tewu touzi). There is no evidence to suggest that Hashikawa was indeed a member of the Japanese military intelligence. See also Lin Zhihong’s discussion of Hashikawa in Lin Zhihong, ‘“Taishi bunka jigyō” ni okeru jinbutsu to gakujutsu chōsa’, Higashi Ajia kindaishi, no. 15, 2012.
95 Matsushita Takahiro, ‘Nihonjin sōryo no Chūgoku fukyō kōsakushi’, Shinpyō, vol. 19, no. 9, September 1972, p. 245.
96 The Study Society was hardly an exceptional case. See, for instance, Anderson, Emily, Christianity and imperialism in modern Japan: Empire for god (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)Google Scholar for a discussion of how Japanese Christians interpreted the Japanese empire in Christian eschatological terms.
97 A discussion of the relationship between religion and politics of some of the Chinese figures who were also in the Study Society can be found in Shi Lu (Erik Schicketanz), ‘Minguo shiqi jiujie sixiang yu zhengzhi lunshu—yi Wushenshe yu Jiushi Xinjiao wei zhongxin’, in Fuluan wenhua yu minzhong zongjiao, (ed.) Fan Chunwu (Taipei: Boyang chubanshe, 2020).
98 Arendt, Hannah, The origins of totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1979), pp. 209–210.Google Scholar
99 In this sense, Yoshii’s case might resemble somewhat the case of Uchiyama Kanzō (1885–1959) who ran a famous bookshop in Shanghai during the same time. Uchiyama was deeply engaged in Sino-Japanese cultural exchange and to this day is known in China as having contributed greatly to friendship between the two countries. A recent article by Takatsuna Hirofumi points out that, despite this image, Uchiyama cooperated during the war with the occupation forces. In Takatsuna’s analysis, part of the reason for Uchiyama’s willingness to engage with the occupation was that it provided him with recognition, as he was appointed as one of the representatives of the Japanese community in the city. See Hirofumi, Takatsuna, ‘Nitchū yūkō no gurēzōn—senjika no Uchiyama Kanzō’, in Gurēzōn to teikoku, (eds) Hirofumi, Takatsuna, Takuya, Momma and Hidetomo, Seki (Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2023).Google Scholar