front cover of American Sutra
American Sutra
A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War
Duncan Ryūken Williams
Harvard University Press, 2020

Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller


“Raises timely and important questions about what religious freedom in America truly means.”
—Ruth Ozeki

“A must-read for anyone interested in the implacable quest for civil liberties, social and racial justice, religious freedom, and American belonging.”
—George Takei

On December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the first person detained was the leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawai‘i. Nearly all Japanese Americans were subject to accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. From the White House to the local town council, many believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security.

In this pathbreaking account, based on personal accounts and extensive research in untapped archives, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American.

“A searingly instructive story…from which all Americans might learn.”
Smithsonian

“Williams’ moving account shows how Japanese Americans transformed Buddhism into an American religion, and, through that struggle, changed the United States for the better.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer

“Reading this book, one cannot help but think of the current racial and religious tensions that have gripped this nation—and shudder.”
—Reza Aslan, author of Zealot

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The Buddha's Tooth
Western Tales of a Sri Lankan Relic
John S. Strong
University of Chicago Press, 2021
John S. Strong unravels the storm of influences shaping the received narratives of two iconic sacred objects.

Bodily relics such as hairs, teeth, fingernails, pieces of bone—supposedly from the Buddha himself—have long served as objects of veneration for many Buddhists. Unsurprisingly, when Western colonial powers subjugated populations in South Asia, they used, manipulated, redefined, and even destroyed these objects to exert control.

In The Buddha’s Tooth, John S. Strong examines Western stories, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, surrounding two significant Sri Lankan sacred objects to illuminate and concretize colonial attitudes toward Asian religions. First, he analyzes a tale about the Portuguese capture and public destruction, in the mid-sixteenth century, of a tooth later identified as a relic of the Buddha. Second, he switches gears to look at the nineteenth-century saga of British dealings with another tooth relic of the Buddha—the famous Daḷadā enshrined in a temple in Kandy—from 1815, when it was taken over by English forces, to 1954, when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. As Strong reveals, the stories of both the Portuguese tooth and the Kandyan tooth reflect nascent and developing Western understandings of Buddhism, realizations of the cosmopolitan nature of the tooth, and tensions between secular and religious interests.
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Of Beggars and Buddhas
The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand
Katherine A. Bowie
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
In the Buddha's penultimate incarnation, he appears as the Prince Vessantara. Perfecting the virtue of generosity, he gives away all his possessions, and even hands over his two children to the beggar Jujaka. This story was once better known across Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asia than the life of the Buddha himself. In Thailand, regional retellings have included humor and sly antiroyalist themes, despite efforts by the Bangkok monarchy to suppress them. Focusing on Jujaka, Katherine A. Bowie traces variations of this famous story, noting changes from its historical emphasis on generosity in feudal society to new emphases on prosperity and tourism under capitalism.
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The Power of the Buddhas
The Politics of Buddhism during the Koryo Dynasty (918 - 1392)
Sem Vermeersch
Harvard University Press, 2008

Buddhism in medieval Korea is characterized as “State Protection Buddhism,” a religion whose primary purpose was to rally support (supernatural and popular) for and legitimate the state. In this view, the state used Buddhism to engender compliance with its goals. A closer look, however, reveals that Buddhism was a canvas on which people projected many religious and secular concerns and desires.

This study is an attempt to specify Buddhism’s place in Koryo and to ascertain to what extent and in what areas Buddhism functioned as a state religion. Was state support the main reason for Buddhism’s dominance in Koryo? How actively did the state seek to promote religious ideals? What was the strength of Buddhism as an institution and the nature of its relationship to the state? What role did Confucianism, the other state ideology, play in Koryo? This study argues that Buddhism provided most of the symbols and rituals, and some of the beliefs, that constructed an aura of legitimacy, but that there was no single ideological system underlying the Koryo dynasty’s legitimating strategies.

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