MURAKAMI SENSHŌ

Murakami Senshō (1851–1929) was a Jōdo Shinshū, Ōtani branch cleric and scholar of Buddhism. He was born in Tanba (Hyōgo prefecture) in Japan, the eldest son of an Ōtani-branch Jōdo Shin cleric. Murakami received a classical Confucian and Buddhist education at academies in Himeji and at the Higashi Honganji in Kyoto. He took the surname Murakami when he married into the family of Murakami Jōkai, a Shin cleric in Mikawa. Murakami went on to hold teaching positions successively at the Sōtōshū Daigakurin, the Ōtani Kyōkō, and finally, Tokyo Imperial University, where he became a lecturer in Indian philosophy.

In an effort to further scholarship of Buddhism that was historically sound, pan-sectarian in scope, and sympathetic to the tradition, Murakami, together with Washio Junkyō (1868–1941) and Sakaino Kōyō (1871–1933), founded the important journal Bukkyō shirin (Buddhist History), one of the earliest academic journals devoted to the humanistic study of Buddhism in Japan. Murakami also published the pathbreaking, pan-sectarian study of Japanese Buddhist history, Dainihon Bukkyōshi (History of Japanese Buddhism). Most controversially, in his book describing the doctrines fundamental to all streams of Buddhism, Bukkyō tōitsu ron (The Unity of Buddhism), and more fully in Daijō bussetsu ron hihan (Critique of the Argument that Mahāyāna Is the Teaching of Śākyamuni Buddha), Murakami advanced the radical thesis that MahĀyĀna Buddhism was not the direct teaching of Śākyamuni Buddha. Rather, he contended that Mahāyāna was a development of Śākyamuni's teaching and that all other buddhas and bodhisattvas for example, AmitĀbha (Amida) and Mahāvairocana (Dainichi), were, unlike the historical Śākyamuni, abstract expressions of the historical Buddha's ideal qualities. Hostile reactions to his book from the Buddhist establishment, particularly his own Shin denomination, forced Murakami to renounce his status as a Shin cleric in 1901. He reconciled with the Shin establishment, however, reclaiming his clerical status in 1911.

See also:Buddhist Studies

Bibliography

Vita, Silvio. "Interpretations of Mahāyāna Buddhism in Meiji Japan: From Religious Polemics to Scholarly Debate." Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan 31 (1986): 44–57.

Richard M. Jaffe