ABSTRACT
J a p a n is unique among Asiatic countries and it is not surprising to find that Japanese Buddhism, though imported from China, has a flavour of its own. The first impressions of the tourist are confirmed by the researches of the historian. Any technical definition of Japanese Buddhism as a form of Mahay ana is inadequate. Whatever its pedigree may be, whatever the doctrines which it accepts in theory, its various phases not only to-day but in home thousand odd years of history smack of the soil. Yet having said this it may be well, at the risk of seeming inconsistent, to point out that the singularity of Japanese Buddhism is partly due to the fact that it is the only instance of Mahayanism now flourishing as a vital religion among people intellectually comparable to Siamese, Sinhalese, or Burmans. Whatever Chinese Buddhism and Lamaism may be for individuals, they are for the masses mere superstitions like the notions of the ignorant peasantry in the countries that follow the Roman or Eastern Churches. But Japanese Buddhism, in spite of national influences both political and artistic, is the lineal and recognized descendant of the creed held by Nágárjuna, Yasubandhu, and Santideva. Special sects treat special doctrines as the whole of religion, but this probably happened in India too. If the language of Japanese Buddhism often seems odd, this is because the writers who introduced it to the notice of Europe (such as Ryauon Fujishima, Lafcadio Hearn, and Kuroda) employed a terminology different from that used by Pali and Sanskrit scholars.
