ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a forgotten side of the history of modern Japanese Buddhism. From 1915-1916 there was in Kyoto a trans-national group of Buddhists named the Mahayana Association, which published an English Buddhist periodical, Mahayanist. The aims of this association were: to study Mahayana Buddhism; to present it to the Western public; and to make bonds of closer fellowship among those interested in the foregoing aims'. Those who wanted to practise in a temple could get in touch with Japanese monks and scholars through this association. In 1915, a Canadian and an American, Mortimer T. Kirby and William Montgomery McGovern, received Buddhist ordination. McGovern's discussion of the Dharmakya and Trikya shares similarities with Japanese modernized Buddhism, specifically that of Suzuki Daisetsu. Foreigners would come to visit Utsuki Nish in order to be put in contact with Buddhist temples in Kyoto. Utsuki became a member of the Theosophical Society, becoming part of the Krotona Institute of Theosophy and its community.
