Session 2: Buddhism and Pragmatism—Buddhism’s Impact on Social Change

Buddhist Organizations and Their Response to
Natural Disasters
Katsuaki Onishi

1. PREFACET

HE Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, marked a turning point in modern Japanese history. The unprecedented violenceof the 9.0 magnitude quake gave rise massive tsunami that caused agreat number of fatalities. According to the most recent data, 15,890
people died and 2,589 remain missing. Approximately 180,000 people
are still living in temporary housing. Further, the impact on the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown compounded thedamage, releasing radiation that has forced 150,000 people to flee theirhomes to live in conditions of insecurity and anguish.
What has been the impact of this compound disaster on the psychology of the Japanese people and on Japanese religions? It could be said tohave had a unique significance for Japan as a country that, over the past
century and a half, had successfully pursued a path of modernization
and rapid economic growth. The disaster has made evident the underlying fragility of the worldview developed over the course of this period,
sparking an intense process of reflection on what it means to be human,
beyond and outside the context of economics. At the same time, thedisaster has been an occasion for people to confront questions ofhuman powerlessness, weakness and vulnerability. The experience may
prove to be a germinal one in terms of renewing people’s awareness offorces that transcend human agency, in this way perhaps giving rise to
new worldviews.
Religious individuals and organizations made important contributions
in responding to the disaster, the magnitude of which—and the depth of
the resulting human suffering—overwhelmed the capacities of secularauthorities. The inadequacy of the official response was evident to all
observers and deeply impressed a mistrust of the authorities and officials
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in the Japanese consciousness. This is the backdrop for the activities undertaken by religious individuals and organizations, activities that wereconducted largely outside the context of existing of administrative
frameworks.
The Japanese archipelago has always been subject to natural disasters
such as earthquakes, typhoons, floods and volcanic eruptions. In the
Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 1995, some 6,500 people losttheir lives. Many volunteer organizations responded to this disaster, and
it is seen as marking the start of a new era of volunteerism in modern
Japan. Religious people and organizations were part of relief efforts,
although these were in many ways tentative and unorganized.
In the wake of the March 11, 2011 compound disaster, the lessons
learned from these earlier experiences were incorporated, leading tomore effective relief and support activities. In fact, it would seem thatsecular volunteer activities came to be seen as an integral aspect of the
lives of religious people; the line demarcating these two realms has been
blurred.
Starting in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and continuing to
the present, religious individuals and organizations, both traditional andnew, have engaged in a range of relief activities. These have included: 1)
The use of religious facilities as emergency shelters; 2) Providing centers for longer-term support for displaced persons; 3) Provision of
cooked meals for survivors; 4) Debris removal; 5) Searching for andlocation of the missing; 6) Providing relief supplies; 7) Support forchildren orphaned in the disaster; 8) Clean-up of radioactive pollutants;
9) Fund-raising; 10) Memorial services for the dead; 11); Psychologicalsupport; 12) “Listening activities.”
From among the many different religious actors involved in such activities, I would like focus on the activities of Buddhists and to offersome observations on the special characteristics of Japanese Buddhism’s
engagements in the public space.

2. The Position of Buddhism in Contemporary JapaneseSociety
This section examines the social context for disaster relief activities conducted by religious individuals and organizations in contemporary
Japan. As the focus of this paper is the involvement of Buddhists,
the examples cited below will be limited to Buddhists and Buddhist
organizations.
In Japan, the system of beliefs and practices known as “State Shinto”

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has been principally concerned with maintaining the order of the national society as a whole. (While prewar State Shinto was dismantled, its
influence persists even today in undeniable ways.) In contrast, theprincipal interest of Buddhism in Japan has been maintenance of the
traditional household and village community order. Household and community ancestor rites have served as a symbol of the ritual connections
that bind people together. In the years after World War II, Japanese society experienced the dissolution of the unifying power of the household
and the village community. This was the price paid for economic
growth. For people who were deprived of their reference group throughthis process, the new Buddhist-based religious movements that emerged
to teach more individualized forms of salvation were appealing, and thisdrove their growth. Forms of Buddhism that existed prior to the emergence of these new movements are referred to in Japan as traditional
Buddhism.
Traditional Buddhism stressed connections with and among parishioners. Funerary ceremonies, in particular, were a vehicle for rooting
people within extended family networks and local communities. The
families of the priests of more established temples gained prominence
within the local community, fulfilling certain key functions. While therole played Buddhist temples has been diminishing, in rural farming or
fishing communities, they continue to provide a locus for foundationalsocial bonds.
Buddhist-based new religious movements such as Soka Gakkai,
Reiyukai and Rissho Kosei-kai have promoted teachings of this-worldly
human transformation, and this has helped them gain acceptance among
urbanized populations deprived of the ties of household and native
place. The bonds among lay believes have also been stressed in thesereligious movements but, in contrast to traditional Buddhist, the focus
of teaching and guidance has been the individual.
During the period of high levels of economic growth, Japan experience the rapid and dramatic formation of a new secular society. Throughthe expansion of opportunities for higher education, secular knowledge
was widely disseminated and opportunities for young people to engage
with religion were greatly diminished. As a result, systems of secularknowledge became the basis for social participation and contribution.
Despite the flourishing of new Budddhist-based religious movements inthis period, the dominant values of Japanese society were all mediatedthrough secular knowledge systems.
Starting in the 1970s, the pace of economic growth slowed, and dissatisfaction with secular society and its values in some cases took thebuddhist organizations and natural disasters

39

form of new spirituality movements and interest in a more spiritual cultural orientation. This trend was especially prominent within the moreeducated strata of society. As is well known, the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo
Sarin gas attacks represented a very rare but extreme example of a groupthat used an eschatological worldview to justify its murderous activities.
The emergence of these new spirituality movements, however, did notalter the fact that the dominant values of Japanese society remained centered on secular knowledge and knowledge systems. For this reason,
discourse in the public sphere continued to be conducted in the languageof administrative forms knowledge rooted in secular knowledge
systems, something that was undergirded by a strong faith in, andreliance on, science and scientific knowledge.
This arrangements was a good fit with the postwar dispensationstressing the separation of politics and religion. Through this, the public
and private spheres were strictly distinguished, with religious values relegated to the latter. Religiosity was, to the degree possible, banishedfrom the public sphere.
Any involvement by religious organizations in the public sphere cameto be viewed with disapproval. Japanese society had been successful in
its efforts to promote rapid economic growth, and this generated support
for the system. Thus, while Buddhist organizations engaged in activities
to promote peace and contribute to social welfare, these were understood to belong to the private sphere, with the impact on the publicsphere minimized. The Japanese media self-identified as the gatekeepersof the public sphere and thus rarely, if ever, covered the social contributions of Buddhist organizations.
The January 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake changed all that. Many
religious bodies, representing both traditional Buddhism and new Buddhist religions movements, actively engaged in disaster relief activities,
even if these were marked by a lack of professionalism and wereconducted on an ad hoc basis. This disaster marked the moment when,
for the first time in Japanese postwar history, religious organizations
stepped into to fill the gap left by a public sector unable to respondadequately to the overwhelming scale of destruction.
This corresponded with the trend of the late 1990s toward smaller,
more limited government. The political climate that favored the adoption of neoliberal policies invited greater participation by private-sector
volunteers in social welfare activities that had previously been considered the responsibility of the public sector. In 1998, the Act on Promotion of Specified Non-profit Activities went into effect, opening the way
for greater participation by Buddhists in secular NPOs as well as the

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formation of NPOs by Buddhist bodies.
This was the societal backdrop against which Buddhist organizations,even as they adhered to the essential assumptions of separation of religion and politics, became more actively involved in the public sphere.
When we consider the relief activities undertaken by Buddhist organizations following the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, it isimportant to bear the historical and social setting outlined above in
mind. This massive, compound disaster has compelled a rethinking of
the role of religious organizations in the public sphere.

3. What did the Great East Japan Earthquake Change?
Many Japanese people experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake as
an event that compelled a questioning of the value system that had
previously prevailed. This questioning had two particular aspects.
The first was a new mistrust of government and science. Despite
warnings issued by some in the scientific community regarding the riskof massive tsunami, these were disregarded as merely theoretical, withthe result that measures to deal with such an eventuality were put off. It
further became clear that that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
had been aware of the tsunami risk, but failed to take this seriously. The
government’s response to radioactive pollutants has invited additional
mistrust, and there is a strong sense that the existing system of crisis
management must be fundamentally rethought.
The second change involved a reassessment of religious values. Whilethe disaster cannot be said to have sparked a nationwide movement forreligious revival, many people have come to feel that secular knowledge
systems alone cannot adequately respond to the needs and questions
posed by suffering and destruction on such a massive scale—the grief oflosing family members, for example, or the need for some source of explanation or solace. It is recognized that neither the secular authorities
nor the scientific community is capable of responding to these needs orproviding the needed answers.
At the very least, many people have come to look favorably on thedisaster relief activities undertaken by various religious organizations.
While a small minority of religious organizations have been criticizedfor taking advantage of the disaster to incite anxiety and engage in aggressive proselytization, most religious organizations not only provided
material support, but also engaged empathetically with survivors,
sharing their grief and offering prayers for the deceased alongside thesurvivors.

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This has involved a reappraisal of religious organizations which,because of their confinement to the private sphere, had largely been seenas organizations principally concerned with the pursuit of their own
interests. The activities of religious organizations has provoked aquestioning of the existing bifurcation of the public and private realms.
At a minimum, barriers to the entry of religious values into the publicsphere have been reduced.

4. Disaster Relief Activities by Buddhist Organizations
Next I would like to introduce some examples of the kinds of activities
for disaster relief undertaken by Buddhist organizations.
4-1 Examples from Traditional Buddhism
Many of the temples affiliated with traditional Buddhists sects continue
to function as a cohesive factor in the bonds of households and communities.
Temples which were spared destruction in the disaster collaborated
with secular authorities and NPOs to provide various forms of material
assistance. Then, as activities shifted to the reconstruction phase, thesetemples provided support to survivors in the following unique forms.
1) Supporting community recovery and reconstruction through theholding of traditional religious events. In many more traditional
communities, an annual cycle of ceremonies and festivals has long
been maintained, and many of these are intimately associated with
temples. The disaster made the holding of these festivals impossible
and thus the revival of these customary practices and ceremonies
offered and opportunity for displaced people to renew their sense ofcommunity and community bonds. Various newspaper articles havereferenced this and the power of traditional arts and ceremonies toserve as a vehicle for collective identity and prayer.1
2) “Volunteer sutra reciters.” This is a term that appeared frequently innews reports in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The numberof fatalities and widespread destruction created conditions in which
it was impossible to conduct adequate funerary services for thevictims. Buddhist priests volunteered to perform sutra recitations,something traditionally considered essential to any commemorationof the dead, at ad hoc funerary services without concern for distinctions among the sectarian affiliation of the deceased. There are42buddhist organizations and natural disasters

reports of participants expressing their appreciation for the prayers
and sutra recitations offered by these priests. Further, temples
accepted remains, providing a temporary resting place for these,
again without regard to distinctions of affiliation.
3) Buddhist temples also organized charity events, with the proceeds
dedicated to the operation of temporary housing.
4) Finally, traditional Buddhist temples engaged in volunteer “listening
activities.” The Soto sect of Zen Buddhism has a particularly large
concentration of temples in the afflicted regions, and a traditional
tea-style ceremony called “Gyocha” is part of the sect’s liturgicalrepertoire. Centered around the sharing of tea, this ceremony provides a time of quiet reflection and exchange about one’s Buddhist
practice. The purpose of this ceremony has traditionally been toencourage greater religious awareness and a return to one’s true self.
Gyocha ceremonies organized for the benefit of survivors by Buddhist priests acting as “listening volunteers” provided a quiet interlude in which survivors enduring severe psychological trauma andchallenging circumstances could partake in a shared sense of lifeand living. Through this, it was hoped that survivors would be able
to regain some degree of normality and begin the process of recovering a sense of themselves in the context of daily life. The activitiesof these listening volunteers provide a form of mental health carefor survivors.2
4-2 The Example of the Soka Gakkai
Here I would like to introduce the activities of the Soka Gakkai, thelargest of the new Buddhist religions in Japan.
In the aftermath of the disaster, the Soka Gakkai moved quickly to establish a task force dedicated to responding to the disaster, assessing thescale of destruction and the resulting need for relief support. The
group’s Tohoku Culture Center, its largest facility in the afflicted region,
served as a temporary shelter for 1,000 survivors. In total, Soka Gakkai
facilities provided temporary shelter for approximately 5,000 people.
Within 12 hours of the disaster, emergency supplies had arrived, and by
the following day, some 5,550 handmade rice balls had been deliveredfrom areas that had been spared destruction. The scope and speed ofthese relief activities demonstrated the networked response capabilitiesof this new religious movement. Further, the Soka Gakkai’s facilities
were used as the base for the activities of the Miyagi Prefecture fire

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fighting company.3
The Soka Gakkai also mobilized its nationwide network to provide
emergency relief supplies to temporary shelters; in total some 20,000
Soka Gakkai volunteers participated in relief activities. The organization’s community-based networks were used to help locate the whereabouts of survivors, serving the needs of both believers and nonbelievers
alike. Relief and support activities were able to reach people in locations
inaccessible to official responders. There are many recorded examples ofSoka Gakkai members who were at once victims impacted by the disaster and active protagonists in the relief work. This is a reflection of thenature of the organization, which has always emphasized the engagement and agency of lay believers, something which stands in contrast to
the activities of traditional Buddhism, which tend to be led by ordained
Buddhist priests.
At the same time, the Soka Gakkai developed volunteer activities
with the participation of specific cohorts within its membership: doctors
and nurses who provided volunteer health counseling; lawyers, accountants and tax specialists who provided volunteer counseling in their respective areas of expertise. Needless to say, among the membershipthere were many people who were injured or killed, or who lost family
members. The question of why people had to experience such incomprehensible suffering was subjected to various interpretations; for many
people, the experience remained something that could not be communicated or discussed in words. The empathetic presence of fellow
members has been seen to lighten the psychological burden and toserve as an impetus for victims to begin to look toward the future.
It would seem that the presence of this network of empathetic connection and sharing has functioned as a more effective form of support than
any metaphysical explanation of the cause or meaning of the disaster.

5. Explaining the Disaster
Why did people guilty of no apparent crime have to suffer so terribly? It
is only natural that a disaster of this magnitude should be the occasion
for thinking about such questions of theodicy. In April, 2011, Pope
Benedict XVI, gave the following response to a question posed by amember of a television audience, a Japanese girl who asked why
children had to experience such grief: “There may not be an answer,
but the important thing thing is that God is by your side.”4
For Christians living in Japan, the earthquake was the occasion for anenergetic debate on the question of theodicy: how was the divine mean-

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ing implicit in the disaster to be interpreted? While the responses werevaried, they could be classed into the following three categories. 1) God
is not in fact omnipotent; 2) God is omnipotent, but chose not to intervene; and 3) God in fact intervened.5 Christians only comprise about 2
percent of the entire Japanese population,6 and so arguments of this typeof monotheistic theodicy are generally unfamiliar and not felt to beparticularly relevant by most people.
Soon after the disaster, Shintaro Ishihara, the Tokyo Metropolitan
Governor, expressed his view that the earthquake was a form of “divine
retribution” and called on the Japanese people to free themselves of selfish desire and reform their way of life. Although he stressed that his was
his personal opinion, he was subjected to harsh criticism for a lack ofsensitivity to the suffering of the victims and was compelled to retract
and apologize for this statement the following day. It would seem thatthe majority of Japanese people have an unconscious stance of rejecting
any interpretation suggesting that the disaster had some meaning ofpunishment or retribution. This could be understood as constituting acultural background that overtly rejects the idea of theodicy. There isparticular reluctance to discuss the disaster in theoditic language in thepresence of surviving victims or the dead.
Buddhists did not generally encourage or engage in discussions oftheodicy in relation to the disaster, or at the least refrained from suchdiscourse in the presence of victims. Most Japanese nationals viewed
the disaster as a natural phenomenon and were not inclined to debate
questions of divine involvement or intervention. Rather, the view oflife’s transience—something perhaps particular to the Japanese people,
born of the repeated historical experience of disaster—produced a senseof acceptance and resignation in the face of inevitable suffering. This
does not, however, mean that Japanese people are entirely indifferent toattempts to discover or identify the meaning of the death and destruction
wrought by disasters.
In pre-modern Japanese society, natural disasters were understood tobe messages from indigenous deities, the kami, whose anger was to bepropitiated with offerings. More recently, the twin processes of modernization and secularization have undermined faith in the existence of thekami: rather than pray to the kami, people put their faith in science. In an
age when prayers offered to the kami lack credibility, the victims of theearthquake found their faith in science brutally betrayed by the enormityof the suffering wrought by the compound disaster. In the face of thisinexplicable, insoluble challenge, in which despair had no prospect ofgiving rise to meaning, people felt they had no option but to resolutelybuddhist organizations and natural disasters

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accept the reality of the situation.
Most Buddhists and Buddhist organizations in Japan did not makeany attempt to offer theoditic or causal interpretations. Rather, they focused on the making themselves available to people in their suffering,
engaging with them in the empathetic sharing of suffering and pain,
working together to reorient toward the future. This was the form taken
by most of the pastoral support extended to the disaster victims by
Japanese Buddhism.
In the case of the Soka Gakkai, SGI President Ikeda offered the following the message to people of the afflicted region: “The treasures of
the heart [a term from Nichiren Buddhism indicating a state of innerrichness and happiness] cannot be destroyed by even the harshest suffering.” “Life is eternal. We remain connected by bonds that transcend thebounds of life and death.” “Do not be defeated! Maintain courage! Holdon to hope!”
Here the disaster is not discussed in terms of theodicy. Rather, a spiritof empathy and making oneself available to the victims is in evidence.
The Soka Gakkai cites the following phrase from Nichiren’s writings asa model of empathy: “The varied sufferings that all living beings
undergo—all these are Nichiren’s own sufferings.” This is seen as an
expressing an ideal of engaging with suffering people, for offeringcontinuous encouragement to them to face and overcome that suffering.
The stance taken by Japanese Buddhists in response to the disasterhas a consistency across lines of sectarian difference. That is, they virtually all focused on offering spiritual empathy for the victims, including
through offering prayers for the deceased, and sought to encourage
survivors in their efforts to start looking to the future.
In closing, I would like to share the view of a Theravada Buddhist,
Alubomulle Sumanasara (1945–), who is quite widely read in Japan. He
is known for having propagated early Buddhism within the Japan Theravada Buddhist Association and guided people in meditative practices.
Rejecting the idea that the disaster represented some form of divine
retribution, Sumanasara emphasized that the natural disaster was no one
in particular’s fault. The real question is whether one experiences this assuffering and is spiritually overwhelmed by it, or whether one can live
as a truly wise person. He does not consider the disaster in terms of karmic causality, but rather in terms of how people experience suffering in
the face of a particular phenomenon, in this case a natural disaster, emphasizing a more agentic interpretation of the meaning of karma and theimportance of living with wisdom.7 In the immediate aftermath of thedisaster, the Japan Theravada Buddhist Association made its place of

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practice available as a temporary shelter and organized the cooking anddelivery of meals for victims along with donations of books to libraries,
the collection of relief funds, and other activities.
In this way, the disaster relief activities of Buddhists and Buddhist
organizations were widely recognized within contemporary Japanesesociety. These individuals and organizations fulfilled a role within the
public sphere, gaining, in the process, a greater voice in society.
Notes
Hisai dento geino [Traditional performing arts in the affected areas]. The Nikkei, 15
March 2014.
2[online] http://www.sotozen-net.or.jp/teqw/20130925.html [Accessed 1 April 2016]3
The editors of Ushio, ed. Higasinihon daishinsai: Soka Gakkai ha dou ugoitaka[Great East Japan Earthquake: What did the Soka Gakkai do?], Tokyo: Ushio Shuppansha, 2011.
4
Transcript of papal Q&A on Italian TV, 22 Apr. 2011. [online] http://ncronline.org/
blogs/ncr-today/transcript-papal-qa-italian-tv [Accessed 1 April 2016]
5
Gray Stern, Can God Intervene?: How Religion Explains Natural Disasters,
Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007.
6
In 2015, there are about 2,950,000 Christians in Japan.
7
Alubomulle Sumanasara. Higashinihon daisinsai de hisai sareta minasama he (Toeveryone that has been affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake). 2011.3.18. [online]
http://gotami.j-theravada.net/2011/03/post-247.html [Accessed 1 April 2016]
1

Author Biography
Katsuaki Onishi is a Research Fellow of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy. Ph.D. His
fields of research are the sociology of religion and new religious movements studies. He
is a member of The Japan Sociological Society, Japanese Association for Religious
Studies, and The Japanese Association for the Study of Religion and Society. He is theauthor of Honmon Butsuryuko to Soka Gakkai no Syakaigakuteki kenkyu [A sociologicalstudy of Honmon Butsuryuko and Soka Gakkai: religious exclusivism and practicality](2009), Kingendai no Hokke undo to Zaike Kyoudan [Hokke Buddhism and lay
Buddhism community in Japanese Modern Society] (2014, co-authored with Shigeru
Nishiyama, et al.), “Multiculturalism, Post-secularism and the Buddhist Worldview,”
The Journal of Oriental Studies vol.53, Tokyo (2014).