This study examines the relationship of Buddhism to modernity, imperialism and ethnicity. Shin Buddhism, brought by Japanese immigrants, became one of the dominant Buddhist institutions in the United States before World War II. The study of the acculturation of Shin Buddhism will enrich the historiography of American religions, in which the analysis of Asian American religion has been relatively neglected up to now.
Findings of previous studies are challenged on two fronts. In the past, scholars observed Buddhism as having modeled itself on Christianity. Recently, scholars have questioned this type of linear assimilation and demonstrated that Japanese Buddhism in the United States maintained its cultural practice, i.e., ancestor worship. The present study, however, reveals that the acculturation of Shin Buddhism required "efforts" to "Japanize" and "Americanize" this organized religion of Japan. The Shin Buddhist clergy sought its position in a society dominated by Anglo-Americans, without losing either its own faith or its Japanese cultural heritage. Second, through investigating various difficulties within the Shin Buddhist orders, the Buddhist communities in Hawaii and North America during the prewar period is considered far from harmonious. Tensions existed among ministers of these orders as well as between the clergy and laity, central offices including the Japanese headquarters and local churches, and the two Shin Buddhist denominations.
While analyzing changes in the organizational style, ritual formats, and doctrine of the Shin Buddhist orders, this study places the acculturation in a larger context. Differences in the political and social conditions, which impacted Nikkei communities, led the Shin clergy to take separate courses of action in North America and Hawaii when the Nikkei faced crises. On the mainland, Shin ministers participated in international religious conferences and appealed to the American public for peace. In Hawaii, their counterparts supported local Nikkei protests to the territorial government during the 1920s. The response of Shin Buddhists to socio-economic pressures in the United States, however, needs to be examined closely alongside their imperial connections in Japan. The Shin Buddhist acculturation was uncertain in terms of its national identity, which paralleled to the ambiguous characteristics of the Nikkei ethnicity.
