僧侶從軍？—— 抗戰後期漢藏教理院兵役案的爭議 （1943-1944）=Monks Becoming Soldiers? A Dispute of the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute to Exempt from Military Service during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1943-1944
The Nationalist government implemented "Military Service Law" in 1936, requiring monks to perform their national obligations and military service. After protest and resistance from the Sangha, the government did not strictly enforce the conscription of monks into the army for standing military service. With the increasingly severity of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Nationalist government amended the Military Service Law in 1943 in order to strengthen its military. The new law detailed the application procedures as well as the scope of exemption and suspension for military service, which resulted in a narrowing path for monks to exempt from standing military service. This paper takes the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute (hereinafter referred to as "Hanyuan") as a case study of the Sangha response to the implementation of the new military service law. Hanyuan was an important activity base for Master Tai Xu and his disciples during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As the new military service law was promulgated, they tried to apply for a suspension of conscription on the basis that the academy was a "frontier cultural and educational institute," with reference to the provisions in the law concerning "schools above junior college." However, due to its status as a "privately owned institution," the application was repeatedly rejected by the relevant departments of the local government, the Ministry of Military Affairs, and the Ministry of Education. In the end Tai Xu had to use his personal connections with the Minister of Education, Li-fu Chen, to ask for an extrajudicial exemption for Hanyuan. With the help of Chen, Hanyuan finally obtained a temporary exemption from military service from Ying-qin He, the Minister of Military Affairs, on the grounds that it provided "important works for the frontier." The resolution of the military service problem by the Hanyuan appears to have been facilitated by personal connections, but it was also a recognition of previous contributions Tai Xu and Hanyuan had made to the Nationalist government's "official business," such as wartime diplomacy and handling of the Tibet issue. This case not only reveals how the relationship between politics and religion (Buddhism) in wartime China was shaped by a mixture of "private friendship" and "official business," but also demonstrated the talent and strategy of Tai Xu and Hanyuan in safeguarding their interests under adverse circumstances.
