The canonical Buddhist sutras were always delivered on the occasion of a particular gathered audience. I apply this basic premise of Buddhist doctrinal production to a body of religious literature produced for women in Japan from the 1890s to the 1910s to help resolve the scholarly conundrum of how to trace female religious agency in the absence of named female authorship. I identify women’s agency as being exercised through reading rather than writing, and through gathering to listen to teachings rather than delivering sermons themselves. I conclude that providing an engaged presence for the teachings is an important form of religious agency in Buddhist and other contexts. Taking a demand-side (rather than supply-side) approach to understanding Buddhist propagation during this period also illuminates the shifting field of competition for the support and collaboration of religious women in modern Japan.
目次
Abstract 473 Ethnography, Historiography, and Women’s Agency 474 Audience as Agency: Educated, Gathered Women 478 The Problem of Women's Salvation in Pure Land Buddhism 482 The Modern "Woman Problem" and Its Buddhist Solutions 484 Conclusion: On Being an Occasion for Buddhist Teaching 489 References 490
