Note (return) — Chapter IX · - THE BUDDHISM OF THE JAPANESE

This is the sect which, being called "Reformed" Buddhism12 and resembling Protestantism in so many points, both large and minute, foreigners think has been borrowed or imitated from European Protestantism.13 As matter of fact, the foundation principles of Shin-Shu are at least six hundred years old. They are perfectly clear in the writings of the founder,14 as well as in those of his successor Renniō,15 who wrote the Ofumi or sacred writings, now daily read by the disciples of this denomination. With the characteristic object of reaching the masses, they are written, as we have shown, not in the mixed Chinese and Japanese characters, but in the common script, or kana, which all the people of both sexes can read. Within the last two decades the Shin educators have been the first to organize their schools of learning on the models of those in Christendom, so that their young men might be trained to resist Shintō or Christianity, or to measure the truth in either. Their new temples also show European influence in architecture and furniture. Liberty of thought and action, and incoercible desire to be free from governmental, traditional, ultra-ecclesiastical, or Shintō influence—in a word, protestantism in its pure sense, is characteristic of the great sect founded by Shinran.