Japanese Buddhism and Ireland

Abstract

This article argues that there is no single relationship between Japanese Buddhism and Ireland. Rather, there is a series of changing relationships mediated by different world-system contexts between one island and another (peripheral and post-colonial) one: as ethnographic information, as cultural influence and as religious practice. The process of building such relationships has a long history, stretching back to the Irish reception of both Jesuit and traveller’s accounts of Japan, later made concrete by early intermediaries like Lafcadio Hearn / Koizumi Yakumo and Charles Pfoundes. W.B. Yeats in particular helped to give Japanese Buddhism a significant place in Irish culture, notably in poetry. From the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese Buddhists started to settle in Ireland and Japanese Buddhism began to be practiced; both are now an established part of the Irish religious landscape. The article sketches this history, culminating in the present situation of Japanese Buddhism in Ireland.