Issei Buddhism in the Americas

With contributions from scholars on both sides of the Pacific. Issei Buddhism in the Americas upends boundaries and categories that have tied Buddhism to Asia and illuminates the social and spiritual role that the religion has played in the Americas. While Buddhists in Japan had long described the migration of the religion as traveling from India, across Asia, and ending in Japan, this collection details the movement of Buddhism across the Pacific to the Americas. Contributors describe the pioneering efforts of first-generation Issei priests and their followers within the context of Japanese diasporic communities and immigration history and the early history of Buddhism in the Americas. The result is a dramatic exploration of the history of Asian immigrant religion that encompasses such topics as Japanese language instruction in Hawaiian schools, the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia, and Zen Buddhism in Brazil.

Duncan Ryvken Williams is an associate professor of Japanese Buddhism and the chair of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California Berkeley. Tomoe Moriya is a professor of international communication at Hannan University, Japan.