先週、ゴダール先生はアジア研究協会（Association for Asian Studies, AAS）がアジアの各地で開催しているAAS-in-Asiaの学術大会に参加してきました。今回の大会はバンコックで開かれ、「アジア」を対象とする世界中の多くの宗教学者・歴史学者・社会学者などが集まりました。先生は今回、「Rising Lotus: Rethinking Nichirenism in Twentieth Century Japan and East-Asia」（20世紀の東アジア・日本における日蓮主義・再考）のパネルセッションのorganizerとして参加し、パネルはその他に東北大学名誉教授の佐藤弘夫先生、佛教大学教授の大谷栄一先生、そして大阪大学研究員のユリア・ブレニナ先生も参加されました。パネルの趣旨等は、下記の通りです。
「In an era of Asia “rising” it is important to reflect on earlier calls for a “rising Asia” in the past. When Japan rose to prominence in the early twentieth century, many voices expressed hope for a rising Japan and Asia in the world. This panel will re-examine Nichirenism, a hugely influential current of modern Buddhism whose proponents entertained grand visions of a rising Asia led by a re-sacralized Japan, spreading Buddhism across the globe. Developed by the Buddhist reformers Tanaka Chigaku and Honda Nissho, it subsequently spread throughout Japanese society in the 1910’s and 1920’s, gaining popularity among a wide range of academics, poets, military figures, colonial subjects in Asia, women writers and leaders, and farmers and housewives in rural Tohoku. Nichirenism was characterized by a very active engagement with society and politics. Most research has focused on the movement’s nationalism, tacitly associating it with a “closed” ethnocentrism. In contrast, this panel will examine how Nichirenism was also “open” and in many ways boundary-crossing. Nichirenism laid claim on a religious universalism and engaged with other religions, and it animated active female leaders and challenged gender-boundaries. Nichirenists proselytized in Asia and Europe, keenly embraced modern science and technology, but also experienced contacts with the spirit world, or miraculous divine interventions, and they saw the course of history leading to unification. This panel will examine new frameworks and generate new questions for understanding the appeal of Nichirenism and modern Buddhism in pre-war Japan and East-Asia.」
ゴダール先生のパネルは、科研プロジェクト「越境する日蓮主義の基礎研究――トランスナショナル・ジェンダー・スピリチュアリティ」（基盤研究B、19H01197）の研究成果の一部です。ゴダール先生を始めとして佐藤弘夫先生、大谷栄一先生、ブレニナ先生による「日蓮主義」研究の第一人者による共同成果は、期待したいです。
Panel Session, “Rising Lotus: Rethinking Nichirenism in Twentieth-Century Japan and East-Asia,” July 1, 2019
Panel Members at Wat Arun (The Temple of Dawn), Bangkok
Clinton Godart visiting the International Buddhist Studies College (IBSC) in Bangkok, July 2, 2019