This paper looks at social and religious conditions that influence(d) the situation of Buddhist ordained women in modern and contemporary Japan, i.e. from the Meiji era (1868-1912)up to the present. These include the legalization of clerical marriage ...
This paper looks at social and religious conditions that influence(d) the situation of Buddhist ordained women in modern and contemporary Japan, i.e. from the Meiji era (1868-1912)up to the present. These include the legalization of clerical marriage in 1872-73 which diversified the possible ways of living for clerics and created the difficult position of temple priests’wives. Equally relevant are the gendered structures of Buddhist institutions, each school's training programs that must be completed to become a fully ordained cleric, and trans-denominational women’s associations that foster solidarity irrespective of Buddhist school, position and position and clerical rank. The final part of the paper presents various ordained women’s opinions concerning clerical marriage and the role of a cleric, in an attempt to illustrate the range of voices and their reflection of each woman’s living circumstances.
KEYWORDS
Contemporary Japanese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhist nuns, Japanese female priests, Japanese ordained women, clerical marriage