In-between two Buddhisms: Ueda Tenzui’s Theravada ordination and activities to recover the remains of the war dead in wartime Burma

Abstract This article examines the activities of the Japanese Buddhist priest Ueda Tenzui (1899–1974) in wartime Thailand and Burma. Ueda initially went to Southeast Asia to pursue his studies of Buddhist precepts. During the war, he joined a pacification team of the Japanese military in occupied Burma and, as part of this role, became the headteacher of a Japanese language school. He was later ordained and served for some time as a monk in the Burmese Theravada tradition. Since the 1970s, research on Japanese Buddhist involvement in Japan’s wars has focused on criticizing those who cooperated with the war effort and praising those who resisted. In this regard, Ueda is unquestionably a ‘collaborator’. Yet, his case demonstrates the importance of the concept of the ‘grey zone’ between the two extremes of collaboration and resistance. While we have to acknowledge that Ueda acted in support of the war effort at the request of the military, he was also a scholar and a practitioner who deepened his understanding of Theravada Buddhism through personal experience. Ueda criticized the war after Japan’s defeat and also came to actively appreciate Burmese Buddhism’s strict adherence to the precepts. At the same time, he never showed a critical attitude towards Japanese Buddhism. Ueda’s thinking is characterized by his ability to find commonalities between Burmese and Japanese Buddhism without ranking them according to some hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, while also recognizing the differences that exist between these two branches of Buddhism.