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HOLMES WELCH
For the next ten years Buddhist exchanges happily continued between the two countries. Japanese scholars toured China to collect material on Buddhist history and art, while Chinese went to Japan to study.13 Probably in 1936 (and at any rate before the Japanese invasion) the Sino-Japanese Buddhist Association was formed.14 It would not be too cynical to suppose that the Japanese viewed it as an instrument for political penetration, while the Chinese hoped to use it to mobilize Buddhist opinion in Japan against that country's aggressive policy.
While the invasion of central China in 1937 put an end to voluntary cooperation with Chinese Buddhists, it increased Japanese opportunities to get cooperation under pressure and enlarged the scope of their missionary activity. As one Japanese source puts it, "where the Japanese army went, Japanese religion went too."15
While in the preceding sixty years about a dozen permanent temples had been established, nearly all in Shanghai, no less than thirty-five were opened between 1937 and 1942, not only in Shanghai, but in Nanking (six temples), Hankow (four), Hangchow (three), Soochow (two), Wuhu (two), Wusih (two), Chen-chiang, Kiukiang, Yangchow, Changchow, and many smaller cities. Most of the parishioners were Japanese — in three cases entirely so17 — but at four temples out of five there were at least a few Chinese parishioners and at one out of six the Chinese were in a majority; in other words, these were really missions.
Not all Chinese monks and devotees could follow their government to Szechwan. Those who remained had to cope with the realities of foreign occupation. They had no choice but to welcome the increasing number of Japanese priests who came to work in China, living in Chinese monasteries or in Japanese research institutes, and in return they went to Japan themselves. In 1939, for example, over twenty Chinese monks were selected by competitive examination. As one of them told me in an interview, he was twenty-two at the time and had been serving as a sacristan (i-po) at Chin Shan. He wanted to go partly because he was curious about the state of Japanese Buddhism. Also he believed that if he learned the language, he would be better equipped to cope with the occupation forces on his return. “If I knew Japanese, they would not be able to bully me. I would be able to reason with them.” After qualifying in the examination,