抄録
In the late 19th century America, Swedenborgianism and Buddhism was not an exceptional combination among some esoteric thinkers. Philangi Dasa, who published the first Buddhist journal in America, was a Swedenborgian and wrote a book titled Swedenborg the Buddhist. Albert J. Edmunds, who co-authored a book on Buddhism and Christianity with Anesaki Masaharu, let Suzuki know Swedenborgianism while the latter worked for the Open Court Publishing Company. Around 1890 Japanese progressive Buddhists looked for help in the West and found some “Buddhists”, who really were Theosophists or esotericists. Dasa’s articles on Swedenborgianism and Buddhism were translated into Japanese and appeared on Buddhist journals. So Swedenborg came to be known as a kind of Buddhist philosopher among Japanese Buddhists. When we take into consideration those historical facts, it is not strange that Daisetz T. Suzuki translated four books by Swedenborg and wrote a biography of him from 1910 to 1915. In addition he made a short speech at the Swedenborg Society in 1912, in which he claimed himself a Swedenborgian. In this paper those historical backgrounds of Suzuki’s commitment to Swedenborgianism are analyzed, and the creativity of Suzuki’s interpretation of the law of correspondence is discussed.
