It is often said that, unlike Christian thought, Buddhist thought is compatible with evolutionary theory. In Japan, it is widely believed that Buddhism did not prevent Japanese people from accepting evolutionary theory. Through an examination of the theoretical works of the Japanese botanist Hayata Bunzō (1874-1934), this paper presents an important counterexample to this common assumption. In the last fifteen years of his life, he published many theoretical works to advocate his own theory of life. Opposing evolutionary theory, he claimed that from the eternal past to the eternal future, the complexity and diversity of organisms had and would remain unchanged. The “dynamic system,” the original system of taxonomy he proposed as part of his theory, has attracted much attention from biologists for its uniqueness. However, what motivated him to construct this unusual theory has yet to be clarified. In this paper, I demonstrate that the theory resulted from his Buddhist belief in the “Eternal Life.” This belief was not a teaching of early Buddhism but an interpretation of the Lotus Sutra that developed mainly in Japan. I also suggest that belief in the Eternal Life might have prevented not only Hayata but also other Japanese Buddhists from positively accepting evolutionary theory.
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