This paper will look at gender discrimination and representation of the feminine in Buddhist teachings, and more specifically how these terms and theories play out in two branches of the Japanese Buddhist community, the Honganji-ha and the Otani-ha movements. To properly analyse and understand the role of women in these societies, focus will be put on the roles and duties of females in the temple and how they’re being represented; the discrimination being experienced; and lastly, different aspects of various readings that correlate with the Hoganji-ha and Otani-ha’s role of women . The Japanese Buddhism movements Hoganji-ha and Otani-ha share similar and contrasting characteristics. Both use the terms bōzu, which means temple master, and bōmori, …show more content…
Through out the 19th and 20th century, both the Otani-ha and the Hoganji-ha had regulations that prescribed that a temple chief priest had to be a male. The administration of the temple was conventionally passed on from chief priest to his son via a hereditary system, which is mostly continued today. Honganji-ha changed its regulations in 1946, it enabled women the admission to the administration of temples. Otani-ha only enabled women admission to administer the temple in 1991, before that the admin of the temple was exclusive to the masculine gender. Before that if there were no sons in a temple family, a daughter of a chief priest had to marry a man who was prepared to become chief priest and who assumed the role of successor to the temple of chief priest. On the other hand, In the Honganji-ha community it is possible for the daughter to become chief priest if there is no male successor, but there was only 2% in 1995. Admission to the administration of the temple was not the only form of discrimination women felt in the Honganji-ha and Otani-ha temples. An example is that girls had to be 20 years old to qualify to be ordained, whereas boys only had to be 9 years old (Heidegger, …show more content…
This correlates with Sponberg’s statement of “soteriological inclusiveness”, it shows Buddha’s view on spiritual potential of females, highlighting that the spiritual path is available to all, but doesn’t include social equality between male and females (Kaushik, 2016). The representations found in the reading highlight the maternal, caring, dependent and fragile nature of the female. These thoughts are echoed in the Harvey reading, stating that a women is never “fit for independence, even in her own house”, she will always be looked after by a male figure in her life, this is due to women being “highly sexed” (Harvey, 2000). This relates to the seven sins of women, Dharmacari Jnanavira points out that social inequality is found in the seven sins of women. The first six characteristics can be read in a patronising tone: women arouse desire in men; they are inherently jealous; lack empathy; superficial and concerned with how they appear; they are deceitful; and exist without shame (Jnanavir, 2017). Jnanavir highlights the seventh sin as “specifically female”, it states that females bodies are forever unclean due to pregnancy, childbirth and menstrual discharges. Again, women are recognised for being the