Background
Masaharu Anesaki was born on 25 July 1873 in Kyoto.
姉崎 正治
Masaharu Anesaki was born on 25 July 1873 in Kyoto.
After attending the Third High School there, he entered the philosophy course of Tokyo Im¬perial University in 1893, where he studied under Inoue Tetsujiro and Raphael Koeber. He was a fellow student and close friend of Takayama Chogyu, who later became an important thinker and critic. He graduated in 1896. While in school, he took up the study of religion and contributed articles to such magazines as Tetsugaku zasshi and Taiyo.
In 1897 he joined Onishi Hajime, Kishimoto Nobuta, and others in establishing a society called the Teiyukai for the purpose of carrying out critical and nonsectarian studies of religion.
During the years from 1900 to 1903 he studied in Germany and England, pursuing religious studies under such scholars as P. Deussen, H. Oldenberg, and T. W. Rhys-Davids and concentrating on the subject of Indian philosophy. In 1904 he received his Ph.D.; his thesis on Buddhism is entitled Genshinbutsu to hosshinbutsu.
In 1905, when a course in religion was set up at Tokyo Imperial University, he was appointed professor to teach it. Thereafter he gave his time to teaching and research, occasionally responding to invitations to lecture on the history of Japanese religion in European and American universities. In 1923 he became a member of the Japan Academy. The same year he was appointed to head the Tokyo Imperial University library, where he worked to repair the severe damage inflicted upon the library by the Kanto earthquake. He retired from teaching in 1934 and in 1939 became a member of the Upper House of the Diet.
In his late years he took up the study of Christianity in Japan.
In 1916 published a work on Nichiren entitled IJokekyo no gybju Nichiren, which continues to attract readers today.
In 1925 he published a collection of articles on the subject entitled Kirishitan shumon no halcugai to sempuku. In 1910-11 he published a translation of Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille uiul Vorstellung under the title fshi to genshiki to shite no sekai, which initiated a vogue for Schopenhauer’s thought.
In addition to the work mentioned above, his writings include Shukyogaku gairon (1900) and others.
His writings on Indian religion, particularly Buddhism, are of special importance. Kompon bukkyo, a study of the Buddhism of the time of Sakyamuni published in 1910, throws grcatlight upon the thought of Buddhism in its earliest stage and established the term kompon bukkyo or “fundamental Buddhism” as a designation for early Buddhism as distinguished from Buddhism in its later stages of development.
Under the influence of his friend Takayama Chogyu, he became a follower of Nichiren Buddhism.