<p>This volume is the culmination of sixteen years of research and engagement in the growing Socially Engaged Buddhist movement of Japan. Volume I provides an essential presentation of historical themes that make Japanese Buddhism so unique and hard to understand for even other Buddhists in Asia. </p><p><br></p><p>Volume I also provides a critical and comprehensive survey of Socially Engaged Buddhism in the modern era, which for the postwar period has never been fully documented.</p><p><br></p><p>Volume II presents the new Socially Engaged Buddhist activities of 21st century Japan, a dynamic movement arising out of the social crisis of</p><p>Japan's "disconnected society" (<em>mu-en shakai</em>).</p><p><br></p><p>These volumes are the third major publication of the Engaged Buddhism Project of the International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC) @ Kodosan in Yokohama, Japan. They follow its two volumes dedicated to the Northeast Japan tsunami and nuclear disaster in <em>This Precious Life: Buddhist Tsunami Relief and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Post 3/11 Japan</em> (2012) ' <em>Lotus in the Nuclear Sea: Fukushima and the Promise of Buddhism in the Nuclear Age</em> (2013).</p>