12th Enemy Encounters Webinar “Creating Enmity in Pre-Modern Nichiren Buddhism”

[Barend Noordam]

Dear colleagues, 

  

Please see below for information about the twelfth session of the 2025-2026 Enemy Encounters in East Asia webinar series of the Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East” at Heidelberg University and the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, Germany.

 

“The Poisoned Drum: Creating Enmity as a Tactic in Pre-Modern Nichiren Buddhism”

Dan Sherer 

(Lecturer, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

• December 11, 2025, 3:00 PM (Heidelberg, CET) via ZOOM.
• The webinar will be recorded, but not the question time.
• If you would like to attend the webinars, please contact barend....@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de.

In this session, Dan Sherer (Lecturer, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will share his thoughts on Pre-Modern Nichiren Buddhism and enemization in Japan:

 

For the Japanese Buddhist sect founded by Nichiren (1222 - 1282), enmity was a major concern. Nichiren believed that Buddhism not based in the Lotus Sutra was not merely incorrect, it was in effect a slander against the Lotus. This slander, and the support of these slanderers by the rulers of Japan had led the buddhas and the gods to abandon Japan, leading to natural disasters, political instability, and foreign invasion. To save Japan Nichiren and his disciples would need to make enemies. For most people, creating enemies would be, at best, a necessary but unfortunate part of life. But for Nichiren and his disciples, enmity was a feature of correct proselytizing that benefitted not only the converted but those who opposed them. In this talk I will discuss how Nichiren and his disciples in premodern Japan thought about enemies and enmity, and how they used the creation of enmity as a tactic.

 

BACKGROUND

For more information about the Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East”, please go to our website https://www.ambivalentenmity.uni-heidelberg.de/en.

 

The RTG also produces the podcast series Enemy Encounters which features interviews and in-depth discussions conducted by members of the RTG with scholars, researchers and journalists about various cases of ambivalent enmity in Eurasia as a whole. It can be accessed here and here.

 

This project has received funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).

 

Kind regards,

 

 

 

Barend Noordam