Buddhism in Japan movement to eradicate Buddhism and bring Shinto to ascendancy arose throughout the country due to the strong connections of Buddhism to the Shōguns. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), after a coup in 1868, Japan abandoned its feudal system and opened up to Western modernism. Shinto became the state religion. Within the Buddhist establishment the Western world was seen as a threat as well as a challenge to stand up to. Buddhist institutions had a simple choice: adapt or perish. Rinzai and Soto Zen chose to adapt, trying to modernize Zen in accord with Western insights, while simultaneously maintaining a Japanese
Critical Buddhism epistemology." Critical Buddhism targeted specifically certain concepts prevalent in Japanese Mahayana Buddhism and rejected them as being non-buddhist. For example, Matsumoto Shirō and Hakamaya Noriaki reject the doctrine of Tathagatagarbha, which according to their view is at odds with the fundamental Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination. Critical Buddhism became known to Western scholarship due to a panel discussion held at the American Academy of Religion's 1993 meeting in Washington, DC with the title "Critical Buddhism: Issues and Responses to a New Methodological Movement", which led to an English collection of essays. Critical Buddhism Critical Buddhism (Japanese: 批判仏教, hihan bukkyō) is