Tentative (provisional) English definitions of Jiyū Shūkyō (自由宗教) and Kiitsu Kyōkai (帰一教會)

自由宗教 (Jiyū Shūkyō)

Together the term jiyū shūkyō (自由宗教) literally means “free religion,” but is better translated more discursively as, “a creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion or spirituality.” 

自 (ji): This character means “self” or “oneself.” It can also imply “automatic” or “from oneself.”

由 (yū): This character means “reason,” “cause,” “significance”, or “origin.” It can convey the idea of something being due to a specific reason or cause.

Here’s how Rinzai Zen master, Keido Fukushima Roshi, talks about the meaning of the word jiyū in his book “Zen Bridge: The Zen Teachings of Fukushima Roshi: (eds Grace Schireson and Peter Schireson, Wisdom Publications, 2017, ch. 23):

I’d like to explain this notion of freedom. There are two characters in the Japanese word jiyu, which is a special Zen term that we usually translate as “freedom.” I believe it’s better not to translate this word as freedom, but to simply remember it as jiyu. The original meaning of the term in ancient China was actually close to the modern meaning of “freedom,” but with the advent of Zen in China, many Chinese Zen masters began to use jiyu as a special Zen term. So it’s important to understand the meaning of the word in the context of Zen.

The problem with translating jiyu simply as “freedom” is quite complicated. Chinese characters were in use in Japan even before Buddhism arrived. We Japanese have used Chinese characters in unique and specific ways down through the ages. Then during the Meiji period (late nineteenth to early twentieth century), Western thought, including the Western concept of freedom and liberty, arrived in Japan. At the beginning of the Meiji era, Japanese scholars struggled with how to translate Western terms and concepts into Japanese. One scholar decided to use the characters for jiyu to translate the Western concept of freedom and liberty. But this was not quite correct. Although the term jiyu had existed in Japan for a long time, aside from Zen monks, few were familiar with it. So when jiyu was used to translate the Western notion of freedom and liberty, most Japanese came to understand jiyu in this sense, without ever having known the Zen sense of the term. This is why I find it problematic to simply translate jiyu as “freedom.”    

Zen is a religion that is free from attachments. Zen has absolutely no attachments. We come to know our attachments through Zen training. When we throw them away, we experience the state of nonattachment. We cannot be free while we are attached; it doesn’t matter whether our attachment is conscious or unconscious. Unconscious delusions are a big problem for mankind. We don’t realize that we have these unconscious delusions, and so we act them out over and over again. 

宗 (shū): This character means “religion,” “sect,” or “denomination.” It can also imply the core or main principle of a thought or belief system.

教 (kyō): This character means “teach” or “doctrine.” It is often used in the context of religious teachings or education.

帰一教會 (Kiitsu Kyōkai) 

This is a term sometimes translated as “Unitarian Church” or “Unity Fellowship.” 

帰 (ki): This character means “return,” “revert,” or “go back to.” It can also imply belonging to something or coming home.

一 (ichi): This character means “one,” “single,” or “unity.” It symbolizes oneness, unity, or singularity, often used to denote the highest or ultimate.

教 (kyō): This character means “teach” or “doctrine.” It is often used in the context of religious teachings or education. NB: the 教 (kyō) of 帰一教會 (Kiitsu Kyōkai) is also the same kyō of 自由宗教 (Jiyū Shūkyō).

會 (kai, simplified form: 会): This character means “to meet,” “to gather,” or “to assemble.” It can also refer to an association, a meeting, a fellowship or a gathering. 

Perhaps the most common way of writing the word kyōkai in Japanese uses the characters 協会, and in this form the word simply means “assembly”, “association”, “federation” or “society.” However, kyōkai written using the characters (教会, almost always (but not exclusively) means a “church,” i.e. a Christian church. In order to avoid this association, Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei (1881-1988) (the key, twentieth-century Japanese Unitarian and advocate of jiyū shūkyō), chose to use the older Chinese character for kai (會) rather than its simplified, modern form (会). By doing this Imaoka-sensei intended that his rendering of kyōkai (教會) should suggest a religious community that was no longer simply a type of Unitarian church but something much more expansive and inclusive. Imaoka-sensei hoped that his rendering of Kiitsū Kyōkai (帰一教會) would be able to suggest to people the meanings of koinonia in Greek (meaning fellowship, joint participation, partnership, the share which one has in anything, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution) and gemeinshaft in German (meaning a spontaneously arising organic social relationship characterized by strong reciprocal bonds of sentiment and kinship within a common tradition). He also hoped to suggest the kind of “community church” developed by the American Unitarian minister, John Haynes Holmes. And, there was still another influence in play, namely, the mu-kyōkai (無教会), the “non-church,” lay movement of Uchimura Kanzō.

In connection with this latter influence, is also important to note that earlier in his life, when Imaoka-sense was in Kobe and working with the radical Congregationalists, he met the important non-sectarian religious and spiritual teacher and exemplar, Tenkō-san (Tenkō Nishida) who also promoted the idea of a non-paid, non-professional ministry. Consequently, this was also something Imaoka-sensei tried to convey through his chosen characters.

And linked to all of this was, of course, jiyū shūkyō (自由宗教 “free religion”), the religious and spiritual centre of gravity for his fellowship. To repeat, it’s vital to realise that the kyō (教 — i.e. the teaching) of jiyū shūkyō (自由宗教) is the kyō (教) offered up within the Kiitsu Kyōkai.

Imaoka wanted his new Kiitsu Kyōkai (帰一教會) to be the “community church” of Holmes’ dream, something that united (kiitsu) everyone in the common cause of achieving a better, more equitable, more beautiful, more just community (kyōkai) and this was the name’s local meaning (see the discussion in George M. Williams, Cosmic Sage—Imaoka Shin’ichirō: Prophet of Free Religion, Uniquest Publishing, Hawai’i, p. 285). As Williams sums up, Imaoka-sensei was convinced that:

One becomes human in community (à la Holmes’ community church and in progressive Shinto or Buddhism’s true Sangha). For Imaoka community had four dimensions, as if legs to a table, a metaphor for personal, local, national and international. The perspective for all four was a cosmic interconnection of all beings, animate and inanimate, with the universe. Community was kyōkai (教會), in places of learning – in church, school, art, literature, even politics and economics. One must use one’s own freedom in community with others who are also free to transform life toward the good, true and beautiful. Together, through humanizing ethics, we evolve toward becoming cosmic human beings. Through learning and growth together, in a unifying community, kiitsu kyōkai is created as a unity of religious and secular (George M. Williams, Cosmic Sage—Imaoka Shin’ichirō: Prophet of Free Religion, Uniquest Publishing, Hawai’i, p. 314-315).