Cosmic Sage: Imaoka Shin'ichirō, Prophet of Free Religion

by George M. Williams

Cosmic Sage attempts to weave together Imaoka Shin’ichirō’s life story and his message. It will reveal the spiritual pilgrimage of a Bodhisattva-Kami-Christian-Unitarian-sage, the Emerson of Japan. Each chapter will provide a setting from which Imaoka's thought and insights can be understood. However, his thought and their expressions were never put together in extended studies or systematically developed. Metaphor, paradox and wordplay merit him being compared with Emerson. This book has been written to explore his influence on liberating religious traditions of Japan, to probe the paradoxes in having multiple religious identities, to follow the faith journey of a “student of life.” Each segment of his life was “like a school, a place of learning with its time for graduation,” as Imaoka-sensei would say. Each graduation was to be valued as it had contributed to one’s life and growth.

390 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2019

Reviews

[Betsy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a biography of an inspiring man. It could use some editing, since some information is given twice or more. For a person with my interests in Free Religion, interfaith and multi-faith people and gatherings, and in particular, the International Association for Religious Freedom (which Rev. Imaoka thought should be named the Int Assoc for Free Religion), it is quite fascinating. The first chapters deal with the mission to Japan of my faith group, the Unitarian Universalists, which failed due to lack of a clear vision of what it was to accomplish. It had positive effects on some Japanese, who must have been more than ready for a formulation of what they were seeking. They created their own word, yuniterian, for all things open-minded and forward-looking, and they were very disappointed that the American Unitarians c. 1895 were not all of that bent. As their country drifted more toward authoritarian and military endeavors, they longed for more tangible support for their liberal approach.
Imaoka went on the live to the age of 106, continuing to explore and educate and support a broad outlook.

[John Burciaga]

This is a valuable book, taking the Western reader into a world that at best we think we know but do not...uncovering the spirituality of the East through a remarkable person whose broadness of soul gives a new dimension to what we cavalierly call "free religion"...but can benefit from a man belonging to a world outside of America--the Emerson of Japan...And Williams is a real scholar, not confined to our perspective, who is familiar with religious aspects that we are the poorer for having ignored or avoided...So much information is here made to be easily read without being ponderous, in a flow of language and expression that engages from start to finish...