This presentation introduces my dissertation research on Ōtani-ha Shin Buddhism and the specific human rights issue of descent-based discrimination. The goal of my research is to analyze this issue in its historical and institutional context, and discover how Shin ethical thought and ideology was formulated within that context. For this presentation, I will begin by describing the concrete manifestations of buraku discrimination within Ōtani-ha structure and procedure. By the late 1910s and early 1920s, these drew intense, organized protest from buraku advocacy groups. Then, I will summarize the ideology, heavily laced with Shin doctrine, of Takeuchi Ryō’on (武内了温, 1891-1967) and his institutional followers. Takeuchi's understanding of buraku discrimination and the proper moral responses to that discrimination on the part of sect followers, created a sub-group within the Ōtani-ha institution that continues to the present day. Takeuchi's ideology, however, clashed with the Marxist, liberationist ideology of the principal buraku advocacy groups.

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