 Inoue draws on concepts and frameworks that were current in the West in the field of “comparative religion” or the “scientific study of religion.” Max Müller, whose thinking informed the spirit of the World’s Parliament of Religions in which a number of Japanese Buddhists participated, speaks of a human faith in the infinite or absolute within the historical world, and of the “struggle to conceive the inconceivable” (Introduction to the Science of Religions, 1870, quoted in Ketelaar 1990, p. 146). This language was seen to resonate with the Buddhist tradition, providing it with broad categories by which Japanese Buddhists were able to situate their traditions in modern, philosophically recognizable frameworks.