Labour, then temples
Chinese and Japanese migration from the middle of the 19th century built the first Buddhist temples outside Asia, in Hawaii, California and British Columbia. The Buddhist Churches of America trace their origin to Jōdo Shinshū missions from 1899; the word churches was chosen deliberately, to be legible to American neighbours.
Japanese American Buddhists were interned during the Second World War, their priests among the first arrested, and they rebuilt their temples afterwards.
Refugees and new arrivals
The second wave was far larger. After the reform of United States immigration law in 1965 and the wars in Indochina, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, Sri Lankan and Chinese communities founded hundreds of temples. Tibetans resettled in India, Nepal, Switzerland, Canada and the United States. Britain, France, Australia and Germany saw the same pattern on their own terms.
What a temple does
For these communities the temple is more than a place of practice. It is the language school, the funeral provider, the new year festival, the welfare office, and the one place where children regularly meet elders who remember the old country.
The practice is often devotional and communal rather than meditative, which is why converts and immigrant Buddhists can live in the same city and rarely meet. Scholars have called this two Buddhisms. The line is blurring in the second and third generations, who sometimes meet the meditation tradition before they meet their grandparents' one.
Why it matters
Buddhist traditions put down roots far beyond Asia, often through families and temples.
History and tradition
What historians can say
Documented by congregational surveys, temple records, census data and immigration statistics. Counting Buddhists in Western countries is unreliable: many people practise without claiming the label, and others claim it without belonging anywhere.