I will present firstly an overview of the introductions and receptions of Herbert Spencer in Japan during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the “Spencer boom” in the 1880’s, the Japanese government’s consultation of Spencer on policy matters, and the usages of Spencer by both conservative government ideologues and the opposition in the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement (Jiyūminkenundō). While many scholars have focused on these political uses of Herbert Spencer, I will highlight a second, but crucial and unexplored path of Spencer’s influence in Japan: that of Buddhist philosophy. While at times critical of Spencer, reforming Buddhist philosophers in late-nineteenth century Japan embraced and disseminated Spencer’s theories of evolution, and his ideas proved an important stimulus for religious thought. This, I will argue, adds an important global dimension to the assessment of Spencer’s worldwide influence, and should broaden the parameters of the discussion on the relation between “religion” and evolution, a debate which is almost entirely dominated by the relations between evolution and Christianity. Finally, I will discuss some possible reasons for the decline of Spencer’s influence in Japan after the turn of the century.