Japanese society in the 1950s and 1960s was filled with anxieties about “the kids these days.” Demobilized soldiers returned home from the Asia-Pacific War addicted to methamphetamine, creating a short-lived drug epidemic. Children growing up unsupervised in Japan’s firebombed cities dabbled in larceny and gobbled up pornography. New forms of media such as television and cinema offered alluring depictions of sex and violence. Journalists and filmmakers gleefully depicted the tawdry state of affairs through documentary depictions of teen criminals, titillating exposés of juvenile delinquency, and sensational coverage of the youth-led mass protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty. At a loss for what to do, leading governmental figures began calling for “more religion” as a solution to Japan’s myriad social problems. Buddhists responded by generating educational treatises suggesting that introducing Buddhist teachings in public schools could help develop a morally upright citizenry. While these creative Buddhist attempts to make bad kids good failed, in retrospect they show how moral panics about misbehaved youths spurred some of the most doctrinally innovative Buddhist thinking of the twentieth century.