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Is Zen Buddhism?
DAVID R. LOY
THE EASTERN BUDDHIST
Volume 28, Number 2, Autumn 1995, pp.273-286
273
It may be considered strange that Zen has it any way been
affiliated with the spirit of the military classes of Japan.
Whatever form Buddhism takes in the various countries where it
flourishes, it is a religion of compassion, and in its varied
history it has never been found engaged in warlike activities. How
is it, then, that Zen has come to activate the fighting spirit of
the Japanese warrior?
-- D. T. Suzuki(1)
SUZUKI'S QUESTION REMAINS the most problematic one for understanding
the place of Zen within Buddhism and comparative religion generally.
In his provocative study Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the
Samurai Psyche,(2) Winston L. King raises this issue on the first page
and reminds us that such perversions of moral and religious ideals are
not found only in Japan. We need only consider "how the simple
otherworldly ethic of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, to love those
who hate us and turn the other cheek to those who strike us could have
been transformed into the Crusaders" gospel of killing infidel
Saracens or into a church of bitterly feuding and even warring sects.
The answers to all such questions are always complex and
unsatisfactory. "This response too, for valid as it is it overlooks
the most important issue: the difference between our understanding of
the Crusader, who would now be considered benighted by all but the
most fundamentalist Christians, and the reputation of the Zen samurai
spirit among contemporary Japanese and those likely to read this
article. The problem, then, is not only how this perversion of
Buddhism occurred, but why samurai Zen continues to be accepted and
praised as a legitimate form of Buddhism.
King never addresses this question squarely, although at times he
comes close. Instead, Zen and the Way of the Sword provides a concise
and admirably clear introduction to a fascinating subject. An
explanation of Zen practice and experience is followed by chapters on
how the samurai adopted Zen (and
--------
1.Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1959/1973), 61.
2.New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
274
how they adapted to each other); the history of the Japanese warrior;
the nature, history and forging of the Japanese sword (in loving
detail and with many illustrations); the samurai code of bushido; the
art of swordsmanship during the enforced peacetime of the Tokugawa
period; and, the most provocative, a critical evaluation of D. T.
Suzuki's views on Zen swordsmanship. It concludes with a rather
cursory consideration of martial arts today outside as well as inside
Japan, which is such a vast subject that King is able to touch on only
a few examples.
The author's delight in swordmaking and swordmanship is
contagious. There are many line drawings, evidently from old prints,
on armor and fighting techniques, castles and battle formations, sword
forging and testing, as well as the proper way to commit seppuku. This
information does not break any new ground (and no Japanese-language
sources are cited), but it is brought together into a well-organized
overview which expands the context beyond Zen and Japanese culture to
bring in more general questions about the relationship between
religion and society.
Nonetheless, Zen and the Way of the Sword is better on the sword
than on Zen. The first chapter attempts to summarize the Buddhist and
Taoist roots of Zen, the role of the Zen master, the function of the
Zen koan and the meaning of Zen enlightenment into 17 pages, and is as
unsatisfactory as one would expect. King provides no personal glimpses
into his qualifications for explaining Zen enlightenment, and his own
efforts are not encouraging: What did Koresada realize when his nose
was twisted? "Probably that Reality and Truth are within " (166). His
main sources are Philip Kapleau (who, despite what is said on page 21,
never received inka from his teacher Yasutani Hakuun) and especially
D. T. Suzuki. There are many quotations from Suzuki's writings, which
raises problems that King does not address, if it is no longer
satisfactory to accept his version of Zen uncritically. King does not
shrink from making some telling criticisms of Suzuki later, but this
critique is limited by the fact that King has been dependent on Suzuki
for setting the terms of the discussion. The usual birfurcations are
central to his explanations: intellectual, cerebral, conceptual,
conscious, deliberate is bad; existential, visceral, intuitive,
unconscious, instinctive is good. Given how much Suzuki criticized
dualism, it is difficult to overlook how problematic these ones are.
For one thing, such category-oppositions have a history and a context
within Western thought that tends to be lost when they are translated
into such a different language as Japanese, and vice-versa: so we must
be cautious about understanding the Japanese understanding of Zen in
such terms. That Suzuki's English was excellent due to his years in
the United States does not alleviate the problem but aggravates it:
how much do his English writings skillfully adapt Zen to Western
sensibilities? That is, how much did he tell us what we wanted to
hear? These
275
considerations have become important yet King does not raise them.
Another problem with such categories is that they conveniently
valorize characteristics that just happen to be Japanese. For example:
"Zen wants to act, and the most effective act, once the mind is made
up, is to go on without looking backward. In this respect, Zen is
indeed the religion of the samurai warrior. (Suzuki)(3). This
exemplifies a general trait that Robert Bellah considers the most
important of Japanese society: its goal-oriented behavior. According
to Nakamura Hajime, "Japanese Buddhists came to maintain the view that
one should repudiate traditional disciplines in the name of
disciplines for the promotion of productive activities. " To make the
same point from another perspective, Japanese culture is less
interested in abstract theory and universalized principles than
Indian. This raises again the old question how much of Zen is Buddhist
and how much of Zen is Japanese. Then is Zen anti-intellectualism an
aspect of Buddhist enlightenment, of the Japanese version of
enlightenment, or of the Japanese understanding of enlightenment?
Raising such questions about the differences betwen Pali Buddhism
and Japanese Buddhism brings us back to the most important issue, the
relationship betwen Zen and the samurai spirit.
I I
The Hinayana, which tends to condemn life, has remained strict in
the prohibition of killing; and it is the Mahayana, which extolls
life, that has ended up by finding excuses for killing and even
for its glorification.
--Paul Demieville(6)
Whether or not Pali Buddhism condemns life, it is strict in its
prohibition
---------------
3.D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series (New York: Harper
and Row, 1949),84.
4.Robert N. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern
Japan (New York: The Free Press, 1957), 188. For a more general
discussion of the differences between East Asia and South Asia, and
where the West fits into them, see David Loy, " Transcendence East and
West," Man and World 26, no. 4: 403-427.
5.Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, rev. trans.,
ed. by Philip P. Wiener (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1964),
505. Nakamur's emphasis.
6."Le Bouddhisme et la guerre," Melanges (Paris: Institut des Hautes
Etudes Chinoises, 1957), 353.
276
against taking life. The eightfold path includes right action (not
destroying life, etc.) and right livelihood (not making one's living
through a profession that brings harm to others, such as trading in
arms and weapons, soldiering, killing animals, etc.). The Dhammapada
expresses the psychological dimension of such an attitude: "Never by
hatred is hatred appeased, but it is appeased by kindness. This is an
eternal truth. "(44) "The victor breeds hatred, and the defeated lie
down in misery. He who renounces both victory and defeat is happy and
peaceful." (46)
Depending on how one understands life ("we must transcend the dualism
of life and death") and killing ( "no one kills, no one is killed ") ,
it is possible to take these prohibitions in more subtle ways. The
danger with this, however, is a sophistry that can end up
rationalizing Buddhism itself away. In his admirable study "The Modern
State and Warfare: Is there a Buddhist Position? " Brian (Daizen)
Victoria finds "no evidence in what are generally considered to be the
fundamental tenets of Buddhism (centered on the Four Noble Truths and
Holy Eight-fold Path) that would condone an adherent's participation
in the killing of other human beings for any reason whatsoever. Thus,
Buddhism, at least in its earliest formulation, must be considered to
take the position of absolute pacifism as its normative standard of
conduct."(7) The life of Sakyamuni Buddha, as conveyed in the Nikayas
for example, is completely consistent with such teachings. It is
inconceivable that he could have lived as a samurai, or that he would
have approved of any such use of his teachings.
What Victoria says about the early Buddhist sangha enables us to
develop this contrast further:
The Sangha was organized to be a non-coercive, non-authoritarian,
democratic society where leadership came only from good moral
character and spiritual insight. It is an order of society which
has no political ambitions within the nation, and in whose ranks
there is no striving for leadership. It seeks to persude men and
women to follow its way, by example and exhortation, not by
force. By completely eliminating the then prevalent caste system
from its ranks, Buddha Sakyamuni may rightly be considered one of
history's first leaders not only to advocate but actually to
practice his belief in the basic
-----------
7.In the 1990 Anthology of Fo Kuang Shan International Buddhist
Conference, 378. "My reading of Buddhist political history tells me
that every time Buddhist leaders have closely aligned themselves with
the political ruler of their day, the Buddha Sangha has become corrupt
and degenerate...The Sangha's often slavish subservience to, and
actions on behalf of, their rulers have resulted, in my opinion, in
its becoming the de facto pimp and prostitute of the State."(379)
277
equality of all human beings. He clearly hoped that the religious
and social ideals of the Sangha would one day permeate the whole
of society. (369)
How well have these ideals permeated Japanese Buddhism?
Historically, Japan has been very good at adapting to foreign
influences, and Buddhism is famously adaptable. This adaptability has
been a two-edged sword, enabling Buddhism to permeate other cultures
by adapting their religious institutions to its own ends, but also
allowing Buddhism to be coopted (even, in its birthplace, to be
assimilated by the "fraternal embrace" of Hinduism, as Coomaraswamy
put it). The Mahayana doctrine that samsara is nothing other than
nirvana may be understood in opposite ways: the true sunya nature of
samsara may be taken as nirvana itself, or nirvana redefined in more
this- worldly ways which end up rationalizing cravings, nationalism
and subservience to secular authority.
From this perspective, the basic problem with Japanese Buddhism
appeared at the very beginning: Buddhism was first brought into Japan
by the ruling classes, who saw it as a potent means to preserve the
nation -- which for them meant their own position, of course. Zen
arrived several centuries later, yet it continued a pattern that by
then had been set. King cites the case of Eisai (1141 - 1215), the
"founder" of Zen, as typical. After returning from his second trip to
China, during which he was ordained as a Rinzai master, Eisai found
that his "new" Buddhism was not acceptable to the Tendai hierarchy at
Enryakuji. So he went to Kamakura, where he gained the favor of the
widow of the first shogun Minamoto Yoritomo, and she established a new
temple for him. His first major writing was Treatise on the Spread of
Zen for the Protection of the Nation. (Dogen too wrote a work, now
lost, entitled The Method of Protecting the Country by the True
Dharma.) Only later was he invited back to Kyoto as an honored
monk-teacher. If the traditional stories can be trusted, establishing
oneself by currying the favor of the powerful was not the way of
Sakyamuni, nor the way of the early Chinese patriarchs, who only
reluctantly answered the requests of emperors to become national
teachers.(8) The contact with secular authority is not in itself
objectionable; according to the Nikayas Sakyamuni had numerous
dealings with rulers, but as teacher and adviser, evidently because
his Dharma was respected for itself, as an alternative authoritative
Law. The problem arises when Buddhist teachings and pres-
--------------
8.This was not as true later. "While Buddhist monks in the southern
part of China(under the Chin dynasty) successfully maintained their
independence of the State, their northern counterparts did not fare as
well. Faced with non-Chinese rulers, Buddhists monks offered their
services as political, diplomatic and military advisers"(King, 371).
278
tige are appropriated for other ends, as an ideology that supports the
state and justifies privilege and class.
If, as Victoria points out, Sakyamuni believed in the equality of
all human beings and hoped sangha ideals would come to permeate all of
society, the issue of social hierarchy is especially problematical for
Japanese Zen, which came to emphasize devotion to one's lord more than
one's personal path of liberation from desire and delusion. Or, more
precisely, the two tended to be equated: to let-go of oneself was
understood to mean identifying completely with one's daimyo. "I have
no desire to attain buddhahood, " Yamamoto Tsunetomo, author of the
Hagakure, wrote after he had retired to become a monk. "The sincere
resolution deeply engraved on my mind is to be reborn for as many as
seven times as a Nabeshima samurai and administer our clan." However
praiseworthy this may be as an example of egolessness, it still needs
to be asked in what sense Yamamoto is a Buddhist monk.
King identifies an inbuilt factor in Buddhism which tended to work
against its own teaching that life is sacred: a doctrine of karmic
destiny. "And free as Zen may have been in some respects from the
bonds of the Buddhist tradition, it was not free from the bonds of the
teaching of karma" (33). Karma is a complicated issue in Buddhism and
it is too simple to say that Zen encourages us to accept such karma,
yet something like that seems to be implied by the repeated
exhortation to become one with our immediate circumstances. King also
cites the strong sense of family loyalty and tradition, especially
among the Japanese upper classes. As an endorsement of one's family
and occupation, however, these attitudes become questionable in the
light of Sakyamuni's own example -- not only when they lead to
violating the precept against killing, but because the sangha was
originally established as an alternative to such family and caste
obligations, which Sakyamuni himself had obviated by abandoning his
own family and royal position.
The difficulty with accepting one's "karmic destiny" is that a
collective "wego", such as the Japanese understanding of egolessness
encouraged, is not intrinsically superior to the individual ego. It
may be even more dangerous, depending on how those energies are
channelled. It is relevant, therefore, that the absolute loyalty
expected by family-heads and daimyo did not extend to interdaimyo
relations, for the daimyo did not consider their own compacts to be
binding. As King points out, such agreements tended to be marriages of
convenience, "acagey betting on the winner of the next set of battles,
cemented by intermarriages and hostages. Hence Japanese military
history is full of temporary alliances, broken or shifted when
conditions changed" (132).
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Eisai Õs relationship
with the secular powers-that-be developed into a Faustian compact
fatal to the original nonviolent spirit of Buddhism. That Zen taught
the samurai how to be loyal to
279
their daimyo and how to fight better for their daimyo elevated that
social relationship above the fundamental Buddhist precept not to kill
any living beings, especially humans. If it is important to recognize
the problems with Western subject-object dualism, what about the
dualism that pits me and my daimyo against you and yours? When we
consider all the killing that has occurred on behalf of abstractions
like God and the future socialist utopia, egoless devotion to a
particular person can seem attractive; but only until we ask whether
what inspired that daimyo was anything more than his (and his clan's)
own lust for power, wealth and prestige. Accepting one's karmic role
in such a social system does provide a clear solution to the perennial
problem about the meaning of one's life, yet we should be clear that
this was not Sakyamuni's solution.
The Code of the Samurai exhorts that "one who is a samurai must before
all things keep constantly in mind, by day and by night,... the fact
that he has to die. That is his chief business" (126). No one would
deny that Zen should help us to be able to die; but one may still be
uncomfortable with the other idea implicit here, that this will enable
us to kill better. The issue is, finally, an ethical one: did bushido
provide an ethic, or did it serve in place of an ethic? That is, did
it provide some moral authority tempering the power of secular
authority? King quotes Roger Ames: "bushido being centered in this
resolution to die, it is not in any strict sense an ethical system at
all... In essence, it does not represent any particular mode of
conduct or normative standards" (125). This may remind us of the
bodhisattva, whose compassionate activities are not limited by the
bounds of conventional morality, yet it is very different, because
insofar as Zen did not provide an alternative moral perspective on the
hierarchical and predatory social system, it became coopted by it. As
Ames continues: "Of course, historically, the proponent of bushido,
the samurai, did align himself with a prevailing morality, or more
likely was born into circumstances where the decision of moral
alignment was predetermined."
I think King puts his finger on the problem:
If, as Suzuki claims, Zen is impatient with all rationalizing
and ethicizing and believes only in visceral-intuitive
rightness, if it can be (as already noted) "wedded to anarchism
or fascism, comunism or democracy, atheism or idealism or any
political or economic dogmatism," serving any master that
happens to be dominant at the time or place where Zen is, can it
be called "Buddhist" in any meaningful sense; or is it only a
subjective energy-providing technique?
...For essentially Zen, with its slight regard for scripture and
280
literary or ritual tradition, has no means of checking its
"Buddhist" quality from time to time or maintaining a consistent
witness to a good or holy life-pattern. (190-191)
Perhaps this gives us some insight into the recent scandals in many
U.S. Zen centers, whose teachers (mostly Japanese or Japanese-trained)
were discovered to have engaged in sexual, financial and other
misconduct. If King is right, the basic difficulty is that Zen
training does not in itself prepare such teachers to deal with the
kinds of moral dilemmas and temptations that their positions expose
them to, especially in a more individualistic, non-Confucian society.
Suzuki could not help touching on the problem of morality in his
Zen and Japanese Culture chapters on swordmanship. King quotes most of
a long paragraph that encapsulates Suzuki's view:
The sword is generally associated with killing, and most of us wonder
how it can come into connection with Zen, which is a school of
Buddhism that teaches the gospel of love and mercy. The fact is
that the art of swordsmanship distinguishes between the sword that
kills and the sword that gives life. The one that is used by a
technician cannot go any further than killing, for he never
appeals to the sword unless he intends to kill. The case is
altogether different with the one who is compelled to lift the
sword. For it is really not he but the sword itself that does the
killing. He has no desire to do harm to anybody, but the enemy
appears and makes himself a victim. It is as though the sword
performs automatically its function of justice, which is the
function of mercy. This is the kind of sword that Christ is said
to have brought among us. It is not meant just for bringing the
peace mawkishly cherished by sentimentalists... [This sword] is no
more a weapon of self-defense or an instrument of killing, and the
swordsman turns into an artist of the first grade, engaged in
producing a work of genuine originality. (Suzuki, 145)
This is not one of Suzuki's better paragraphs. According to it,
selflessness makes the killing sword into a life-giving instrument of
righteousness, for the man who has mastered the art does not use the
sword; thus the opponent may be said to kill himself. "[T]he enemy is
filled with the evil spirit of killing and so he is killed by this
evil spirit" (Suzuki, 180). In the Japanese feudal era, though, were
all enemies really evil? And what would happen, then, if feuding
daimyo required two enlightened swordmasters to fight? Would each be
killed by the selfless sword of the other?
King too finds such apologetics unconvincing. He is left "almost
speechless"
281
by the logic that produces this Zen work of genuine originality, as if
a blow that kills were ethically indistinguishable from the
brushstroke of a calligraphy master. "There is a vague and imprecise
hope that the Zen-inspired sword is, indeed, functioning as an
instrument of "justice" -- one presumes in the conceptual, moralistic
sense of the word. But it is apparently not absolutely necessary that
it be so to make such deeds beyond and above ordinary ethical
judgments" (186).
In sum, insofar as the Zen experience "transcends" concepts and
ethics, and emphasizes oneness with one's situation, its Japanese
practitioners seem more vulnerable to the prevailing ideology and more
likely to be coopted by the dominant social system. Instead of
providing a moral and spiritual perspective on secular authority, Zen
ends up sacralizing secular authority.
III
Despite some passages (such as the above paragraph on Zen
swordsmanship) that lend themselves to such cooptation, Suzuki himself
did not fall into this trap. His twelve years in the U.S. and Europe
(1897 - 1909) provided him with an international perspective on the
emperor system, state Shinto, militarism, and the self-righteous
"Japanese spirit" they propagated.(9)
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for most of his colleagues
in the Zen world, who did not benefit from such a lengthy
internationalization. For example, Suzuki's teacher Shaku Soen, a
progressive, university-educated roshi who portrayed Buddhism as a
"universal religion" at the Chicago World
9.For a detailed study of Suzuk's social and political views, see
Kiyohide Kirita,"D.T.Suzuki on Society and the State," in Rude
Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School & the Question of Nationalism,
edited by James W. Heisig and John c. Maraldo (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1995), 52-74. For an example of Suzuki's antiwar views,
see "Why Do We Fight?" The Eastern Buddhist os vol. 1, no. 4
(November-December 1921), 270-281. A note on Shinran in The Eastern
Buddhist os vol. 1, no. 5 contrasts him favorable with Nichiren, who
"inspired the militarists of some years ago when a jingoistic spirit
reigned in this country" (395-396). "Buddhism and Education" ( The
Eastern Buddhist os vol. 8, no. 1 [May 1949], 36-45) contrasts Shinto
and Buddhism: "Shinto is warlike, militant, and devoid of a loving
spirit; while Buddhismm: "Shinto is warlike, militant, and devoid of a
loving spirit; while Buddhism is just the opposite, for it teaches
all-embracing love which knows no enemy of whatever nature"(36). "My
firm conviction is that if Buddhism held the Japanese statesmen,
militists, and people generally in its firmer grasp, that is, if Japan
had been governed by Buddhism and not by shinto as she has been until
recently, there would have been no such war as the one whose most
ignominious catastrophe was Japanese are all experiencing just at
present"(37).
282
Parliament of Religions, actively supported the Russo-Japanese War
(1904-5) and justified it in terms embarrassing to read today:
War is not necessarily horrible, provided that it is fought for
a just and honorable cause, that it is fought for the upholding of
humanity and civilization. Many material human bodies may be
destroyed, many humane hearts be broken, but from a broader point of
view these sacrifices are so many phoenixes consumed in the sacred
fire of spirituality, which will arise from the smoldering ashes
reanimated, ennobled, and glorified.(10)
Thus have all wars been justified by their apologists. When Tolstoy
wrote asking him to cooperate in appealing for peace, Soen refused and
visited the war front to encourage the troops, declaring that
war against evils must be unflinchingly prosecuted till we attain
the final aim. In the present hostilities, into which Japan has
entered with great reluctance, she pursues no egoistic purpose,
but seeks the subjugation of evils hostile to civilization, peace,
and enlightenment.... I came here with a double purpose. I wished
to have my faith tested by going through the greatest horrors of
life, but I also wished to inspire, if I could, our valiant
soldiers with the ennobling thoughts of the Buddha, so as to
enable them to die on the battlefield with the confidence that the
task in which they are engaged is great and noble. I wished to
convince them of the truths that this war is not a mere slaughter
of their fellow-beings, but that they are combatting an evil, and
that, at the same time, corporeal annihilation really means a
rebirth of soul, not in heaven, indeed, but here among
ourselves.(11)
Harada Sogaku (1870 - 1961), the abbot of Hosshin-ji, made the
identification between Zen and war complete and explicit:
Forgetting [the difference between] self and others in every
situation, you should always become completely one with your work.
[When ordered to] march -- tramp, tramp; [when ordered to] fire --
bang, bang; this is the clearest expression of the highest
Bodhi-wisdom, the
----------
10.Shaku Soyen, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot: Addresses on Religious
Subjects, trans. D. T. Suzuki(New York: Weiser, 1971),211-12. The full
text was originally published in 1906 and taken from a memorial
address for those who died in the war.
11.Shaku Soyen, Zen for Americans(LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Press,
reprinted 1974),201-3.
283
unity of Zen and war."
What is most discomforting about these words is not that Soen and
Harada support war, but that they invoke Buddhism to justify and
promote it. In Soen's case, a terminology appropriate to Armageddon is
used to excuse a war of colonial expansion. In Harada's case, the
nonduality of self and other -- an essential principle of Suzuki
"stimeless, ahistorical Zen -- is used in a way that flatly
contradicts the basic spirit of Sakyamuni "steachings. The issue is
complicated by the European colonization of Asia, which made the
Japanese fearful for their own independence; the Russo-Japanese War,
for example, was started in reaction to Russia "simperialist moves
into Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsula. What is not complicated,
however, is the unquestioned identification of Zen ideology with
nationalistic aims. If both Soen and Harada were politically and
historically benighted, or at least uncritical, one wonders how much
Zen anti-intellectualism played a part in this. Again, the problem is
not so much that they were products of their time, but how much Zen
contributed to making and keeping them so.
A recent paper by Robert Sharf, "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism"
, argues for a close relationship between such Zen ideology and
nihonjinron, the popular pseudo-science devoted to demonstrating the
uniqueness (and usually the superiority) of Japanese culture and
spirit. Sharf believes this is true not only for the Zen religious
establishment but for the philosophical proselytizers whose views have
been most influential in the West. He devotes a long section to
nihonjinron themes in D. T. Suzuki's writings which he traces back to
1935, when Suzuki began publishing a series of Zen books in Japanese
that are still largely unknown outside Japan. This section is not
persuasive, however, in the light of Kirita's much more detailed study
of Suzuki's social and political views. For example, during the
Pacific War Suzuki's non-Buddhist writings were concerned to find a
uniquely Japanese spirituality in Buddhism, especially in its Pure
Land sects; yet this did not lead him to exalt the Japanese people or
offer them as an example for the rest of the world to follow. The
following passage is typical:
The Japanese are highly sentimental and lacking in logic, have
difficulty in forming an independent judgment on the right and
-------------
12.Quoted in Daizen Victoria, "Japanese Corporate Zen," Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars 12, no. 1 (1980),65.
13.History of Religions 33, no. 1 (Auguest 1993),1-43.
Editor's note: Since republished in revised form in Donald S.
Lopez, Jr., ed., Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under
Colonialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995),pp. 107-160.
284
wrong of things, are only concerned about being ridiculed by
others, and are reluctant to enter into unknown and unexplored
areas, and if they should dare to do so, they do it recklessly and
without any plans made in advance.(14)
This is not nihonjinron. However, some of Sharf's other targets are
more difficult to defend. Suzuki's lifelong friend the philosopher
Nishida Kitaro "was himself guilty of the most spurious forms of
nihonjinron speculation", such as repeatedly characterizing Japanese
culture as one of "pure feeling", more emotional, aesthetic and
communal than (and, by implication, superior to) the intellectual,
rationalistic and scientific cultures of the West (23). In 1944, a
difficult year for all Japanese, Nishida declared that contemporary
Buddhists Òh ave forgotten [the] true meaning of the Mahayana. Eastern
culture must arise again from such a standpoint. It must contribute a
new light to world culture. As a self-determination of the absolute
present, the national polity (kokutai) of Japan is a norm of
historical action in such a perspective. The above mentioned true
spirit of the Mahayana is in the East preserved today only in
Japan."(15) This must be taken in the light of Nishida's support for
the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and for the Pacific
War.(16)
Such a nihonjinron attitude was evidently shared by Hisamatsu
Shin'ichi (1889-1980), who also believed that only Japanese have the
aesthetic and intellectual sensibility necessary to fathom Zen,
despite the fact that this truth was universal:
I have long spoken of "Oriental Nothingness"... I qualify it as
Oriental because in the West such Nothingness has never been fully
awakened, nor has there been penetration to such a level. However,
this does not mean that it belongs exclusively to the East. On the
contrary, it is the most profound basis or root source of man; in this
sense it belongs neither to the East or West. Only as regards the
actual Awakening to such a Self, there have been no instances in the
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14.Quoted in "D.T. Suzuki on Society and the State," 60. For its
source, Kirita gives the Collected Works (in Japanese), vol. 21, page
179.
15."Towards a Philosophy of Pre-established Harmony as a Guide,"
trans. David A. Dilworth, The Eastern Buddhist, NS, vol.3, no.1 (1970)
,36.See Sharf,
24. 16.How much Nishida supported them, and why,
are difficult issues discussed at length in Rude Awakenings. See
especially the chapters by Ives, Ueda, Yusa, and Jacinto Zavala.
285
West; hence the regional qualification "Oriental".(17)
Sharf recounts a well-known conversation between Hisamatsu and Suzuki
recorded at Harvard University in 1958:
Hisamatsu: Among the many people you've met or heard of (in the
West) is there anyone who you think has some understanding of Zen?
Suzuki: No one. Not yet anyway.
Hisamatsu: I see. Not yet. Well then, is there at least someone you
have hope for? (Laughter)
Suzuki: No. Not even that.
Hisamatsu: So, of the many people (in the West) who have written
about Zen there aren't any who understand it?
Suzuki: That's right.
Hisamatsu: Well, is there at least some book written (by a
Westerner) which is at least fairly accurate?
Suzuki: No. Not to my knowledge.
Taken out of context, this conversation is somewhat misleading: Suzuki
had high hopes for Zen in the West, while recognizing that its
naturalization abroad would take time. Nonetheless, if Zen experience
is indeed the essence of all religion, as Suzuki so often claimed,
this conclusion cannot help but be depressing. Yet there is more than
one way to understand their dialogue. It may be that Occidental
culture is so rationalistic and so infected by subject-object dualism
that all Westerners are spiritually obtuse. But it is also possible
that the problem is on the other side as well: that a supposedly
universal experience has in fact come to be defined primarily in
Japanese terms.
Sharf concludes by situating the nihonjinron impulse in its
historical context, as one intellectual reaction to the radical and
destabilizing transformation of Japan initiated by the Meiji
reformation:
Nihonjinron is in large part a Japanese response to modernity --
the sense of being adrift in a sea of tumultuous change, cut off
from the past, alienated from history and tradition. Since the
Meiji reforms, Japanese intellectuals have been confronted with
the collapse of traditional Japanese political and social
structures, accompanied by the insidious threat posed by the the
hegemonic discourse of the
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17.Zen and the Fine Arts, trans. Gishin Tokiwa( Tokyo: Kodansha, 1971;
originally published in 1957 as Zen to bijutsu), 48. See Sharf, 31-2.
18.FAS Society Journal (Spring 1986), 19-23.
286
West. In response, the Japanese would formulate a conception of
Japaneseness that would, in part, insulate themselves from Western
universalizing discourse. This was accomplished through insisting
that the essence of Japanese character lay in a uniquely Japanese
experience of the world, an experience that was thus conveniently
out of the reach of foreigners. (36-37)
Whether or not this overstates the case, it touches on something
important. The Meiji restoration remains an ambiguous legacy.
Traumatized by its brutal forced opening to the rest of the world,
acutely aware of the need to adopt Western technology as quickly as
possible in order to defend itself from the imminent colonization that
devastated the rest of Asia, not only Japan Õs self-confidence but its
very self-identity were badly shaken. It is not surprising, then, that
Zen and the samurai spirit became understood to exemplify the superior
soul of the Japanese -- which happened to fit nicely into a concern
that arose in certain quarters of the West to find a superior "other"
with which to flog itself. We may sympathize with Japan's need to
establish its own identity on the world stage, and Japanese
intellectuals' need to avoid the "hegemonic discourse" of the West.
Nonetheless, the resulting self-understanding of Japanese Zen
Buddhists cannot be accepted uncritically.(19)
------------
19.I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer and Dan Yukie for their
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
David Loy
Faculty of International Studies
Bunkyo University
Chigasaki 253, Japan
December 14, 1994
Sincere thanks to Ti.nh
Tue^. for providing us with this article. Buddhism Today, 02-7-2000
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