Tricycle | Awake in the World

In Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997), Brian Victoria examined how the Japanese Zen clergy interpreted Buddhist teachings in ways that made Zen dharma—and themselves—complicit with the Imperial Forces for the success of what was called "The Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere."

Recently, Victoria uncovered a specific text, a book that Yasutani Roshi wrote in 1943 about the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen, in which Yasutani jingoistically employed fervent nationalism, obedience to the emperor, and anti-Semitism in his explication of Zen. These revelations raise questions that themselves are not new. But with the specificity of one person who figures so prominently in the Western expansion of Zen—whose face is so familiar to and revered by thousands of Western Zen students—comes a jarring, visceral kick in the gut that forces a confrontation with such issues as the nature of enlightened mind, the relationship between realization and actualization, and between form and emptiness; the constraints of time and place; and the alliance between political systems and forms of dharma—to name a few.

In this special section, Victoria presents and contextualizes material from Yasutani Roshi's book on Dogen Zenji. This is followed by Victoria's own response to the material. In addition, we requested responses from people directly descendent from or related to Yasutani Roshi's lineages in the United States (see chart opposite below).

Yasutani Roshi: The Hardest Koan is not intended to answer the questions and paradoxes posed by Victoria's material, but to initiate a conversation that may prove helpful, if not cautionary, to the unfolding of dharma in the West.

Introduction

When we look at the recent history of Zen’s dissemination to the West—and in particular to the United States—it seems that the vast and varied terrain of the Zen landscape was funneled through just a handful of Japanese teachers. Of these, Yasutani Roshi (1885-1973) remains one of the most significant.

In 1965, Yasutani’s American disciple, Philip Kapleau, compiled The Three Pillars of Zen. The first section is devoted to Yasutani’s instructions for beginning students and continues to this day to be an essential source of Zen teachings. Although Yasutani traveled to the West seven times in the 1960s, it was largely this widely read and influential book that made him so important to the growing Zen movement. In addition to Kapleau, Yasutani was also a principal teacher of both Aitken Roshi and the late Maezumi Roshi. As a prominent lineage holder in three of the largest and most established Zen centers in the United States, Yasutani was a major player in the transmission of Zen from Japan to the West.

The Issue

Yasutani’s prominent role in the development of Western Zen provided ample opportunity to know this man’s personal history. But that did not happen. Yasutani’s support of the Japanese military establishment was ignored, denied, or diminished. Now, new research reveals Yasutani’s rabid anti-Semitism at the height of World War II if not before.

Anti-Semitism was part of a larger and complex picture of Japanese nationalism and the complicity of the Zen establishment with the Imperial forces (see Zen at War). It echoed German propaganda and certainly tapped into Japan’s own preoccupation with racial purity. Yet, in the absence of any sizable Jewish population, anti-Semitism was basically a mechanism to suppress liberal and left-wing thought among the Japanese themselves. That is to say, following the Russian Revolution of 1917 Jews had been portrayed in Japan as promoting progressive ideas in order to destabilize society and thereby further their insidious plot to take over the world.

Yasutani’s writings reflect all of this: support for the war; the interpretation of Zen teachings to deify the emperor, serve Japan, and wipe out the enemy; and the way in which Japanese anti-Semitism was tagged onto nationalism in order to counter all forms of 'subversive thought.'

Given that Japanese anti-Semitism in 1943 was not central to nationalism in general or to Yasutani in particular, it is valid to question the intention in bringing this to light at all. My reasons address the resistance on the part of Westerners to confront the dark side of their tradition. Although there is, of late, some acceptance of how Zen teachings were used to encourage killing and mayhem, the massacre of Nanking, for example, does not pack the same emotional wallop for Westerners as the issue of anti-Semitism. Thus, these recent revelations provide a compelling point of entry to issues that continue to be relevant for anyone interested in Japanese Zen.