Other Zen Masters and Scholars in the War Effort, Chapter Nine, [Excerpt] from "Zen at War", by Brian Daizen Victoria
Second Edition
© 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
CHAPTER NINE: OTHER ZEN MASTERS AND SCHOLARS IN THE WAR EFFORT
It would be comforting, though incorrect, to believe that Ekiju and his "imperial-state Zen" were somehow unique or isolated phenomena within Zen circles during the war years. The truth is that he was merely representative of what other leading Zen masters were saying and doing at this time. For example, there are numerous instances of Zen masters conducting intensive meditation retreats, typically lasting five days, for officers. The retreats would take place in the unit's martial-arts training hall, with the officers using their folded army blankets as makeshift meditation cushions.1
If there is anything that distinguished Ekiju from his contemporaries, it was that his lay disciple Sugimoto Goro came to epitomize what many Zen masters and scholars merely talked about. Yet the importance of this talking by Zen masters should not be underestimated, for, as previously discussed, the government clearly appreciated its importance as a morale booster. Sugimoto described what he believed the appropriate role was of not only Zen but all Buddhist priests:
Each Buddhist temple should be a training center for developing spiritual discipline within the people. Priests should be the leaders of this training. In so doing they can claim the right to be called men of religion.2
Ekiju commended this passage by Sugimoto, commenting that it displayed a "grand attitude."3 Yet he was far from alone in the Zen world in his acceptance of this role for Zen priests.
Hata Esho Soto Zen master Hata Esho, Eiheiji's chief abbot, agreed with Ekiju. He wrote the following in the December 1942 issue of Sansho:
One full year has elapsed since the outbreak of the Greater East Asian War. It is said that the war has entered a stage of protracted fighting. In such a stage the need for materials will increase more and more .... We Zen priests cannot directly produce so much as a grain of rice or a sheet of paper. However, in terms of developing the spiritual power of the people, there is a way for us, incompetent though we be, to do our public duty. I believe that we should do everything in our power to go in this direction.4
If there is any question as to what this leading Soto Zen master thought of Japan's war effort, or Buddhism's relationship to that effort, Esho clarified his position in the same issue of Sansho:
On December 8 Buddha Shakyamuni looked at the morning star and realized perfect enlightenment while seated under the bodhi tree. One year ago, on this very day, through the proclamation of the imperial edict to annihilate America and England, our country started afresh toward a new East Asia, a great East Asia. This signifies nothing less than the enlightenment of East Asia .... As we now welcome the first anniversary of the outbreak of the Greater East Asian War, we realize that the future will not be easy. We must therefore renew our conviction that nothing else but certain victory lies ahead.5
Even before Esho's exhortation, Soto Zen leaders had focused their efforts on developing the spiritual power of the people. Typical of this effort was an article written on January 1, 1941, by the sect's administrative head, Omori Zenkai (1871-1947). He quoted the very same passage from Zen Master Dogen about "forget [ ting) the self" that Sugimoto had previously. Zenkai went on:
The essence of the practice of an [imperial) subject is to be found in the basic principle of the Buddha Way, which is to forget the self. It is by giving concrete form to this essence in any and all situations, regardless of time or place, that Buddhism is, for the first time, able to repay the debt of gratitude it owes the state.5
Yamada Reirin One year later, in 1942, Soto Zen master Yamada Reirin (1889- 1979) wrote a book entitled Evening Talks on Zen Studies (Zengaku Yawa). In postwar years Reirin became president of Komazawa University and then chief abbot of Eiheiji.
Reirin began his book by pointing out that Emperor Kimmei (539-71) first allowed Buddhism into Japan because he recognized that "it would be of service to him."7 Reirin then went on to speculate as to whether or not Buddhism was still able to render such service. He wrote:
Japan has now plunged into the most serious situation it has faced since the beginning of its history. The question is whether or not Buddhism can now be of service to the emperor. In both quantity and quality, it is necessary for Buddhism to provide such excellent service. All Buddhists, regardless of sectarian affiliation, must come forward to do their great duty in support of imperial rule. 8
Reirin clearly believed he was doing his part in this effort. He devoted an entire chapter to addressing one of the most difficult problems on the wartime home front, the consolation of parents whose sons had fallen in battle. Utilizing the Buddhist-influenced folk belief in Japan concerning the transmigration of souls, Reirin provided the following explanation:
The true form of the heroic spirits [of the dead] is the good karmic power that has resulted from their loyalty, bravery, and nobility of character. This will never perish .... The body and mind produced by this karmic power cannot be other than what has existed up to the present . . . . The loyal, brave, noble, and heroic spirits of those officers and men who have died shouting, "May the emperor live for ten thousand years!" will be reborn right here in this country. It is only natural that this should occur.9
Finally, like so many of his predecessors, Reirin pointed out the "virility" Haja Tokimune received from his Zen training.10 Zen made possible the maintenance of an adamantine mind and the welling up of a pure and fiery spirit.11 If one would but "annihilate the ego," he wrote, then an "absolute and mysterious power and radiance will fill one's body and mind."12 together with "an unlimited gratitude to the imperial military" for their "wonderful fruits of battle."13
Kurebayashi Kodo Soto Zen scholars of the period were no less supportive of Japan's war effort than were the sect's Zen masters. One of the sect's best-known scholar-priests, a specialist in the thought of Zen master Dagen (1200-1253), was Dr. Kurebayashi Kodo (1893-1988). In the postwar years he succeeded Yamada Reirin as president of Komazawa University. At the outbreak of full-scale war with China in 1937, he wrote an article entitled "The [China] Incident and Buddhism."
Kodo's article, appearing in the October 1937 issue of Sansho, began with the now standard advocacy of the "just-war" theory. "It goes without saying." he said, "that the North China Incident is a war on behalf of justice." Not only that, but "all of Japan's wars since the Sino-Japanese War have been such wars." And, in case there were any doubt, he added, "Should there be further wars in the future, there is no doubt they will also be just."14
Aside from giving present and future Japanese governments carte blanche to fight whenever and wherever they wished, Kodo's statement is notable for the rationale he provided to justify his position:
The reason [Japan's wars are just] is, I dare say, because of the influence of the Buddhist spirit. The spirit of Japan which was nurtured by Buddhism is ceaselessly working towards cooperation among peoples and eternal peace in the Orient. Without the influence of Buddhism, a thoroughgoing, international fraternal spirit would be impossible.15
Kodo went on to assert that Japan's actions in China were the "practice of compassion:"16
Wherever the imperial military advances there is only charity and love. They could never act in the barbarous and cruel way in which the Chinese soldiers act. This can truly be considered to be a great accomplishment of the long period which Buddhism took in nurturing [the Japanese military]. In other words, brutality itself no longer exists in the officers and men of the imperial military who have been schooled in the spirit of Buddhism.17
Kodo concluded the article by reminding his readers that "it was only the Japanese people who embodied the true spirit of Buddhism. . .. "Without a faith in Buddhism." he asserted, "this nation cannot prosper, nor can humanity find happiness."18 One can only wonder what Kodo would have said to Ienaga's well-documented assertion that "there were s . many atrocities [committed by Japanese troops] that one cannot even begin to list them all."19
Hitane Jozan Kodo was not, of course, the only Zen scholar to voice his support for Japans war efforts. Dr. Hitane Jozan (1873-1954), a scholar-priest at Rinzai Zen sect-affiliated Rinzai Gakuin (the predecessor of Hanazono University), also wrote an article about the same incident. It was entitled, "The Current Incident and the '!ow and Practice of a Bodhisattva," and it appeared in the October 1937 Issue of Zenshu, a monthly periodical jointly supported by all branches of the Rinzai Zen sect.
Jozan began his article with the assertion that up to this point Japan's modern wars had been a matter of self-defense. "It is impossible," he wrote, "to find any other meaning to either the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, or the Manchurian Incident [of 1931]."20 The current fighting, however, was different:
Speaking from the point of view of the ideal outcome, this is a righteous and moral war of self-sacrifice in which we will rescue China from the dangers of Communist takeover and economic slavery. We will help the Chinese live as true Orientals. It would therefore, I dare say, not be unreasonable to call this a sacred war incorporating the great practice of a bodhisattva.21
Fukuba Hoshu It was difficult for some adherents of the Zen school to justify the Japanese invasion of China because violence was being employed against the very country that had been the birthplace of their tradition. How could they reconcile repaying the debt of gratitude they felt they owed the classical Chinese Chan patriarchs with the devastation of their homeland?
A colleague of Hidane Jozan at Rinzai Gakuin, a Rinzai Zen scholarpriest named Fukuba Hoshu (1895-1943), provided a way out of this quandary in an article entitled "What Is Japanese, What Is Chinese" (Shinateki to Nihonteki) published in the November 5, 1939 issue of the journal Zengaku Kenkyu. According to Hoshu, the solution was really quite simple. The Chinese Zen masters had never fully realized the true meaning of Zen. That is to say, the Chinese Zen patriarchs' understanding of Zen had been limited by the faulty cultural values of Chinese society, values that the Chinese Zen patriarchs had been unable to overcome. In contrast to this, "the social and historical norms that existed in Japan allowed ... Zen's true nature to be made manifest."22
On the one hand, Hoshu admitted that Chinese society had traditionally valued both loyalty to the sovereign and filial piety to one's parents and family. However, when the two values came into conflict the Chinese "without regret chose filial piety over loyalty."23 What was even worse was that in times of political and economic unrest, the Chinese blamed the ruler for the nation's troubles and "readily believed that a revolution was justified."24 This kind of thinking had, according to Hoshu, brought nothing but internal divisions and turmoil to Chinese society, even to the present day.
Japan, on the other hand, was quite different. It was a country where family and state had become one unified, communal entity due to the fact that "the family had been warmly embraced by the state."25 This, of course, had been made possible because of the existence and benevolence of the imperial house and the contributions made to national morality by such pioneer Zen masters as Eisai, Kokan Shiren (1278-1346), and others. Therefore, "if ever one or the other [loyalty or filial piety] had to be chosen, there is no question that it would be the former ... for this represents the superiority, the absoluteness of the virtue of loyalty in Japan."26
Japanese Zen, then, had both contributed to and benefited from this understanding of loyalty. In concluding his article, Hoshu pointed out that this understanding had facilitated Japanese Zen's recognition that the spread of Zen was identical with (soku) the protection of the state. Hoshu's closing statement was "I believe it is through the manifestation of Zen's true nature [in Japan] that we can repay the benevolence of the Chinese patriarchs."27
Harada Daiun Sogaku There is one other lineage or school of Zen Buddhists whose wartime words and actions are worthy of consideration. This lineage, though relatively small in number, has been quite influential in spreading its interpretation of Zen in the West, especially the United States. The founder of this group was Zen Master Harada Daiun Sogaku (1870- 1961). Philip Kapleau, a prominent descendent of this lineage, described this master in The Three Pillars of Zen:
Nominally of the Soto sect, he [Daiun] welded together the best of Soto and Rinzai and the resulting amalgam was a vibrant Buddhism which has become one of the great teaching lines of Japan today. Probably more than anyone else in his time he revitalized, through his profound spiritual insight, the teachings of Dogen-zenji, which had been steadily drained of their vigor through the shallow understanding of priests and scholars of the Soto sect in whose hands their exposition had hitherto rested ....
Like all masters of high spiritual development, he was the keenest judge of character. He was as quick to expose pretense and sham as he was to detect it. Exceptional students he drove mercilessly, exacting from them the best of which they were capable. From all he demanded as a sine qua non sincerity and absolute adherence to his teachings, brooking not the slightest deviation. Casual observers often found him rigid and narrow, but disciples and students who were faithful to his teachings knew him to be wise and compassionate.28
Another prominent member of this lineage, Maezumi Hakuyu Taizan (1930-95), founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, had this to say about Daiun:
Daiun Harada Roshi was a Zen master of rare breadth and accomplishment in twentieth-century Japan .... He became abbot of Hosshinji and during the next forty years, until his death in 1961, made the monastery famous as a rigorous Zen training center, known for its harsh climate, its strict discipline, and its abbot's keen Zen eye.29
Daiun was also one of the most committed Zen supporters of Japan's military actions. If, as Kapleau claims, Daiun "revitalized" Zen, he did so by creating something he called "war Zen" (sensa Zen) as early as 1915, at the time of Japan's entry into World War I. It was in this year that he published A Primer on the Practice of Zen (Sanzen no Kaitei), of which "War Zen" was the eleventh chapter.
The first subsection of this chapter was entitled "The Entire Universe Is at War." For Daiun there was nothing strange about Japan being at war, for "if you look at all phenomena in the universe you will see that there is nothing which is not at war."30 In the natural world, for example, plum seeds try to conquer the world for plums, while rice grains try to conquer the world for rice. The human world is the same, with politicians struggling with one another to conquer the political world, and merchants struggling with one another to conquer the business world.
Buddhism is not exempt from this type of struggle, according to Daiun, for Buddha Shakyamuni himself had conquered demons in the course of realizing enlightenment. Thus, "without plunging into the war arena, it is totally impossible to know the Buddha Dharma." Daiun then went on to point out that "in all phenomena of either the ordinary world or the spiritual world, there is not one where war is absent. How could Zen alone be free of this principle? ... It is impermissible," he wrote, "to forget war for even an instant."31
In fairness to Daiun, aside from his initial praise for Japan's military success, he used the term "war Zen" to describe what he believed should be the appropriate mental attitude of Zen practitioners in their search for enlightenment. The enemy Daiun advocates conquering is the practitioner's ignorance and desire. Even this, he noted, was not the ultimate expression of Zen, for "in the Great Way of the Buddhas and [Zen] patriarchs there is neither war nor peace."32
While Daiun's initial use of "war Zen" may have been metaphoric, by 1934 this was clearly no longer the case. In March of that year he wrote the following in an article appearing in the March 1934 issue of the magazine Chuo Bukkyo:
The spirit of Japan is the Great Way of the [Shinto] gods. It is the substance of the universe, the essence of the Truth. The Japanese people are a chosen people whose mission is to control the world. The sword which kills is also the sword which gives life. Comments opposing war are the foolish opinions of those who can only see one aspect of things and not the whole.
Politics conducted on the basis of a constitution are premature, and therefore fascist politics should be implemented for the next ten years .... Similarly, education makes for shallow, cosmopolitan-minded persons. All of the people of this country should do Zen. That is to say, they should all awake to the Great Way of the Gods. This is Mahayana Zen."33
By 1939 Daiun no longer found it necessary to even discuss antiwar thought. In "The One Road of Zen and War," an article appearing in the November 1939 issue of the magazine Daijo Zen, he wrote:
[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now under way]. Verse: I bow my head to the floor in reverence of those whose nobility is without equal.34
By the beginning of 1943 the tide of war had clearly turned against Japan. The government called on Buddhist leaders to do their utmost to mobilize the entire civilian population in the war effort. Under these circumstances Daiun wrote the following in the February 1943 issue of the periodical Zen no Seikatsu:
It has never been as necessary as it is today for all one hundred million people of this country to be committed to the fact that as the state lives and dies, so do they .... We must devote ourselves to the practice of Zen and the discernment of the Way. We must push on in applying ourselves to "combat zazen." the king of meditation.35
By the latter part of 1944 the outlook for Japan had become bleak. The unthinkable was becoming thinkable. The home islands might be invaded. In this situation every able-bodied citizen, both young and old, armed often with no more than bamboo spears, was being trained to repel the invaders. In response, Daiun wrote the following article entitled, "Be Prepared, One Hundred Million [Subjects], for Death with Honor!" which appeared in the July issue of that year's Daijo Zen:
It is necessary for all one hundred million subjects [of the emperor] to be prepared to die with honor .... If you see the enemy you must kill him; you must destroy the false and establish the true-these are the cardinal points of Zen. It is said that if you kill someone it is fitting that you see his blood. It is further said that if you are riding a powerful horse nothing is beyond your reach. Isn't the purpose of the zazen we have done in the past to be of assistance in an emergency like this?36
Japan's surrender was a year away. By early 1945 most Buddhist-related publications had closed down as part of the overall effort to funnel all available resources to the military effort. Buddhist leaders, Zen and otherwise, lost their printed voice. Newspapers were still being published, however, and on occasion Buddhist viewpoints were still to be found.
Masunaga Reiho One of the last Zen-related voices to be heard was that of Dr. Masunaga Reiho (1902-81), a Soto Zen priest and scholar who in the postwar years published substantial works in English,37 From May 25 to June 1, 1945, Masunaga wrote a series of articles in the Buddhist newspaper Chugai Nippo entitled "The Source of the Spirit of the Special Attack Forces." He put forth the following argument:
The source of the spirit of the Special Attack Forces lies in the denial of the individual self and the rebirth of the soul, which takes upon itself the burden of history. From ancient times Zen has described this conversion of mind as the achievement of complete enlightenment.38
In equating the suicidal spirit of kamikaze pilots of the Special Attack Forces with the complete enlightenment of Buddhism, Masunaga had taken Zen to the militaristic extreme.