Second Edition
© 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: CORPORATE ZEN IN POSTWAR JAPAN
During World War II, we have seen, Zen was used a a method to train not only officers and soldiers but "industrial warriors" as well. In postwar Japan, when the "infinite power" supposedly derived from zazen was no longer needed on the battlefield, some Japanese businessmen decided it could be put to use in the rebuilding of Japan's devastated industrial base. The Occupation had introduced democracy and education reform, including anew-emphasis on individual rights, to Japanese society. In addition, the terrible postwar poverty had encouraged the growth of leftist forces, including militant labor unions. Some in the business community saw Zen as a way of restoring the traditional values of discipline, obedience, and loyalty to superiors.
CORPORATE TRAINING PROGRAMS
One form the corporate response took was the creation of training programs for their new employees. An article entitled "Marching to the Company Tune," appearing in the June 1977 issue of Focus Japan, an English-language magazine published by the semi-governmental Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), describes the history of these programs:
[These programs] were developed in the late 1950s when companies realized that schools were no longer emphasizing the old virtues of obedience and conformity. Living and training together, sometimes for as long as a month, are designed to artificially recreate the old neglected virtues.1
What better place than a Zen monastery for the artificial recreation of the old neglected virtues? Here monk and lay trainees rise at 3:30 A.M. to meditate, eat rice gruel for breakfast, and endure the winter cold with only tiny charcoal braziers for heat. Extended periods of sitting in the traditional cross-legged lotus posture can be quite painful even for an experienced meditator, let alone a novice. If even the slightest movement is detected, the meditator will be "encouraged" to remain immobile by one or more blows of a long wooden stick known as a kyosaku wielded by a senior monk-monitor. After being struck, the offending meditator is required to place the palms of his hands together and bow as an expression of his appreciation for the blows.
There can be no doubt that this Spartan life style does increase the ability to withstand adversity; and, as George A. DeVos has pointed out, endurance has long been a highly desirable virtue in Japanese business organizations.2 It is, however, in the social rather than the physical environment of a Zen monastery that there is the greatest emphasis on obedience and conformity. To be allowed to enter a monastery as a trainee, a monk is expected to prostrate himself in supplication before the entrance gate for hours, if not days, depending on the monastery. When asked why he wishes to enter the monastery, the monk should reply, "I know nothing. Please accept my request!" indicating that his mind is like a blank sheet of paper, ready to be inscribed by his superiors as they wish. If a monk fails to give the proper answer, he is struck repeatedly with the kyosaku until his shoulders are black and blue and the desired state of mind is achieved.
Once permitted to enter the monastery, the monk finds that everyone is his superior. Even a fellow monk who was admitted only a few hours before· him will automatically precede him on any formal or semiformal occasion, including meals, and exercise some degree of authority over him. Those senior monks who have been in training for more than one or two years seem, to the new entrant, to be superior beings. They not only wield the kyosaku but also determine whether or not the novice's work assignments are performed satisfactorily. These senior monks wear finer and more colorful robes than their juniors and live in more spacious quarters. They also have the official privilege of leaving the monastery for short periods of time and the unofficial privileges of surreptitiously eating meat, drinking alcohol, and keeping petty monetary and in-kind gifts made to the monastery.
There are striking parallels between Zen monastic life and training, and military life and training. During the war Soto Zen master Sawaki Kodo noted that Zen monasteries and the military "truly resemble each other closely." Among other things, this was because both required communal life styles. Kodo continued:
The first thing required in communal life is to discard the self .... In battle those who· have been living together communally can work together very bravely at the front .... Today the state requires that we all follow a communal life style wherever we are, thus repaying the debt of gratitude we owe the state. The spirit of Zen monastic life does not belong to Zen priests alone but must be learned by all the people.3
The prospect of incoming employees learning a communal life style to "repay the debt of gratitude" owed their company is, of course, no less attractive to Japan's business world than it was to the imperial military. Not surprisingly, therefore, corporate Zen training is often conducted in tandem with or in place of so-called "temporary enlistment" (kari nyutai) in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. In the case of Zen monasteries, senior monks act very much like drill sergeants, and novice monks are their recruits. As one new salesman who had just completed his company's training program noted: "My work has much in common with that of a soldier."4
If senior monks are the drill sergeants, then it is the Zen master or masters who act as the generals or corporate heads. They enjoy the real authority in a Zen monastery and are ultimately responsible for directing the training programs for both monks and lay persons. In the talks they give to incoming trainees, one of the most frequently recurring themes is the Zen phrase daishu ichinyo, which means that all members of the monastic community (daishu) should act as one (ichinyo). When it is time to do zazen, everyone sits. When it is time to eat, engage in long, silent hours of manual labor, or sleep, everyone acts together as if they were one body. To do otherwise is called katte na kodo or "self-willed action" and condemned as the very antithesis of the Zen life. In a Zen monastery, complete conformity is by no means an old, neglected virtue.
Discipline, obedience, conformity, and physical and mental endurance in the face of hardship are not the only features of monastic life attractive to corporate Japan. The traditional Buddhist teaching of the non-substantiality of the self has also been given a unique corporate twist. This twist is well illustrated by Ozeki Soen (b. 1932), the abbot of Rinzai Zen-sect affiliated Daisen'in temple and one of the best-known of the Zen priests conducting employee-training courses. In a collection of his sermons delivered during such training courses, he stated:
Employing your vital life force, you should exert yourselves to the utmost, free of any conceptual thought .... This is what it means to be alive. That is to say, at every time and in" every place, you should work selflessly.5
Sakai Tokugen A further example of Zen's corporate twist is provided by Sakai Tokugen (1912--96), another leading Zen master involved with employee-training programs. Tokugen, a disciple of Sawaki Kodo, was also a former professor of Buddhist Studies at Komazawa University. In the May 1974 issue of Daihorin, he lamented the lack of sincerity in carrying out the orders of one's superiors in postwar Japan:
Sincerity [in carrying out orders 1 means having feelings and actions of absolute service, giving one's all [to the task at hand]. In doing this there can be no thought of personal loss or gain .... By carrying out our [assigned] tasks, we become part of the life of the entire universe; we realize our original True Self .... This is the most noble thing human beings can do.6
For Tokugen, then, selfless devotion to the accomplishment of one's assigned duties is none other than enlightenment itself. Is it any wonder that he has also been a popular leader of employee-training programs? How many Western companies can promise enlightenment as an added employee benefit? Here, certainly, the Protestant work ethic, with eternal salvation as its reward, has met its match.
It should be clear by now that, at its most basic, the same spirit of self-renunciation characterizes both Tokugen's exhortations to be a good worker and those of D. T. Suzuki, Yamazaki Ekiju, Harada Sogaku, and others to be a good soldier. The only difference between them is the object of loyalty and devotion. In premodern Japan, absolute loyalty was owed to one's feudal lord. From the Meiji period onward the focus shifted to the central government and its policies as embodied in the person of the emperor. In postwar Japan the focus shifted once again, this time to the corporation and its interests-which are of course very closely connected in Japan with those of the state.
There is one further aspect of Zen training that is very attractive to Corporate Japan, the practice of zazen itself. The samadhi power supposedly derived from the practice of zazen was originally utilized in Zen training to give the practitioner a deeper insight into his or her own nature and the nature of reality itself. Yet this same power, facilitating as it does complete absorption into the present moment, can be applied to any work, from wielding a samurai sword with lightning swiftness, to fighting selflessly on the battlefield, to manufacturing computer components with flawless precision. What could be more attractive to a Japanese company?
In reality, Japan's defeat meant not the demise of imperial-way Zen and soldier Zen but only their metamorphosis and rebirth as corporate Zen. Perhaps Zen's newest incarnation is more benign than its past variants, in that it does not seem to require loyalty even unto death. But in the mid- 1970s, a new phenomenon was detected among Japan's corporate warriors: karoshi, or "death from overwork." At least some part of postwar Japan's economic miracle must be assigned to the willingness of company employees to work themselves to death.
Katsuhira Sotetsu The emergence of corporate Zen in postwar Japan was not entirely without its critics. Perhaps the most prominent of these was Katsuhira Sotetsu (1922-1983), head of the Nanzenji branch of the Rinzai Zen sect. In his posthumous 1988 book Enlightenment of a Pickle-pressing Stone (Takuan Ishi no Satori) Sotetsu wrote:
Of late there has been a Zen boom, with various companies coming to Zen temples saying they wish to educate their new employees. But it is clear what kind of education they are seeking. They want to educate their employees to do just as they are told. They claim that Zen is good at this. However, their claim is a bunch of rubbish! Zen is not as paltry as all that. It is not so small-minded as to restrict a person to such a limited framework. This said, the responsibility for having sanctioned such a Zen boom lies with the Zen temples themselves.7
During the war years, as a young Zen priest, Sotetsu had volunteered to become a pilot in a special-attack, or kamikaze unit. He frequently begged his unit commander to send him on a mission, but the war ended before he got his wish. Sotetsu wrote about this: "Without entertaining the slightest doubt, I believed I should die for my country, killing even a single enemy. I now recognize that, as a priest, there could be no greater contradiction than this. I will carry this contradiction with me to the day I die."8 In November 1983, at sixty-one years of age, Sotetsu committed suicide.
ZEN AND THE POSTWAR JAPANESE MILITARY
Zen remains influential in Japanese military circles as well. The reconstituted Japanese military, the Self-Defense Forces, with a budget in 1996 second only to the United States military, continue to call on Zen masters for spiritual guidance despite Japan's so-called "Peace Constitution" of the postwar era.
Sugawara Gido In his 1974 book, If I Die, So What! (Shinde Motomoto) Sugawara Gido (1915-78), the chief abbot of Rinzai Zen sect-affiliated Hokoku Zenji temple, writes with evident pride of his more than ten years of service as an adjunct instructor for the Self-Defense Forces.9 Gido goes on to draw a parallel between the "unwavering faith" displayed by both Fleet Commander Admiral Togo Heihachiro (1848-1934) and Army General Nogi Maresuke during the Russo-Japanese War, and Zen enlightenment.10 As for the Pacific War, he wrote:
There is no doubt that all those involved in the Greater East Asia War had discarded their self-centeredness and, sacrificing their lives, acted on what they believed was right for their country.11 I think they attained the path of Truth [makoto]. If you believe that something is right, that it is the path of Truth, you should rush forward towards it.12
Gido also discussed Bushido, remarking that it was such Kamakura period (1185-1333) Zen masters as Eisai and Dogen who helped develop the samurai spirit, which "regarded the body as of no more value than so many goose feathers and was ever willing to sacrifice life itself in the service of one's lord."13 Gido argued that the ultimate spiritual beauty of Bushido was to be found in two of its uniquely Japanese practices, which he believed continue to course through the veins of the Japanese people: ritual disembowelment (seppuku) and seeking revenge on one's enemies (ada uchi). What made these two acts so compelling was that their practitioners "were well-acquainted with shame, propriety, and Truth." Moreover, the "selfless mind" embodied in these practices was the equivalent of the classical Zen koan Mu. Needless to say, Gido regarded these acts as being "incomprehensible to foreigners."14
In Gido's eyes, one of the most persistent problems facing the Self-Defense Forces was that their members were subjected to various forms of social discrimination at the hands of those. Japanese, including local government officials, who were opposed to the reestablishment of a military force. According to Gido, however, there was no need for Self-Defense Forces soldiers to be concerned about whether they were loved or hated. "Just silently continue polishing your machine guns and cleaning your tanks, even if you don't have to use them for the next two, three, or even five hundred years .... This is where your true life lies."15.
Omori Sogen Omori Sogen (1904-94) began his Zen practice in 1925 as a lay disciple of Seki Seisetsu, abbot of Tenryuji. Sogen claimed to have realized enlightenment at the age of twenty-nine, after having meditated intensely for eight years on the koan Mu. His breakthrough occurred as follows:
I finished zazen and went to the toilet. I heard the sound of the urine hitting the back of the urinal. It splashed and sounded very loud to me. At that time I thought, "Aha!" and I understood I had a deep realization.16
In 1966 Sogen published a book with a familiar ring to its title, Sword and Zen (Ken to Zen). Sogen opened his book by admitting that he didn't know when the phrase "The sword and Zen are one" (ken Zen ichinyo) had first been used.17 Nevertheless, he had no hesitation in stating "there can be doubt that with regard to their ultimate goals and aims, the sword and Zen are identical."18 He described the nature of this unity:
[quote[Zen is the sword of the mind while the sword is the Zen of the sword blade .... For a warrior to discharge his duties he must necessarily clarify the origin of life, and transcend life and death in order to reach the absolute realm .... This is the reason the destiny of the sword is inevitably connected to Zen.19[/quote]
Abstract as this quotation may seem, Sogen was prepared to cut through the metaphorical rhetoric when it came justifying the use of the sword in the defense of "peace and justice":
Can someone tell me just how justice is to be protected and peace preserved? Are there any concrete ways of protecting justice and maintaining peace other than resolutely making evil submit and eliminating those who threaten peace? In order to accomplish this, those [who do such things] must be harmed, even though in one respect it is, I dare say, wrong to do so.20
Sogen was well aware that "protecting justice and maintaining peace [in East Asia]" was precisely the rationale given to justify Japan's wartime actions; he had formerly been an ardent supporter of those same actions. In August 1945, Sogen made plans to preempt the broadcast of the emperor's announcement of Japan's surrender and fight till the end.21 He would have had to have very powerful friends indeed to even know in advance of the emperor's radio broadcast, let alone its contents. But in fact Sogen was very well connected, for he enjoyed the patronage of the Toyama family, the patriarch of which, Toyama Mitsuru (1855-1944), was a central figure in two of Japan's most infamous ultranationalist secret societies, the Genyosha (Dark Ocean Society) and Kokuryokai (Black Dragon Society). The historian David Bergamini described Toyama as the Lord High Assassin of these two secret societies.22 A second historian, E. H.Norman, noted that the two secret societies that Toyama helped run formed "the advance guard of Japanese imperialism ... mold[ing] public opinion in favor of aggression."23
Sogen also praised the elder Toyama for providing him with the wisdom necessary to endure his life of hardship amidst the poverty of the immediate postwar period. Toyama, he wrote, had once told him that "Since ancient times there has never been a person who starved from doing the right thing. If you are doing what is right, heaven will surely provide food. Therefore, even if you starve and die, do the right thing.24 What Sogen conveniently omitted from his account is that, for Toyama, doing the right thing had meant a lifetime of assassinations, drug dealing, and terrorism in Japan's colonies, coupled with political blackmail, intimidation, and backstairs intrigue at home.
Just how close Sogen was to the Toyamas is demonstrated by the fact that Toyama Mitsuru's son, Ryusuke, served as an advisor to the martial arts hall, Jiki Shin Dojo, that Sogen founded in 1933 and headed through the end of the war. For Sogen, Toyama Ryusuke's most attractive feature was his utter fearlessness:
During his [Ryusuke's] student days at Dobun Shoin, a very good friend had tuberculosis. Seeing this person who was depressed and in despair vomit blood, Toyama Sensei said, "Tuberculosis is nothing. Watch this!" and drank down the blood.25
According to Sogen, Ryusuke was "a great man that one can meet only once in a lifetime."26
Because Japan lost the war, Sogen decided "according to the Way of the Samurai." to formally enter the Rinzai Zen priesthood.27 He then went on to become a professor at Rinzai-affiliated Hanazono University in 1970 and its president in 1978. Six years earlier, in 1972, he had established Chozenji International Zen Dojo, complete with a martial arts training hall, in Hawaii. In material published in 1988, Sogen's American disciples described him as having earlier been an antiwar activist. They wrote:
Omori Roshi was influential in government circles before the outbreak of World War II and strenuously appealed to [Prince] Konoe, who was to be the next prime minister, to appoint either Ugaki or Mazaki to the post of Commander of the Army instead of Tojo. He hoped to avert Japan's war with the United States. He blamed his own spiritual weakness for his failure.28
As with D. T. Suzuki and others, the question must be asked as to whether Sogen was opposed to war in principle or merely opposed to fighting a losing war with the United States. The two generals whom Sogen supported, Ugaki Kazushige (1869-1956) and Mazaki Jinzaburo (1876-1956), were both longstanding supporters of Japan's colonial expansion. Ugaki, for example, had willingly accepted appointment as governor general of Korea in 1931. Similarly, there is nothing in the record to suggest that Sogen himself was opposed to the subjugation of Taiwan, Korea, or Manchuria. Thus, even if his "strenuous appeal" to Prince Konoe had been successful, it would have done little or no good for the millions of Chinese, Koreans, and other Asian peoples who became the victims of Japanese aggression, supported by such doctrines as the identity of the sword and Zen.
While corporate Zen is the primary manifestation of imperial-way Zen and soldier Zen in postwar Japan,29 Zen's connection to the Japanese military, and to the sword, has by no means disappeared. Yasutani Hakuun was another of those Zen masters leading retreats for members of the Self-Defense Forces, specifically for officer-candidates at the elite Self-Defense Academy.30 In fact, thanks to the writings and missionary activities of numerous postwar and small numbers of prewar Zen leaders like Yasutani, it can be argued that modern-day variations of imperial-way Zen and soldier Zen are now to be found in the West as well as in Japan, although often without the knowledge or support of their Western adherents. As these Zen variations settle into their new home in the West, the critical question is simply this: Will the doctrine of the unity of Zen and the sword, with all this implies historically, settle in with them?
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Notes:
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. "Marching to the Company Tune" in the June 1977 issue of Focus Japan, p. 36.
2. See DeVos, "Apprenticeship and Paternalism" in Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-Making, pp. 221-23.
3. Sawaki, "Zenrin no Seikatsu to Kiritsu" in the June 1944 issue of Daihorin, pp. 23-25.
4. "Marching to the Company Tune" in the June 1977 issue of Focus Japan, P. 36.
5. Quoted in Maruyama Teruo, Nihonjin no Kokoro o Dame ni Shita Meiso, Akuso, Guso, p. 194.
6. Sakai Tokugen, "Onoda-san to Shoji no Mondai" (The Question of Life and Death and Mr. Onoda) in the May 1974 issue of Daihorin, pp. 23-24.
7. Katsuhira, Takuan Ishi no Satori, p. 100. Sotetsu's critique notwithstanding, there has been no lessening of the Rinzai Zen sect's interest in promoting "corporate Zen" over the intervening years. For example, shortly after the collapse of Japan's so-called "bubble economy" in 1992, the Zen Studies Institute at Hanazono University collaborated with the Rinzai sect's Tenryuji branch to produce a video tape in both Japanese and English entitled "Introduction to Zazeil." The promotional material accompanying this tape began with the following headline: "Zazen, the Generative Power for Overcoming Economic Recession." It went on to add: "Zen, the wisdom fostered by Japanese culture, can be said to be the key to overcoming the current economic slump, the worst since the end of the war .... Zazen is now the focus of businessmen's attention."
8. Ibid., p. 40.
9. See Sugawara Gido, Shinde Motomoto!, p. 182. Gido also mentions on p. 178 that postwar temple visitors sometimes ask if his temple was established during the Pacific War. This is because his temple's name included the word "hokoku" which refers to "repaying the debt of gratitude one owes the state," a popular wartime slogan. Gido, however, informs such visitors that his temple was founded and named by a feudal lord of the Ashikaga family during the Kamakura period (1185-1333). This fact again points to the medieval origins of the unity of Zen and the state, suggesting that its modern manifestation should be considered less an aberration than an extension of its premodern character.
10. Ibid., p. 189.
11. The phrase "Greater East Asian War" (Dai Toa Senso), was the official wartime term for the Pacific War. Due to the militarist connotations of the term, it has generally been shunned in postwar Japan. In fact, during the Allied Occupation (1945-52) its use was officially forbidden. Given this, it can be said that Gido's use of the term here represents, at least to some degree, an endorsement of Japan's wartime actions.
12. Sugawara, Shinde Motomoto!, p. 182.
13. Ibid., p. 187.
14. Ibid., p. 188.
15. Ibid., p. 183.
16. Quoted in Hosokawa and Sayama, "The Chozen-ji Line (Omori Sogen Rotaishi)" in the Journal of the Institute of Zen Studies 3 (1988), p. 2.
17. Omori, Ken to Zen, p. 1.
18. Ibid., p. 69.
19. Ibid., pp. 7-8.
20. Ibid., pp. 206-207.
21. Hosokawa and Sayama, "The Chozenji Line (Omori Sogen Rotaishi)" in the Journal of the Institute of Zen Studies 3 (1988), p. 3.
22. Bergamini, Japan's Imperial Conspiracy Vol. 1, p. 340.
23. Norman, "The Genyosha: A Study in the Origins of Japanese Imperialism" in Livingston, The Japan Reader I, pp. 366-67.
24. Hosokawa and Sayama, "The Chozen-ji Line (Omori Sogen Rotaishi)" in the Journal of the Institute of Zen Studies 3 (1988), p. 3.
25. Ibid., p. 2.
26. Ibid., p. 2.
27. Ibid., p. 3.
28. Ibid., p. 3.
29. The question of the exact number of participants in Zen-influenced corporate training programs is difficult to answer with any degree of specificity. When the author was in training himself at Soto Zen-affiliated Jokuin temple in Saitama Prefecture in the mid-1970s, he helped support some three to four such programs per month, each one of which typically lasted three to four days and involved ten to fifty or more employees. More recently, in an interview on October 3, 1996, Saito Meido, a priest administrator at the Rinzai Zen-affiliated head temple of Myoshinji, informed the author that a total of five hundred and fifty company employees had participated in its corporate-training programs during the first nine months of 1996. Meido went on to add, however, that this represented a significant drop in numbers in comparison with the past, something he attributed to Japan's economic slump.
30. Noted by Sharf, "Zen and the Way of the New Religions" in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 2213-4 (1995), p.422.