Zen at War - Sources

Sources

Victoria draws from his own study of original Japanese documents, but also uses the publications of Ichikawa Hakugen, a Rinzai-priest and a scholar who taught at the Hanazono University in Tokyo. Hakugen's work, in Japanese, include:

• 1967 Zen and Contemporary Thought (Zen to Gendai Shiso)
• 1970 The War Responsibility of Buddhists (Bukkyosha no Senso Sekinin)
• 1975 Religion Under Japanese Fascism (Nihon Fashizumu Ka no Shukyo)
• 1977 Buddhism During the War (Senji Ka no Bukkyo)

Hakugen himself had been "a strong advocate of Japan's 'holy war'":

And I should not forget to include myself as one of those modern Japanese Buddhist who did these things.

Hakugen points to twelve characteristics of Japanese Zen which have contributed to its support for Japanese militarism:

1. Subservience of Buddhism to the state.
2. Buddhist views on humanity and society. Though "Buddhism emphasizes the equality of human beings based on their possession of a Buddha nature", the doctrine of Karma has also been used as a "moral justification for social inequality".
3. protection of the state and the hierarchical social structures.
4. Emphasis on sunyata and selflessness, "leaving no room for the independence of the individual".
5. Lack of Buddhist dogma, which left no "compelling basic dogma a believer would fight to preserve".
6. The concept of on, "the teaching that a debt of gratitude is owed to those from whom favors are received". In the case of Japanese Zen, this gratitude was also owed to the Empreror, as "the head of the entire Japanese family".
7. The belief in mutual dependency, which "led in modern Japan to an organic view of the state coupled with a feeling of intimacy towards it".
8. The doctrine of the Middle Way, which "took the form of a constant search for compromise with the aim of avoiding confrontation before it occurred".
9. The tradition of ancestor veneration, in which "the entire nation came to be regarded as one large family in which loyalty between subject and sovereign was the chief virtue".
10. The value given to "old and mature things". Since society was based "on a set of ancient and immutable laws", oppostion to this was unacceptable.
11. Emphasis on inner peace, which "contributed to it's failure to encourage and justify the will to reorganize society".
12. The Buddhist logic of Soku, "just as it is", which leads to "a static, aesthetic perspective, a detached, subjective harmony with things".

Hakugen saw D.T. Suzuki as "most responsible for the development of imperial-way Zen", but in no way standing alone in this development. Hakugen traces this development to pre-meiji developments:

In the Edo period Zen priests such as Bunan, Hakuin, and Torei attempted to promote the unity of zen and Shinto by emphasizing Shinto's Zen-like features. While this resulted in the further assimilation of Zen into Japan, it occurred at the same time as the establishment of the power of the emperor system. Ultimately this meant that Zen lost almost all of its independence.