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 Modern Buddhism for the Protection of the Realm C H A P T E R F O U R In his arguments about the causes of Imperial-Way Zen, Ichikawa focuses on Zen’s epistemology, metaphysics, and views of society and history. He situates the first of these foci at the center of his critique, writing at length about the ethical pitfalls of Zen “peace of mind.” While critical of the political stances D. T. Suzuki took from the Meiji period onward, Ichikawa appropriated Suzuki’s privileging of Zen experience insofar as he construed Zen practice as cultivating an unmediated, direct oneness with things,1 which Suzuki termed “prajna-intuition” and Ichikawa described as “becoming one with things” (narikiru). In the twenty years since Ichikawa’s death, however, many scholars have come to challenge dominant representations of Zen experience, especially as advanced by Suzuki. Bernard Faure, Robert Sharf, and others have problematized such epistemological claims, arguing that the role of special “experience” has been less central to Zen than Suzuki and others have made it out to be, and that the construct of ineffable, pure, unmediated experience beyond the duality of subject and object is largely unintelligible.2 Even if we grant for the sake of the argument that prominent Zen figures have experienced things in the ways that Suzuki and Ichikawa claim, and that this epistemology has been grounded in a metaphysics and social theory that valorize actuality, we are still left with the question of the extent to which these factors caused “Imperial-Way Zen.” Though they may help explain why this or that Zen leader passively accommodated Japanese imperialism, they do not fully account for why they actively collaborated with it. To answer this question we must turn to historical analysis. To his credit, in Buddhists’ Responsibility for the War, Ichikawa lifts up the traditional relationship between Buddhism and the state as the first of twelve factors that have contributed to the conservative stances of Zen and other  MODERN BUDDHISM FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE REA L M forms of Japanese Buddhism. In general, however, historical analysis takes a back seat to his central focus on Zen “peace of mind.” Brian Victoria, a scholar heavily influenced by Ichikawa, directs a good part of his critique at historical patterns. In Zen at War, Zen War Stories, and several articles, Victoria analyzes an array of talks, writings, and activities of prominent Buddhist figures from the Meiji Restoration through the first part of the Shōwa period. Focused on laying bare the political stances of Zen leaders, he spends little time offering causal explanations of the ideology and actions he so thoroughly maps. In passing, however, he does ascribe Zen collaboration with Japanese imperialism to the connection Zen has maintained with the samurai and their warrior ethos, bushidō, as encapsulated in the expression kenzen-ichinyo, the “unity of Zen and the sword.” He construes this connection, especially as interpreted by prewar and wartime Zen Buddhists, as “the key to understanding the eventual emergence of ‘imperial-state Zen’ (kōkoku Zen).”3 To support this argument he quotes a plethora of statements by Zen masters about bushidō and its core constructs—loyalty, courage, self-sacrifice, moving forward without flinching once one’s course has been set—and it is clear from his presentation that in maintaining close contact with prominent military officers, Zen leaders continued their traditional association with Japan’s warriors. It is not equally clear, however, that the primary cause of the nationalist bent of Zen leaders in the first half of the twentieth century was the ongoing Zenbushid ō connection. True, they cloaked their nationalism in the rhetoric of kenzen -ichinyo, but is the Zen connection to bushidō the reason they were so eagerly patriotic? One cannot help but wonder whether there might not have been other causes of nationalist Zen before and during the Fifteen-Year War. Interestingly, Victoria himself points to other causal factors when he asks, “what did post-Meiji Zen adherents find in the relationship between Zen and Bushido that justified their own fervent support of Japan’s war effort?”4 With this wording he seems to construe the Zen-bushidō connection not so much as the main cause of Zen support for Japanese militarism and imperialism but as a construct readily available when Zen leaders sought an ex post facto justification for that support. His wording betrays his recognition that factors other than the historical Zen-bushidō connection —many of which he points out...

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