A Postscript
On March 10, 1895, Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki wrote to Paul Carus introducing himself as the translator of The Gospel of Buddha, a student of philosophy, and an avid reader of Open Court and the Monist. In December of the same year, a letter from Shaku Soen to Carus (in Suzuki's handwriting) commended Suzuki to Carus as a diligent student of philosophy, "greatly inspired by your sound faith" and earnestly desiring to study under Carus's personal guidance. He offered the inducement that Suzuki would be able to introduce Carus's ideas to Japan and suggested that he start work early next spring.1 So began Suzuki's twelve-year apprenticeship in La Salle (March 1897 to February 1909), which was to have profound consequences for Western knowledge of Japanese Buddhism. When Suzuki died at the age of ninety-five, his publications in English included seven major translations of Mahayana texts, twenty-two books, and well over a hundred articles, essays, reviews, and miscellaneous writings.2 His Japanese-language corpus is many times greater: the Suzuki Collected Works runs to more than forty volumes and is still in progress.3 His work provided the basis of what the West knows of Japanese Buddhism at both popular and scholarly levels, and contributed substantially to the by now popularly accepted equation of Zen with Eastern Buddhism, and the attribution to it of the culture and civilization of Japan.
Although a direct consequence of the delegation to Chicago, and perhaps the culmination of its mission, the story of the formation of Zen as the essence of Eastern Buddhism and its acceptance in the West belongs to a later period of history and to other studies.4 Suzuki's career spans periods of massive change in Japan's relations with the West and with Asian countries; his writings participate in an even wider set of discursive formations, republished, recirculated at different times and in different languages and to different purposes. It is not my intention in this concluding chapter to take on a survey of Suzuki's long and productive career but to look at one or two aspects of his work at La Salle to demonstrate continuities with the Chicago mission, signpost changes, and foreground the work already done on the subject. Suzuki's journey to the West was both a continuation and a point of change.
Learning from the West
It is clear from the letters just mentioned that Suzuki (with Shaku Soen's encouragement) instigated his apprenticeship with Carus.5 His journey to the West followed the pattern of early Meiji Buddhists who studied at Oxford, seeking the methods of academic scholarship to produce a modern canon, the basis of modern Buddhist studies.6 Suzuki went to Carus to learn from him the various skills required to disseminate knowledge of Buddhism to the West. The need for this had been brought home to him very sharply in the year before he arrived in America by the controversy between Barrows, Ellinwood, and Shaku Soen.7 Suzuki, as Shaku Soen's translator, would have been at the center of the exchange, reminded of the ignorance of and prejudice toward Mahayana in the West, even among Buddhist scholars, and directly encountering the arrogance and power of the Western Buddhist establishment to exclude Asian authority. At La Salle he acquired both the authority to be heard and the means to win sympathy and understanding for Mahayana Buddhism.8
Although assisting Carus in translating Chinese mayor may not have instigated his trip to America, it was an important part of Suzuki's work. Their joint translation of Lao-Tze's Tao Teh King was published in 1898; two other co translated Taoist texts appeared in 1906.9 Suzuki's translation of Asvaghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith was published in 1900, and it is clear from this immaculately documented display of erudition that he had by this time mastered the rules of scientific Buddhology. With this publication and the related scholarly articles in professional journals, he made the shift from "popular believer" and claimed his authority to contribute to academic discourse.
Studying Carus's philosophy of science was another central aspect of the program, providing both the framework and the vocabulary of Suzuki's Buddhist writings. Carus himself observed the striking similarities between the "very terms of Asvaghosha's system and expressions which I have used in my own philosophical writings," and was delighted that Suzuki's work "fully justified" his own interpretations of Buddhism.10 The similarities with Carus's monism are even more striking in Outlines of the Mahayana.11 As Verhoeven observes, "[L]ike Carus, or perhaps because of Carus Suzuki presents a Buddhism to Americans that recapitulates the German doctor's."12 In these early writings promoting Buddhism to American audiences, Suzuki took considerable license with central Buddhist concepts, some that Verhoeven traces directly to Carus's writings, which make Buddhism appear "eminently compatible with approved values."13 Although there are undoubtedly strong similarities, as Carus himself notes, "the coincidence of some salient points need of course not exclude disagreements in other important matters."14 Suzuki's unquestionable admiration for Carus and their mutual friendship did not preclude an agreement to disagree on the relative merits of Buddhism and monism, as we saw in the relationship between Carus and Shaku Saen. It was in 1901 -- shortly after the publication of Asvaghosha's Discourse and well into his American sojourn -- that Suzuki expressed his concern that Buddha no fukuin had "the odour of a Westerner about it," seriously qualifying his endorsement of it as a vehicle for teaching Buddhism to Japanese. I suggest it may be more useful to consider Suzuki inverting the process Carus had used in The Gospel of Buddha, deploying monism in the cause of Buddhism.
Suzuki's period at La Salle offers further parallels with the Oxford experience of Nanja Bun'yu and Takakusu Junjira. He too combined academic study with networking, establishing his credentials, studying the state of religion abroad. Where better than the Open Court editorial office to keep abreast of currents in Western thought? Carus's journals attracted papers on psychology, archaeology, science, and religion. Who better than Carus himself to teach the arts of reaching audiences? His achievements in promoting and maintaining interest in Buddhism in America cannot be denied. He made the unfamiliar less confronting, "less alien and worrisome," through his Christianizing and even Americanizing of Buddhism.15 His writings, disseminated through his journals and publishing company, facilitated acceptance of Buddhism among his predominantly Protestant North American readers. By the end of his apprenticeship with Carus, Suzuki had acquired an appropriate philosophical vocabulary and intellectual framework for presenting Japanese Buddhism to Western audiences. He had published books and papers to establish his credentials within the Western Buddhist discourse. He had also learned the basic skills of editing and publishing, which were to be used in establishing, first, the Japanese-language journal Zendo16 and, later, Eastern Buddhist.
Suzuki at La Salle
Suzukj's stay at La Salle was extremely productive. He began the translation of Asvaghosha's Discourse not long after he arrived.17 While working on this he also published book reviews and articles for the Monist, Open Court, and other journals.18 Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot appeared in 1906 and Outlines of the Mahayana in 1907. The first book was based on lectures given by Shaku Soen on his second trip to America in 190519 but was substantially Suzuki's work. He not only translated the lectures, but edited them, "condensing several articles into one," and made substantial additions -- "making a special essay out of subjects only cursorily referred to," and, where necessary, "put the thoughts in a form more comprehensible to the American public." Sermons also contained his translation of the Sutra of the Forty-Two Sections.20 While at La Salle Suzuki also wrote articles for the Japanese journals Rikugo zasshi and Shin bukkyo21 and, most significant, published his first English-language article on Zen, "The Zen Sect of Buddhism" (1906-7).
It is not difficult to trace a continuation of the Manifesto agenda in these early writings. The Buddhism they present is the familiar deinstitutionalized, deritualized, scientific and philosophical expression of shin bukkyo as a universal religion. They reiterate the familiar themes: the Mahayana is the teaching of the Buddha; Eastern Buddhism is not pessimistic or nihilistic; although it is a religion of self-reliance, people are not left unaided; Mahayana offers a noninterventionist system of moral retribution, is rational, and is compatible with science; "philosophical thought in this twentieth century runs parallel to Mahayana Buddhism."22 Each work laments Western ignorance and misunderstanding of the Mahayana. The trajectory is particularly clear in Outlines, in which Suzuki presents Eastern Buddhism to the West as the delegates to Chicago no doubt would have liked to have done. It addresses all of the priorities identified in the Manifesto and presents Eastern Buddhism -- the need for this third discursive space is clearly articulated -- unconstrained by time or language, equipped with knowledge of the interests of the audience and mastery of the vocabulary to make the ideas relevant to them.23 There are, however, significant differences, new strategies in a changing discursive environment, that contributed to the formation of the well-documented features of popular Western perceptions of Zen. The differences speak of the lessons of Suzuki's journey to the West as well as of changing strategies in the promotion of Eastern Buddhism.
Decentering Original Buddhism
The publication of Asvaghosha's Discourse made a key Mahayana text available to Western scholars. The introductory essay on the dating of Asvaghosha is an immaculately scholarly comparison of all the evidence available in Chinese sources on the dating of the lost Sanskrit original, challenging Western assumptions of the priority of Theravada. In this book Suzuki established the development and systematization of key Mahayana concepts several centuries earlier than previously believed, significantly closer to the time of the life of Sakyamuni. With this work Suzuki located the articulation of concepts of Suchness, of the three bodies of the Buddha (and therefore dharmakaya), and of the idea of salvation at a time not much later than the Pali sutras.24 From this it followed that the Mahayana and Hinayana both emerged out of a period of development soon after the Buddha's death when the various schools that had formed during the Buddha's life were formalized. They were more or less contemporary; Theravada had no more claim to originality than Mahayana.25 Working within the textual parameters of the Western paradigm, Suzuki challenged the priority of Pali Buddhism. There were "Hindu types," not just one Indian Buddhism.
In his next book, Outlines of the Mahayana, he takes a bolder step, inverting focus on the older canonical teachings and speaking instead to late nineteenth-century confidence in progress and evolution, of development. "Is Mahayana Buddhism the Genuine Teaching of the Buddha?" he asks in the introduction. Unquestionably yes, but "the role of an originator is necessarily indefinite and comprehensive." The concern to show that Mahayana and Japanese Buddhism are the teachings of the historical Buddha remains, but rather than pursue the tradition of the five periods of teaching, which he no doubt realized had little chance of being accepted against the evidence of Western scholarship, he approached the problem differently. Eastern Buddhism is a living religion, the culmination of thousands of years of development, a living force. "Just as Kant's philosophy instigated the diverse philosophical systems of Jacobi, Fitche, Hegel, and Schopenhauer;' the followers of the Buddha developed his teachings "as required by their needs and circumstances, finally giving birth to the distinction of Mahayanism and Hinayanism."26
In this scheme Mahayana is progressive; Hinayana, conservative. Both came from the one source, but one tended to preserve the monastic rules and traditions, the other drew nourishment where available and unfolded the germs of concepts presented in the original system.27 Eastern Buddhism then is the Buddha's teaching, not in the fundamentalist sense of return to origins but as a thoughtful development of the ideas presented. Development gives rise to the Mahayana and, in time, to Eastern Buddhism. Eastern Buddhism deserves a separate space because, Suzuki argues, its sects have differentiated so distinctly from their original Hindu types (note the plural) in the twenty centuries of its development under the East Asian genius.28 The scheme, introduced in Suzuki's first essay on Zen and repeated in each of his writings, is spelled out completely in a lecture he gave soon after his return to Japan in 1911."We know that the acorn is different from the oak, but as long as there is a continuation of growth their identity is a logical conclusion. To see really into the nature of the acorn is to trace an uninterrupted development through its historical stages. When the seed remains a seed and means nothing more, there is no life in it; it is a finished piece of work and, except as an object of historical curiosity, it has no value whatever in our religious experience."29 Following Carus, Suzuki is not concerned with "Buddhism in its cradle" but with "Buddhism up to date;' the living spiritual experience rather than the ancient texts.
Decentering the Canon
Suzuki's boldest challenge to Western assumptions appears in "The Zen Sect of Buddhism" (1906-7), provocatively placed in the Journal of the Pali Text Society, the flagship journal of Orientalist Theravada scholarship. By introducing Zen, Suzuki challenges the heart of Orientalist scholarship, circumventing the texts and the words of the Buddha entirely. In this article he presents an alternative system of legitimation through direct, face-to-face transmission from master to disciple, an unbroken lineage originating with Sakyamuni himself. Zen is the quintessential teaching of the Buddha, but for Zen, texts are beside the point. A detailed history of the transmission of Zen from Sakyamuni onward, patriarch by patriarch (pp. 9-18), establishes authenticity. A footnote on page 13 explains the importance of the lineage to anyone who might have missed the point.
Suzuki's stress on development, together with a guarantee of authenticity through the unbroken lineage of direct transmission, decentered the importance of the Founder and his very words that so obsessed Western scholars at the time and was used by them to dismiss Mahayana. Under the heading "Principles of Zen" are the subsections "Facts and Not Words" (p. 19) and "No Sutras, No Books" (p. 20). Zen "does not find any intrinsic importance in the sacred sutras, or their exposition by the wise and learned" (p. 9), but insists "most emphatically" on inner spiritual development. Zen discourages "blind acceptance of an outside authority and a meek submission to conventionality"; Zen teaches life, individuality, and inspiration. It gives "perfect freedom to the self-unfolding of the mind within one's self, which was not to be obstructed by any artificial instruments of torture, such as worshiping the Buddha as a savior, a blind belief in the sacred books, or an unconditioned reliance upon an outside authority" (p. 21). The article concludes with a list of traditional texts that may be consulted for further information. Although "it is an avowed enemy of literature," Zen has produced many learned scholars (pp. 42-43). Textuality is repositioned rather than abandoned.
Positive, Energetic, Practical
Throughout the article Suzuki emphasizes the positive and energetic aspects of Zen ("Not Asceticism," "Zen and General Culture"); its adaptability and appeal to the practical mind; its "simplicity, directness, and efficiency." It flourished in Japan, we are told, because it was introduced at a time "noted for its able, military administration."30 Zen is practical, active, and energetic, "the very antithesis of Oriental 'fatalism.'"31 The section "Zen Discipline" describes zazen and offers meditation and mental discipline, speaking of their benefits beyond Buddhism, especially in "these days of industrial and commercial civilization" when many people have little time to devote themselves to spiritual culture.32 As Tweed has shown, many Americans came to Buddhism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because -- thanks largely to Paul Carus -- they saw it as a positive, optimistic, active, and energetic alternative. Others came seeking spiritualism and mysticism, and still others came to it through an interest in Japanese art and culture. Suzuki's Zen offered much to attract interest in the West at that time.
Zen: The Essence of Eastern Buddhism
Although Eastern Buddhism is the result of twenty centuries of development of the Buddha's idea, Zen is unique within Eastern Buddhism, Suzuki argues, as the one sect peculiarly suited to the Far Eastern mind. Unlike the Tien T'ai, Avatamsaka, the Madkyamika, or the Yoga, which reflect the "elaborately speculative genius of the Hindus" (p. 32), Zen offers a simple and practical spirituality, suited to the down-to-earth Chinese mind.33
When we come to Zen, after a survey of the general field of Buddhism, we are compelled to acknowledge that its simplicity, its directness, its pragmatic tendency, and its close connection with everyday life stand in remarkable contrast to the other Buddhist sects. Undoubtedly the main ideas of Zen are derived from Buddhism, and we cannot but consider it a legitimate development of the latter; but this development has been achieved in order to meet the requirements peculiarly characteristic of the psychology of the Far-Eastern people. Therefore I make bold to say that in Zen are found systematized, or rather crystallised, all the philosophy, religion, and life itself of the Far-Eastern people, especially of the Japanese.34
The ease with which Zen accommodated Confucianism and Taoism in China was also to its advantage, Suzuki argues. It is a sect so elastic, so comprehensive it could readily reconcile itself to the Chinese environment and, by extension, into any other environment. The idea that Zen is suited to the East Asian mind in general and the Japanese in particular, is repeated and elaborated in later works. Buddhism is the quickening spiritual force of the Far East (p. 32), but Zen is unique; it is Buddhism in a form particular to the needs of the Far Eastern mind. It is the basis of the life and culture of Japan. Paradoxically, however, the argument of East Asian particularity, based on Zen's simplicity, practicality, and flexibility, is also the seed of its universality.
In Suzuki's 1907 essay on Zen, it is uniquely Japanese, the basis of Japanese culture, and as the essence of Buddhism, both of it and beyond it. This decontextualized essence then, paradoxically, can develop into a transreligious, universal spirituality. In a continuity with the Chicago position, it is uniquely Japanese and hence a source of national pride, but of universal applicability, and therefore available to be Japan's contribution to the world. The delegation repackaged shin bukkyo as Eastern Buddhism and offered it as the universal religion of the future; Suzuki -- after an apprenticeship with Carus and years of engagement with the Western discourse on religion and science -- made the further transition from Eastern Buddhism to Zen. Although they did not circulate widely at this time, the core ideas which were later to obtain popular currency were apparent at La Salle.
Buddhism, Zen, and Japanese Culture: The Haaden Revisited
The idea that Buddhism (and even Zen) was the basis of Japanese civilization was neither new nor unique to Suzuki. It had been an essential part of shin bukkyo's call for popular support. The delegation to Chicago emphasized the point, and it was given material form in the Hooden, the Japanese Pavilion at the exposition (Chapter 1). When Suzuki wrote in 1907, the connection had been eloquently articulated and disseminated in Europe and America by Okakura Kakuzo -- director of the art exhibition at Chicago -- in his Ideals of the East (1903), The Awakening of Japan (1903-4), and The Book of Tea (1906), and in Nitobe Inazo's Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1906 in English, 1899 in Japanese). The enthusiastic reception of these books in the West extended the discursive context within which Suzuki's writings circulated.35
The first two of Okakura's books had been written while he was in India visiting Buddhist archaeological sites and staying at the house of the Tagore family, leaders of Hindu Renaissance and Indian cultural nationalism, where he had been introduced by the Irish-born disciple of Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita. The books were written with the explicit intent of stirring the youth of India to follow Japan's example in throwing off the "White Disaster," waking from "the colonial night of Asia." The "ideals" of the title are the shared Hindu-Buddhist ideals of Indian origin, which, when subjected to the Japanese genius, provided the basis of Japan's success.36 The Kamakura, a time of military rule and bureaucratic achievement during which Zen took hold among the samurai, is central to the scheme of the book. It is the time when a distinctive Japanese form of Buddhism emerged. Okakura compares it with the European age of chivalry (p. 154), and likens the stories of its hero, Yoshitsune, to the tales of the Round Table, and his death to that of King Arthur (p. 157). But Japan's age of chivalry is merely preparation for the Ashikaga period, the Age of Bushido, the way of the warrior, an age of chivalry and also of great artistic achievement, a time when the influence of Zen has brought Japanese culture to a point of even higher development. The result is a restatement of the message of the Hooden: Japan was exquisitely civilized while Europe was still in the Dark Ages.37 In this section of the book we find all the elements of the now familiar equation of Zen Buddhism with the essence of Japan, and the attribution of all the accomplishments of Japanese culture to the union of Zen and the warrior class (pp. 172-84 especially).
The point here is the way in which Okakura's contacts in Calcutta circulated the texts of Japanese Buddhist nationalism into new arenas. Nivedita had introduced Okakura to the Tagores as the "William Morris of Japan," linking him with Western critics of the Industrial Revolution and the materialistic society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His books, written for an Indian audience, were popular in the West because of the mutually supportive concerns of Asian cultural nationalism and the ideas of Ruskin, Carlyle, and William Morris. He gave them the spiritual East, an idealized Age of Chivalry and refined aestheticism. Okakura's pan-Asian anti-imperialist writings served in this Western cause and in doing so bound Buddhism, particularly Zen, to warrior culture and to artistic achievement.38
As we have seen, when Suzuki wrote of Zen and Japanese culture in 1907, he wrote of the appeal of Zen to the samurai rulers to illustrate the positive, life-affirming aspects of Zen. It was a religion that appealed to men of action, to efficient administrators; it was life-affirming, the opposite of "Oriental fatalism." It appealed not just to the elites but to all levels of society. "Not only emperors, statesmen and generals came to see Zen masters, but also men of letters, artists, singers, actors, wrestlers, merchants, masters of tea ceremony, and swordsmen" (p. 34). The list is of practitioners, again emphasizing that Zen is active and practical. It is clear that Suzuki is aware that he is engaging with other writers here. He writes that, while Bushido, "much talked of since the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War;' is "in fact, a production of ... Shintoism, Confucianism and Buddhism;' "no fair observer will deny that Zen had a great deal to do with the religious and spiritual aspects of Bushido. For the Lebensanschauung of Bushido is no more nor less than that of Zen."
The Changing Contexts of Buddhist Nationalism
When Inoue Enryo spoke of Japan as the repository of Asian culture, of Japan as leader of Asia, of Japan's duty to lead the battle of the yellow races against the white, his focus was essentially domestic; his project, the formation of a sense of national belonging based on allegiance to and pride in Buddhism. Hence the delegation to Chicago could be seen to be very largely an event for reinterpretation within the Japanese discourse. In contrast, by the early years of the twentieth century when Suzuki began his career, the discourse of nation was a matter of international projection, of negotiating the definition of the nation in relation to Asia and to the West. Japan's military successes, as well as its growing imperial presence and increased status in Asia, gave potential reality to rhetoric such as Inoue's. Aspiring Asian nationalists looking to emulate Japan's success came to study in Japan. Indians thrilled to Okakura's vision of "Buddhaland" in opposition to "Christendom." Filipinos saw Japan as what they sought to become, free from colonial rule, sovereign in their capacity to determine their own history.39 In colonial domains as remote as Egypt Mustafa Kamil's book The Rising Sun (al-Shams al-mushriqua, 1904) stirred anti-imperial passion with the Meiji model.40 Decades before the military appropriation of the idea, Japan was seen by some Asians at least as model and leader.
Military success also won Western esteem at this time. "As a gentle, peaceful, honest and honourable nation, Christians would have none of her except as a semi-contemptuous field for mission work," observed a writer in Arena (1894) soon after Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War, but "as a slayer, as a fighter, she has brought all Christian nations to her side with hats off, and a surprised: 'By Jove, she's great. She has won our respect. She must henceforth be reckoned with as a nation.'"41 Respect increased when Japan protected Western interests in China during the Boxer uprising (1900-1901) leading to the signing of the Anglo- Japanese alliance (1902) and recognition of Japan's status as a major power.42 Japan's new status was demonstrated most spectacularly in the defeat of Russia in 1905. For the first time an Asian nation had defeated a Western power.
There can be little surprise that writings of this period show a pride in Japan's military heritage.43 Military success and Buddhist culture were explicitly, and proudly, linked by Shaku Saen, who wrote that "it was impossible to explain Japan's string of military victories in terms of military equipment or logistics. This was not something that took place because of military prowess built up in Japan over a few decades ... but was due to the samurai spirit, the Spirit of Japan, nurtured by the country over the past two thousand years."44 Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot contained three short essays defending Japanese aggression in Manchuria,45 as well as "Buddhism and Oriental Culture;' which explained Buddhist equanimity in the face of death and sacrifice, the Bushido spirit shown by the heroes in the recent war.
The pervasiveness of Bushido at this time prompted Basil Hall Chamberlain, contemporary observer and longtime resident of Japan, to produce a pamphlet, The Invention of a New Religion (1905), explaining to Westerners that this "high minded chivalry" was an entirely new phenomenon "fabricated out of whole cloth, chiefly for foreign consumption." There was no end of people ready to spread the "new religion of loyalty and patriotism," readily swallowed by Europeans and Americans in their enthusiasm for the marvelous and for Japan, "a land of fabulous antiquity and incredible virtues." Although Japan did have its valiant heroes as all nations have, he wrote, "the very word ["Bushido"] appears in no dictionary, native or foreign, before the year 1900."46 In terms of creating Western understanding of modern Japan, Chamberlain's concern was well founded.
The connection between Zen, art, and Bushido is elaborated in The Book of Tea, the one book that Okakura specifically directed to the West. Written after the Russo- Japanese War to foster international respect based on cultural achievement rather than success at war, the preface tells us, it introduced Zen and its influence on Japanese aesthetics as displayed through various aspects of tea-related arts. It concludes with a romanticized account of the final tea and death by seppuku of the sixteenth-century tea master Sen no Rikyu, the point of which is to show the composure and awareness of beauty of a chajin even in moments of extremity. "The last moments of the great tea-masters were as full of exquisite refinement as had been their lives." The Book of Tea remains in print to the present and has had enormous influence on Western understanding of Japan, leading many to an appreciation of Japanese aesthetics and serious study of tea and Zen. It was, nevertheless, self-Orientalizing, projecting an image of Japanese cultural practice long past as the essence of the present. When General Nogi Maresuke followed the emperor Meiji in death by committing ritual suicide on September 13, 1912, Japanese were shocked by what was to them such an archaic, anachronistic act. In the West, remote from the reality of Japan, it merely confirmed what people had so recently read.47
The transition from Eastern Buddhism to Zen as the repackaged version of shin bukkyo for Western consumption occurred with Nukariya Kaiten's Religion of the Samurai in 1913. It developed ideas such as those expressed in Suzuki's 1907 essay and appropriated for Zen-the religion of the samurai-Eastern Buddhism's claims to universality and its uniqueness to Japan.48 Nukariya equated Zen with shin bukkyo and, in an echo of Inoue Enryo's plea, offered it as the ideal doctrine for "the rising generation." He advocated Bushido as the code of conduct for all citizens in their struggle for existence. Zen was the essence of Eastern Buddhism, "the very heart of Asian spirituality, the essence of Japanese culture, and key to the unique features of the Japanese race." Japan remained the exclusive repository of this transnational truth. Zen was both universal and uniquely Japanese.
Suzuki offers similar ideas in his extremely influential book Zen and Japanese Culture, but this belongs to later times, and other stages of Japan's relations with Asia and the West.49 In Eastern Buddhist (1921) we see the more cautious statement that Buddhism in general is the basis of the arts in Japan, the basis of Japanese intellectuality. Echoing Inoue Enryo, Suzuki suggested that the training in Buddhist thought over the centuries was "one of the chief reasons the Japanese were readily able to assimilate the highest flights of Western intellect."50
The Eastern Buddhist Society
Suzuki's English-language writings on Zen did not have wide circulation until Essays in Zen Buddhism appeared in 1927, and the reprint of the essays written for New East as Introduction to Zen Buddhism in 1934. Meanwhile, his work of promoting knowledge of Mahayana, including Zen, continued with the founding of the Eastern Buddhist Society, an emphatically nonsectarian Mahayana counterpart to the Pali Text Society. It fostered study of Buddhism and translations of primary sources into Japanese and European languages. It would support and propagate and legitimate scholarship on Mahayana in the way that the Pali Text Society had so admirably done for Theravada. Its aim was to bring knowledge of Japanese Buddhism to the West; to address Western ignorance and misunderstanding of the Mahayana; to publish in both English and Japanese, "raising the beacon of Buddhism in the West"; and to make knowledge of Buddhism accessible to the Japanese general public.51 The subscription rates for England, France, India, and the United States on the cover of the society's journal signal its transnational vision.
Eastern Buddhist stressed the fact that Buddhism is a living religion in Japan and that Buddhist scholarship in Japan remains active. It reported on scholarly activities and reviewed (in English) recent Japanese publications. Eastern Buddhist exemplified the Chicago message: only in Japan do we still have the texts and the people who understand them and write new ones.52 It chronicled the public vitality of Buddhism in Japan, noting major public celebrations, events, and debates. A regular frontispiece introduced a major artwork illustrating Buddhism's long, active, and culturally rich history in Japan. Much of the work that circulated in later publications first appeared in the pages of the journal.
Throughout his career Suzuki wrote prolifically on Mahayana Buddhism, particularly on Pure Land schools and on Zen, the sect of his own practice. It was Zen, however, that caught popular attention, accepted, as the Western Theravada construct had been, because of its perceived relevance to Western concerns. As Sharf observes, the single most attractive feature of Zen was the idea of "direct experience," which he sees as a Japanese appropriation of the idea of "religious experience" emphasized in the work of scholars such as Friedrich Schleirmacher, Rudolf Otto, Joachim Wach, and William James.53 This "direct experience," touted as characteristic of Eastern spirituality in general and Zen in particular, appealed to Westerners seeking alternatives to their own seemingly moribund religious institutions.54 Robert King sees Suzuki's Zen as an ideal Asian export to the spiritually inclined Westerner searching for an exotic alternative to institutional Christianity, a "classic example of the universality of 'mysticism,' increasingly conceived of as the common core of the various 'world religions.' Suzuki's Zen thus functioned as the archetypal Japanese example of the perennial philosophy for Theosophists and scholars of mysticism alike."55 Decontextualized from Buddhism, Zen could also be seen as a spiritual technology, something that could be adopted as an adjunct to Christian practice. In his preface to the 1963 reprint of Suzuki's Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, Alan Watts would write: "Although Dr. Suzuki speaks here of Buddhism as a religion, this is only in the most vague and general sense of the term .... The real concerns of Buddhism are closer to psychology, or even to something such as ophthalmology, than to the differing systems of belief which we recognize in the west as adopting a religion .... It is so thoroughly experimental and empirical that the subject-matter of Buddhism must be said to be an immediate, non-verbal experience rather than a set of beliefs or ideas or rules of behaviour."56 Buddhism here (not even Zen in particular) is scientific, transreligious, universal. The impact of Suzuki's Zen owes much to interpreters like Watts and Hugo Munsterberg,57 whose own works depend on it, and its diffusion through the literary works of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and others of their generation.58
As I wrote at the start of the chapter, my aim was to foreground the work that has been done on Japanese Buddhism in the West. I mention Sharf and King here because their work shows a persistence of certain patterns discussed already. The most important of these are the political dimensions of the discourse, interaction between East and West, the deployment of Western scholarship for intrinsically Japanese purposes, and the Western Orientalist gaze that continued to see only those aspects of the representations of Japanese Buddhism that were relevant to its present preoccupations. The result has been that Zen, represented in Japanese nationalist strategies as the essence of Japaneseness, has been accepted in the West as the "full and unmediated experience of life itself untainted by cultural accretions the ultimate source of all religious teaching, both Eastern and Western no more Buddhist than it is Christian, Jewish or Muslim."59 Eastern Buddhism, essentialized in Zen, is now respected, accepted, and practiced around the world. Japan has over time derived cultural kudos by taking Eastern Buddhism to the West, but with little consequence for general Western knowledge of the nature and variety of Buddhism in Japan.
Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Eastern Buddhism
I have argued that the Buddhist delegation to Chicago was a nationalist initiative, promoting shin bukkyo as the basis of Japan's modern identity by attaining apparent Western validation for its claim to be the universal religion of the future. The delegation did not succeed in winning Western regard for Japanese Buddhism at that time. Mahayana Buddhism remained excluded from academic consideration. This, however, did not detract from the importance of the event as a strategy in the Japanese discourse. The delegation itself, Japanese inclusion and participation in the international conference at Chicago, was an event that could be interpreted to the Japanese audience to support Buddhist revival.
The Japanese Buddhists were not alone in using the Parliament this way. Histories of nationalist movements in nineteenth-century India show the successful deployment of the Western reception of Vivekananda's Hinduism. Less apparent, probably because it was the continuation of a long-established tradition and challenged none of the presuppositions of readers, was the deployment of Christian success at the Parliament in Barrows's books, the two-volume official history as well as his later works, The Christian Conquest of Asia and Christianity: The World Religion. The Japanese, Hindus of India, and Barrows all demonstrated the familiar process of "Oriental ism;' of defining themselves by reference to a construct of remote reality. In the case of Japan and India, a more appropriate term might perhaps be "Occidentalism;' since the West, rather than the East, was the external resource.
The parallel between Orientalism and Occidentalism was, however, not complete. The "West," as the Japanese used the term, was as amorphous as the "East" is in English and operated in precisely the same way to signify an alterity. Seiyo or obei defined by contrast the Japanese wa (us) and was used within the Japanese discourse of this time with equal lack of concern for the reality of this other. The important difference, however, was the reality of Western dominance in the relationship and the function of the West in Meiji Japan as both model and judge of achievement. Consequently, even in the 1890s, at a time of intense reaction against Westernization, Western authority was deployed to promote Buddhism as a source of intrinsically Japanese identity. The development and promotion of shin bukkyo illustrated some of the various functions the West was put to in Meiji discourse.
Shin bukkyo owed a great deal to the West. Buddhist scholars adopted the methods of Western academic scholarship, using them to define modern Japanese Buddhism and to present it in a form acceptable to Western-educated Japanese. The West also provided models for the function of religion in society. The YMBA must be recognized as the domestication of the Protestant Christian institution. A similar influence is evident in the formation of lay Buddhist organizations; in the movement to provide direct personal access to the teachings of Buddhism through specially prepared introductory tracts; and in the emphasis on philanthropic works, such as the foundation of hospitals and pastoral work in prisons. However, the delegation to Chicago shows the West put to a different function. The West was neither a source of knowledge nor an example, but a source of legitimation.
From this point of view, taking Eastern Buddhism to Chicago was one in a series of events in the revitalization of Buddhism, linked by their reference to Western authority. The first was the Japanese tour of Colonel Olcott. In spite of the fact that his Japanese hosts were fully aware of the deficiencies of his understanding of Buddhism, they presented him as living evidence of reform claims that Western intellectuals and men of science were dissatisfied with Christianity and turning to Buddhism. Reform Buddhists paraded Olcott around rural Japan, having him speak the messages of Buddhist reform through his translators, creating opportunities for press coverage that diffused the message further still. Similar processes can be seen at work in Shaku Soen's Japanese publication of Carus's Gospel. What links these events is their recourse to a Western authority -- even a dubious one -- to validate things Japanese. In these cases, the West was not copied, borrowed from, or domesticated. The West was neither exemplar nor source of inspiration. Its only function was to appear to endorse Japanese Buddhism, and even the reality of this was beside the point.
One problem in this "Occidentalist" process, however, was the lack of separation between the Japanese nationalist and the Western Orientalist discourse on Buddhism. Discursive statements, once put into circulation, are subject to interpretation, available to be put to other uses. Hence, in Olcott's Western publications, his tour of Japan became a personal triumph, and he became one who brought the light of the East back to the benighted Japanese. Carus similarly reinterpreted his Japanese exposure to his own credit. The apparent approval of Japanese Buddhists in promoting these men as champions of Buddhism in Japan was used to give their enunciations on Buddhism an authority they would not otherwise have been granted. Because both these authors referred their readings of Buddhism to the Pali texts, the net effect of the Japanese Buddhist strategy was to reinforce the existing Western Orientalist construct of Buddhism. A statement made to Buddhist reform advantage in the Japanese discourse was turned against it in the West.
The attempt by Buddhist delegates at the World's Parliament of Religions to appropriate and deploy the Western construct of Buddhism had a similar result. The Buddhist delegates were excluded by the prevailing rules of truth, which gave priority to the written texts of "original" Buddhism over the voices of contemporary practitioners. What they said was only "true" when it endorsed what was already accepted. It was otherwise rejected as the modern, popular practice of "so-called Buddhists."
This does not, however, imply that there was unanimity of Western opinion on the nature of Buddhism. Theosophists, missionaries, transcendentalists, positivists, and others each continued to see Buddhism differently. The reception of Buddhism here followed the pattern evident in the American representation of material culture in the Hooden. In a continuation of the basic principle of Orientalism, the representation of Japanese Buddhism at Chicago -- like the representation of Japanese art and architecture -- was appreciated to the extent that it fitted with a current American vogue. Carus's appropriation of Buddhism in the cause of his post-Kantian, Christian monism was only the most clearly articulated exercise of this kind. Missionaries clung to their vision of the nihilist foe. Others admired Buddhism, as Lafcadio Hearn observed, because of the delight of discovering it contained "the very thoughts of Emerson."60 How significant is it that Ashitsu's paper that had suggested the links between Japanese Buddhism and philosophic idealism was translated into German, and that Catholic France -- where Toki Horyu spent some time on his return from Chicago -- published the first account of Shingon ritual?61 This selective acceptance was no doubt encouraged by the Japanese attempt to present those aspects of Eastern Buddhism they expected would meet European interests, making Eastern Buddhism accessible to Western readers. Suzuki's success as interpreter of Mahayana Buddhism to the West supports this.
Although Japanese Buddhism has been a strong and growing presence in America since the 1950s,the most significant immediate impact of the delegation on its Western audience may not have been in conveying knowledge of the Mahayana teachings but in its contribution to the wider Japanese project at the exposition, the campaign to establish that Japan was a civilized nation, so closely tied to the concurrent diplomatic campaign for treaty revision. Seager writes that the Parliament provided the first contact that many Americans had had with educated Asians. They were impressed by the obvious intelligence, erudition, commitment, and sincerity of the delegates. Seager's point is that their civilized demeanor undermined preexisting assumptions about the "heathen" and made it possible to take non-Christian religions seriously. For all its deficiencies as a source of knowledge of Buddhism, Carus's Gospel of Buddha must also be credited for contributing to this process of making Buddhism approachable. Although the delegation had expected to achieve this through Buddhist philosophy, one of its aims was realized. As Seager argues, this also had profound repercussions for the United States. The favorable impression created by the Asian delegates was important in effecting the transition from the nineteenth-century American ideal of religious assimilation to the pluralism of the twentieth century. The Parliament, Seager continues, "marked the formal debut of Asian religions into the mainstream of American religious life."62 Dharmapala, Shaku Soen, and Vivekananda all made subsequent lecture tours of the United States. This had repercussions not just for American religious awareness but for the continuing projection of the various Asian nationalist projects, most apparent in the Indian nationalist deployment of Vivekananda's Vedanta Societies in America.63
The delegates had been realistic in their expectations. As the Manifesto explained, they did not expect immediate benefits from sending a few people to a conference but hoped only to lay foundations for future progress, and from this perspective they were successful. The term "Eastern Buddhism" is now in general use, and if Mircea Eliade's work From Primitives to Zen can be taken as representative of comparative studies in religion, Zen, if not Japanese Buddhism as such, had, by the mid-1960s, won a place at the pinnacle of religious evolution. Interest in Mahayana Buddhism now far outstrips that in the Theravada at both popular and scholarly levels. Although it may not be anything the delegates would recognize, Eastern Buddhism -- as Zen -- is now sufficiently well established in the West to have produced new cultural forms64 and transmitted its lineages abroad.65 By the time of the centenary of the World's Parliament of Religions, Shingon, Tendai, and Pure Land schools had a growing presence.