On three occasions the direction of Japanese history has been modified significantly by external influences: the first was the arrival of Buddhism, initially from Korea and then from China; the second was the first influx of western ideas in the sixteenth century; and the third, still going on, is the period of cultural exchange with the West which followed the Meiji restoration in 1868. The first and third of these are reflected in the ideas of the thinkers considered in this section.
Historians of Japan generally cite 552 CE as the date at which Buddhism can be said to have arrived from the Asian mainland, as it is recorded in ancient chronicles that, in that year, the first image of the Buddha was transported from Korea. Somewhat as was also the case in Tibet, Buddhism supplanted the native religion – in the case of Japan, Shinto – as the major force shaping the spiritual life of the nation, and has continued to be so ever since. Gradually, the major forms of Mahayana Buddhism which had evolved in China established themselves in Japan, acquiring new emphases to suit the Japanese temperament as they did so. It is often assumed in the West that much the dominant form of Japanese Buddhism is Zen, the best known outside Japan, but the truth of the matter is somewhat more complex. Zen did of course come to flourish in Japan, but historically it was not the first form of Buddhism to do so. Nor has it been, in terms of the number of adherents, the most popular: other sects, notably Shingon (i.e. Tantric), Jodo or Pure Land and Tendai (C: T’ien-t’ai) have always been as influential in these respects as Zen.
Tendai Buddhism, which has its roots in Chinese thought of the fifth century CE, was introduced to Japan early in the ninth century by Saicho (767–822 CE; he is also referred to by means of his title Dengyo Daishi or Great Teacher Dengyo). Saicho established a Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei, an institution which was to become extremely powerful, and which exercised great influence over many subsequent developments in the evolution of Japanese Buddhism. The Tendai tradition is here represented by its late variant Nichirenism. Though this school of thought now has the status of a separate sect with its own sub-sects, and has a presence in the West, the philosophical debt to the parent tradition is extensive, and the basis of Nichiren’s practice is a set of beliefs which would have been acceptable both to Saicho and his Chinese mentors, notably the acceptance of the Lotus Sutra as the key text of Buddhism.
One of the major areas of contrast between Zen on the one hand and other Buddhist sects, Tendai included, is its insistence that no sutras are of central importance on the path to enlightenment: Zen locates its religious authority in a direct line of unwritten transmission of the dharma from the Buddha to all Zen masters. In view of its later extensive impact on Japanese life, it is interesting to reflect that Zen took longer to establish itself in Japan than either Tendai or Shingon. Influences of Chinese Zen can be traced in Japan from the seventh century, and the first Chinese master to visit the islands, Tao-hsuan, did so in the Tempyo period (729–749 CE), yet no major school of Japanese Zen came into being throughout the entire Heian period (794–1185 CE). The title of the founder of Japanese Zen goes to Eisai (1141–1215 CE; also called Zenko Kokushi). He was an adherent of a form of Rinzai (C: Linchi) Zen, which he took back to Japan from China, establishing the first Rinzai temple there, the Shofukuji (on Kyushu) in 1191. For a complex series of historical, political and religious reasons, some discussed in the essays which follow, Rinzai Zen has become the form of Buddhism most familiar to the West. Not least among the reasons for this is the inspiration it was to furnish to certain Japanese customs and art forms, notably the tea ceremony, noh drama, haiku verse, flower arrangement and various martial arts. The Rinzai Zen sect is here represented by its reviver and greatest systematizer, Hakuin.
Until recently, far less well known in the West is the second major Zen sect, Soto (C: Ts’ao-tung), represented here by its founder, and a major figure in Japanese philosophical history, Dogen. Dogen took the ideas of his Chinese masters and developed them into a comprehensive and powerful philosophy. The area of major contrast between Soto and Rinzai thinkers concerns Zen method: the Rinzai sect lays special stress in meditation on the problems called koans, while the Soto sect places greater emphasis on the practice of seated meditation or zazen: Dogen goes so far as to identify this practice with nirvana. It is in respect of method that Bankei, the third Zen master considered here, differs from both Dogen and Hakuin. For Bankei, any set method, koan practice, zazen or any of the other techniques listed in the records of the Zen masters, is likely to prove a hindrance on the path to enlightenment. A key feature of his Zen is spontaneity, which he equates with the working of the Buddha-mind or reality, and adherence to any fixed set of rules, he argues, is more likely to hinder spontaneity than promote it. Taken together, the ideas of Dogen, Bankei and Hakuin typify the three most significant Japanese approaches to Zen.
The two modern thinkers considered here, Suzuki and Nishida, exemplify two contrasting responses to the opening of Japan to western influences which began in 1868. It is largely as a result of Suzuki’s work that Zen is as well known in the West as it is. A Rinzai scholar who wrote excellent English, Suzuki made it his mission in life to make the West aware of Zen. This he did via a lifetime of intensive publication, especially the three major books of Essays in Zen Buddhism published in the 1920s and 1930s. By contrast, his friend Nishida, who will probably turn out to be the most important Japanese philosopher of this century, became a scholar of the western tradition of philosophy, seeking in it a means with which to solve the problem which occupied him for his entire working life: to find a conceptual framework for the central experience furnished by Zen.
Nishida and Suzuki are encouraging examples with which to end this book. It is quite clear that, as with other modern thinkers from the eastern traditions, e.g. Radhakrishnan, they understood western thought very well, and there is no reason to suppose that their traditions must remain not fully comprehensible to the West. Hard work and sympathetic imagination will take us a long way on the path to understanding.