Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2009 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2009.

Paperback edition 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Originally published as Zen to yū na no Nihon-maru by Kobundo Publishing Co., Ltd.

© 2005 Shoji Yamada.

English translation © 2009 International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto.

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11    2 3 4 5 6

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-94764-8 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-226-94764-5 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-94765-5 (paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-94765-3 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-78424-3 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

880–01 Yamada, Shoji, 1963–

[880–02 Zen to iu na no Nihon Maru. English]

Shots in the dark : Japan, Zen, and the West / Shoji Yamada ; translated by Earl Hartman.

p. cm.—(Buddhism and Modernity)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-94764-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-94764-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Herrigel, Eugen, 1884–1955. Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens—Influence. 2. Herrigel, Eugen, 1884–1955—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Zen Buddhism—Study and teaching—Europe. 4. Civilization, Western—20th century—Japanese influences. 5. Archery—Japan—Religious aspects. 6. Ryoanji Teien (Kyoto, Japan) 7. Rock gardens, Japanese—Religious aspects. I. 880–03 Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyu Senta. II. Title. III. Series: Nichibunken monograph series ; no. 9.

GV1188.J3Y3313 2009

799.3'2—dc22

2008042071

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Shots in the Dark

Japan, Zen, and the West

Shoji Yamada

Translated by Earl Hartman

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

Kyoto

BUDDHISM AND MODERNITY

A series edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr.

NICHIBUNKEN MONOGRAPH SERIES

No. 9

Contents

Preface to the American Edition

Introduction

1. Between the Real and the Fake

The Kitschy World of Zen in/and the Art of . . .

The Rock Garden in New York

The Moving Borderline

2. The Mystery of Zen in the Art of Archery

The Beginning of the Story

Spiritual Archery and Herrigel’s Meeting with Its Teacher

Becoming a Disciple

Breathing

The Release

Purposefulness and Purposelessness

The Target in the Dark

The Riddle of It

3. Dissecting the Myth

The Spread of Zen in the Art of Archery

The Moment the Myth Was Born

What Is Japanese Archery?

The Great Doctrine of the Way of Shooting

What Herrigel Studied

4. The Erased History

The Blank Slate

Herrigel’s Early Years

The Japanese in Heidelberg

Homecoming and the Nazis

From the End of the War to Retirement

5. Are Rock Gardens Really Pretty?

From the Tiger Cubs Crossing the River to the Higher Self

The Neglected Rock Garden

The Rock Garden in Textbooks

Unsightly Stones and a Weeping Cherry Tree

Shiga Naoya and Murō Saisei

Are Rock Gardens Pretty?

Popularization and the Expression of Zen

Proof of Beauty

6. Looking at the Mirror’s Reflection

Another Japan Experience

Bruno Taut and Ryōanji

The People Who Introduced Zen and Ryōanji to the West

Isamu Noguchi

How Zen in the Art of Archery and Ryōanji Were Received

Does Zen Stink?

Kyūdō, Zen, and the Olympics

I Knew It! It’s Zen!

Postscript

Translator’s Afterword

Appendix: Herrigel’s Defense

Kanji for Personal Names

Kanji for Japanese Terms

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface to the American Edition

It is said that Japanese soft power—such as manga and anime—is overwhelming the world. Many foreigners become interested in and familiar with Japanese culture through them. However, Japanese culture has been popularized in the West not only by manga and anime, but also by Zen.

In the 1980s, many foreigners became interested in Japan because of its economic power. Times, however, are changing: even though Japan went through a deep depression in the mid-1990s, Japanese culture still retains a powerful attraction for foreigners, who see it as embodying a sense of spiritual exoticism. What has happened in the recent quarter of a century could be described as a shift from yen to Zen. While we find only a slight difference between yen and Zen in terms of alphabetic order, they represent vastly dissimilar value systems. This book presents some of my research on the process of how the value system surrounding Zen has changed, based on an analysis of information transmission between Japan and the West. I hope that readers of this book will enjoy sharing the intellectual interest that I have had for nearly twenty years.

It is a great honor for me to have my book translated and published in English as the first copublishing project between the University of Chicago Press and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. Earl Hartman, my friend and a skilled practitioner of Japanese archery, kindly undertook the difficult task of translation. I have adapted and expanded his original translation by incorporating corrections to the Japanese edition, adding new footnotes, and modifying some of the Japanese expressions to make the text more understandable to an English-speaking audience. As a result, this book is not a word-for-word translation of the original Japanese volume, but a completely revised edition. All mistakes and inadequacies in this book are mine.

I am grateful to Patricia Fister, editor of the Nichibunken monograph series, and to Alan Thomas, the editorial director for humanities and sciences at the University of Chicago Press, for their editorial expertise and cooperation throughout the copublication process; Hans-Peter Rodenberg, who kindly undertook the German-English translation of the text of Herrigel’s Defense; and my Nichibunken colleagues Markus Rüttermann and Frederik Cryns, who graciously checked the German and French citations, respectively.

In addition, I wish to thank the following people for their support and encouragement: James C. Baxter, William Bodiford, Inaga Shigemi, Katakura Motoko, Kawakatsu Heita, Donald S. Lopez Jr., Nakamura Norio, Sakamoto Yasuyuki, Mieko Akisawa-Schamoni, and Wolfgang Schamoni.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the colleagues and members of my project room: Iwai Shigeki, Okaya Junko, and Chavalin Svetanant, who always cheered me on as I was engaged in working on this English edition. Finally, I thank my helpmate, Yamada Kazue, from my heart.

Shoji Yamada

Kyoto, June 2008

Introduction

Everyone knows this fairy tale:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Why, you are, of course.

In a corner of their hearts, everyone is looking for a magic mirror. If there was a mirror that would reflect the image of them as they fervently wished to be, surely everyone would treasure such a mirror for as long as they lived.

On the other hand, there are mirrors that don’t do that, such as concave mirrors and convex mirrors. For a long time there have been two full-length fun-house mirrors on the observation deck of the Tsūtenkaku tower in Osaka. For people from other parts of Japan who are not familiar with Osaka’s fun-loving and idiosyncratic culture, why such things are in that particular place is a complete mystery; but in any case, it is amusing to play with them.

When you stand in front of the concave mirror, you appear stretched out as though you are being pulled up and down by your head and your toes—as though you have been transformed into a toothpick. In front of the convex mirror it is the reverse: you look short and fat as though you have been squashed in a mechanical press. Unsightly and with short legs, you look like a comic book character. Tourists look at their distorted appearances and laugh. But how can they laugh at such warped reflections? Is it because they can relax knowing that they could not possibly look like the twisted images in the mirror? People do not believe they really look like the grossly distorted images in fun-house mirrors, so they laugh them off. However, when a magic mirror reflects an image distorted in a beautiful way, people want to think: yes indeed, this is how I really look.

All of you astute readers should understand by now. The image reflected in the mirror that I am talking about in this book is the image of Japan drawn by foreigners. However, this brings up a question. What kind of a distorted image would a Japanese accept as being him or herself? What sort of a distorted image would he or she laugh off? Where exactly is the boundary between the two?

On February 25, 1936, with the Nazi swastika flag flying over Germany, a lecture called Die Ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens (The chivalrous art of archery) was given at the Berlin branch of the Germany-Japan Association. The name of the lecturer was Eugen Herrigel (1884–1955), a tenured professor of philosophy at the University of Erlangen in southern Germany. Herrigel had taught at Tōhoku Imperial University in Sendai, Japan, from May 1924 to July 1929. In the lecture, Herrigel spoke about the lofty spirituality of Japanese archery, which he had come to know during his stay, and related the astonishing details of the training he had undergone.

The text of the lecture was published immediately in the German magazine Nippon (Japan).¹ In the same year, a translated version was featured in the magazine Bunka (Culture) published by Tōhoku Imperial University,² and in 1941 Iwanami Shoten published a revised translation under the title Nihon no kyūjutsu (Japanese archery).³ The popularity at that time of Tōhoku Imperial University and the arbiters of culture associated with Iwanami Shoten can be inferred from the rapid succession of publications of this text.⁴

However, the translation was problematic. When it was revised, there were inconsistencies in the Japanese expressions used to explain some vital concepts. The people responsible for the translation were all close to Herrigel and his archery teacher, Awa Kenzō (1880–1939). They were all in a position to understand Awa’s archery instruction better than Herrigel, whose Japanese language skills were weak.

It seems that Herrigel’s translators and Japanese friends, while praising what he had written, were confused about the discrepancies between his writings and Awa’s teachings. Did Master Awa really say things like this? Why did Herrigel come to understand Japanese archery in this way? This confusion can be seen in the inconsistencies among the translations.

In 1948, Herrigel published Zen in the Art of Archery,⁵ which can be considered the definitive version of the chronicle of his archery training in Japan. In his book, Japanese archery is described in even more mystical terms, and not only archery, but all of Japanese culture, is presented as being synonymous with Zen.

Zen in the Art of Archery was translated into more than five languages and became a worldwide bestseller. The Japanese version was published in 1956.⁶ Hand in hand with the Zen and New Age booms in Europe and the United States, it was very fashionable as a trendy kind of wisdom from the 1950s through the 1970s. There is a surprisingly large number of foreigners who have said they formed their image not only of Japanese archery, but of Japanese culture itself, from reading Zen in the Art of Archery.

The book became a widely discussed topic among the Japanese cultural elite as well. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was accepted as a central text in the discussion of Japaneseness which took place from the 1960s through the 1970s. Proclaiming that the book presented the ideal image of Japanese culture and believing in Herrigel’s writings 100 percent, countless numbers of people took it as the starting point for the development of their theories of Japaneseness.⁷ I do not know of any other document on the theory of Japaneseness that has been accepted this uncritically. Zen in the Art of Archery was a magic mirror that, for Japanese people, reflected the ideal image they had of themselves.

One day I was reading an authoritative book about Awa Kenzō, written by a specialist in the field, and I came upon the following statement:

While Kenzō used the phrase the bow and Zen are one and employed the philosophical language of Mahayana Buddhism in particular to describe shadō (the Way of Shooting), he did not approve of Zen unconditionally.

To be honest, I was shocked. If this is true, it cannot be overlooked. The man who supposedly taught the bow to Herrigel as Zen did not approve of Zen unconditionally? If that is the case, then the book that Herrigel wrote—what was it, exactly? What kind of a mistake did he make to come up with a book like that and where did he make it?

I should mention that there was a period in my life when I spent a considerable amount of my free time practicing kyūdō (the Way of the Bow / Japanese archery), and Herrigel was always floating vaguely around in the back of my mind. I started my scholarly career as a research associate at a three-year engineering college, but it so happened that I later transferred to an institute that researches Japanese culture from an international perspective and so I was blessed with an environment that allowed me to deepen and expand my research and contemplation of this question. I compared Nihon no kyūjutsu (Japanese archery) and Zen in the Art of Archery in great detail, surveyed related documents, and discovered a great deal of unpublished material in museums and universities on my trips to Germany. Through doing this I came to see how the myth of Zen in the Art of Archery was born and how it was imported back into Japan—that is, I came to see the process by which the Japanese found and polished a magic mirror that reflected a beautiful image of themselves.

In this book I want to discuss an additional topic: the rock garden at the temple of Ryōanji in Kyoto. I am a complete amateur when it comes to gardens, so perhaps it might be considered rash of me to venture an opinion on this subject. However, Ryōanji also illustrates the magic mirror effect and so I think it is worthy of discussion.

Today, the rock garden at Ryōanji is one of the most well-known examples of the Japanese garden. If one asks foreign Japan experts, What is the most beautiful garden in Japan? a large number of them would probably reply the rock garden at Ryōanji.

However, I heard the following story from a foreigner who was an expert on Japanese gardens. He had lived in Kyoto for a number of years and had gone to many different gardens, but he simply could not bring himself to visit Ryōanji. He confessed to me that he was afraid: what would he do if he went to Ryōanji, saw the rock garden, and did not like it? Just exactly what kind of a rock garden is it that can intimidate a foreigner to such an extent?

Leaving aside foreigners for the moment, how much do the Japanese themselves value the rock garden at Ryōanji? Of course, to professional gardeners, its beauty and importance are self-evident. But do regular tourists really think it is beautiful? I have visited the rock garden any number of times. But to be perfectly honest, not once did I think that it was pretty. What a frightening confession to make! Just like the above-mentioned foreign expert on Japanese gardens, the fact that I think this is a frightening confession shows that I, too, have been thoroughly intimidated by the supposed beauty of this rock garden.

Having admitted that, I think I should make a full confession: I prefer gardens where one can experience the subtle moment-to-moment changing of nature from month to month throughout the year. The rock garden at Ryōanji is nothing but an abstraction of nature. One cannot feel the seasons. Not only that, it is always packed with tourists, and as a final indignity, a loudspeaker is always blaring the message: View the garden quietly, please! I am reduced to having to leave the rock garden behind and go to the Kyōyōchi pond elsewhere on the grounds to catch my breath.

The fact that I do not like the rock garden at Ryōanji is probably just a matter of personal taste. It is also not really fair to dislike it just because it is always crowded with tourists. However, I am confident in my speculation that those who are moved by its beauty when they see it for the first time are rare. It is not difficult to find documents that support my speculation from a historical perspective. Prior to the beginning of the Shōwa period (1926–1989), few people visited the rock garden at Ryōanji, and within Japan itself, aside from a few professionals, there were not very many people who said that it was particularly beautiful. Moreover, praise from foreigners did not come to be dominant until after the Zen boom in Europe and the United States started in the 1950s. As a Japanese, it is somewhat gratifying to know that Japan has a garden that foreigners praise and travel all the way across the ocean to visit. But this, again, is just a magic mirror that reflects a beautiful image of me.

I know that there are passionate devotees of both Herrigel and rock gardens all over the world, and I am sure that some of you will be angry with me for writing this sort of thing. However, I want you to stop and think for a moment. If you are angry at this book, what is the source of that anger?

Just exactly how many magic mirrors do we have? What kind of an image must a mirror reflect for us to love it? What kind of an image must a mirror reflect for us to laugh it off as a fun-house mirror? And what kind of an image must a mirror reflect for us to hate it? Where is the boundary between these mirrors?

It is on this boundary line that we can find the visage of what we believe to be the ideal Japan as well as the form of Japanese culture that we ourselves arbitrarily create. And it is also on this boundary line that we can see how the Japanese have created Japanese culture while actively selecting their self-image from among the various images of Japan that come from foreign countries. With archery, rock gardens, and Zen as our clues, let us begin our voyage of self-discovery.

1

Between the Real and the Fake

THE KITSCHY WORLD OF ZEN IN/AND THE ART OF . . .

In researching Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery, I discovered that this book has exerted an influence in unexpected directions. There are a large number of books with titles like Zen in/and the Art of . . . that seem to be playing on the title of Herrigel’s original book. Before going into the actual contents of Zen in the Art of Archery, I would like to discuss this baffling social phenomenon.

The most famous book of this kind is probably Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (1928–).¹ This book is an autobiographical account written by a former university professor who lost his memory as a result of electric shock therapy. It is one of the best-selling New Age books, so I am sure most people have heard of it. Pirsig does not discuss Japanese Zen Buddhism, but his book had a big influence on the so-called Zen boom in Europe and the United States.

Regarding the question of what connection there is between Zen and motorcycle maintenance, Pirsig says the following:

Zen Buddhists talk about just sitting, a meditative practice in which the idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one’s consciousness. What I’m talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is just fixing, in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn’t dominate one’s consciousness.²

Riding with his young son on the back of his motorcycle as he slowly regains his memory, the hero of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ponders his personal philosophy of quality, which transcends the duality of subject and object. Regardless of whether this is Zen or not, there is no doubt that many people in the West felt a great spiritual connection to this book.

In Zen training, people do work such as cutting grass and cleaning toilets. Sometimes they experience enlightenment as they concentrate single-mindedly on this manual labor. Therefore, one cannot say that it is impossible to experience enlightenment while fixing a motorcycle. The idea that the practice of manual labor can illuminate profound philosophical questions is similar to the theory of applied art expounded by Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889–1961).³

However, there are probably many Japanese who have doubts about how real the Zen in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is. Why is this, exactly? Looking at the title, it is obvious that Pirsig was conscious of Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery. Pirsig’s book was born out of Zen in the Art of Archery. However, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was such a bestseller that many of the books that followed got their inspiration not from Herrigel, but rather from Pirsig. One can say that books with title beginning Zen in the Art of. . . . take after Herrigel, and books with title Zen and the Art of . . . take after Pirsig. Having said that, though, since Pirsig himself was almost certainly influenced by Herrigel, one can probably consider all books with the title Zen in/and . . . published after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to be Herrigel’s grandchildren, so to speak.

One such book is called Zen in the Art of Writing (1989).⁴ It is a collection of essays for aspiring writers written by the science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury (1920–), who is famous as the author of Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury has this to say:

Now—are you surprised?—seriously I must suggest that you read ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY, a book by Eugen Herrigel. Here the words, or words like them, WORK, RELAXATION, and DON’T THINK appear in different aspects and different settings. I knew nothing of Zen until a few weeks ago. What little I know now, since you must be curious as to the reason for my title, is that here again, in the art of archery, long years must pass where one learns simply the act of drawing the bow and fitting the arrow. Then the process, sometimes tedious and nerve-wracking, of preparing to allow the string, the arrow, to release itself. The arrow must fly on its way to a target that must never be considered.⁵

Since Bradbury put Zen in the title of his book, it appears that he felt that writing a novel is quite similar to what Herrigel was talking about in Zen in the Art of Archery. Leaving aside the question of whether he is right or not, however, the word Zen was removed from the title of the Japanese version of Zen in the Art of Writing. In Japan the book is called Buraddoberi ga yatte kuru (Bradbury this way comes).⁶

There is another book where the word Zen disappeared from the Japanese title. This book is Shoshinsha no tame no intānetto (The Internet for beginners) by Brendan P. Kehoe (1970–). The original title is Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner’s Guide (1992).⁷ While it has a provocative title, it is just an explanation of Internet technology for beginners, written in a decidedly conservative style. Among the large number of similar books available, it seems to have sold well. Kehoe is a hacker who works at the well-known IT company Cygnus Solutions. He does not appear to be particularly enamored of Zen, and there is not a single mention of Zen anywhere in the book. The Japanese title appears to be an attempt to convey the meaning of the book’s contents.

The question is: why was the word Zen omitted from the Japanese title of both Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing and Kehoe’s Zen and the Art of the Internet? Was it because the publishers thought that Japanese readers would get a strange impression? Or was it perhaps more likely that the translators and the editors felt that there was a gap between the image that Bradbury and Kehoe have of Zen and what Japanese people would understand by the term Zen? They probably thought that including Zen in the title would make the books appear a bit disreputable in the eyes of Japanese readers, and that there was a danger that they would think that the books were written by foreigners who had weird ideas about Zen.

In a field related to Zen in the Art of Writing, there is a book called Zen and the Art of Screenwriting: Insights and Interviews (1996).⁸ The author is a professor emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles and is the creator of UCLA’s movie and television scriptwriting program. The book discusses the vital points in writing screenplays for film and television and has interviews with ten well-known scriptwriters. The contents have nothing to do with Zen.

Let me give one more example from the field of art and literature: the mystery novel Zen and the Art of Murder (1998).⁹ The hero of the book is a tough female private detective who is still hooked on cigarettes even after surviving lung cancer. The author names her Zen Moses. This book was nominated for the Seamus Prize for Best Debut Novel in 1999. The author, Elizabeth M. Cosin, also published Zen and the City of Angels in 1999.¹⁰

In the field of books about living, there is a book called Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design (1993).¹¹ At more than six hundred pages long, this tome is full of Zen wisdom and studded with iconic Zen sayings. Its aim is to teach self-realization through success in business, but wouldn’t a Japanese think, rather, that the pursuit of material gain has nothing to do with Zen?

Zen fits well with the world of sports. Under the general rubric of mental training, in recent years top athletes have taken to practicing Zen-like methods for concentration and relaxation. Although I do not play golf myself, when I watch golf on television it looks as though the states of mind of the players are similar to those of Zen practitioners, and according to the author of Zen in the Art of Golf (1991), all these things are one thing.¹² In the field of exercise and recreation books, there are titles like Zen in the Art of Mountain Climbing (1992)¹³ and Zen in the Art of Street Fighting (1996).¹⁴ Books like Zen in the Art of Stickfighting (2000),¹⁵ written by a person claiming to be a Grand Master with a tenth-degree black belt, are also amusing.

In English, there is a saying that travel broadens the mind. According to Zen and the Art of Travel (2000),¹⁶ the Zen mind can enrich the experience of travel and if you travel you will come to better understand Zen. A beautiful pocket book with full color plates of scenes from around the world accompanying the text, Zen and the Art of Travel explains that travel preparations, destinations, food and lodgings, precautions, and homecomings are all connected to Zen wisdom. The same publishing company has also published a series of books with titles like Zen and the Art of Gardening (2000),¹⁷ Zen and the Art of Cooking (2001),¹⁸ and Zen and the Art of Well-Being (2001).¹⁹ For Japanese, the word Zen is imbued with an aura of stoicism, but for Westerners, pleasure is apparently also Zen.

Roulette, craps, baccarat, blackjack, slot machines, video poker: according to Zen and the Art of Casino Gaming (1995),²⁰ casino gaming involves complex player psychology and strategies for winning. The author, who is a professional gambler, claims to transmit the know-how needed to be successful at gambling. There is also another gambling and Zen book called Zen and the Art of Poker (1999).²¹ On the subject of game centers, there is an interesting book called Zen and the Art of Foosball (2002),²² which explains the secret to winning foosball, a table soccer game where players spin numerous handles mounted in a table to kick the ball towards a goal.

Not only gambling, but comedy is Zen too. According to Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy (1998),²³ Zen is defined as your guess is as good as mine. It talks about how Zen accepts that which is unpredictable and lives life just as it is in the present moment. If that is true, is not stand-up comedy nothing other than Zen? English-language stand-up comedy is usually delivered in an incredibly rapid-fire style and so I have great difficulty understanding it. However, is there really Zen there of which Japanese people are unaware? The same author has also written a book in the same category called Zen and the Art of the Monologue (2000).²⁴

I would also like to mention two books that, simply from the unexpectedness of the juxtapositions in the titles, are really amusing. Zen in the Art of Close Encounters (1995)²⁵ is a critical anthology concerning things like UFOs and crop circles.