Our Kōan―How to be Mindful in the Nuclear Age: Engaged Zen in Japan

 (From Hakuin to Moritaki Ichirō) 

Kazashi Nobuo

Summary [1]: 

Two pillars of Zen are sitting meditation and kōan. Kōans are the handed-down phrases given to practicing priests to call into question their taken-for-granted framework of thinking [2]. They are primarily meant to help induce “satori-enlightenment” inside those who engage in ascetic practices. However, Zen has another aspect that places great importance on concrete acts to save others just as there are two complementary aspects in Buddhism in general: that is, the “going-forward (or hinayana)” phase toward self-enlightenment and the “returning (or Mahayana)” phase to save others in this world.

    In order to highlight a lineage of such “engaged Zen,” this paper first presents, in broad strokes, the life of Hakuin (1685-1768), who lived in feudal Japan and revitalized the Rinzai sect by his artistic ingenuity and vigorous political criticism. Then, as an interlude, we will refer to a “hygiene for life” prescribed by Nietzsche to cure our “historical malady” as well as the contemporary “mindfulness” therapy in order to place “engaged Zen” in a wider philosophical context and bring its distinctive significance into contemporary perspective. 

   In the latter part we introduce the career of Hiroshima-based philosopher Moritaki Ichirō （1901−1994）, who led the anti-nuclear movement in postwar Japan and was known for the numerous sit-ins he conducted in protest against nuclear tests. We propose to regard these sit-ins as collective acts of engaging with the utmost “kōan” of our times, in other words, as public endeavors to be “mindful” in the nuclear age. 

Lastly, we shall draw attention to the fact - a seed of hope amidst the dire reality of the present world - that such “mindful” engagement has been reflected in the preamble of the TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) that came into effect in 2021.    

1  Hakuin’s “Sutasuta Bonze”

Hakuin Ekaku, the restorer of the Rinzai Sect during the mid-Edo period, is known for his unique Zen paintings (zen-ga) such as sharp-eyed Daruma (Dharma) faces with challenging comments (gasan), pilgrims scribbling self-contradicting graffiti, Hotei (a legendary monk) spreading out a Möbius-formed strip of cloth with a phrase from an enigmatic kōan written on its circular strip [3], or an almost-naked busybody “sutasuta bonze” [4] walking around town briskly. Hakuin was also a social reformer who engaged bravely in harsh critique of the bad government of his times when society was in great turmoil because of famines and peasant uprisings. The humorous “sutasuta bonze” can be regarded as a self-effacing image of Hakuin himself, who was called “an active volcano” because he continued to intervene actively in worldly affairs [5]. 

1-1　Precocious Awakening at the Sunset Glow 

Hakuin Ekaku was born in 1685 in Hara town (present Numazu city) near Mt. Fuji. His childhood name was Iwajirō. Supposedly his family gained its livelihood from work related to Hara town as a “shukuba (lodging place)” [6] on the Tokaido Route. His mother was a devout follower of the Nichiren sect [7], and he was “raised under an unusual religious environment”: “From his earliest childhood he was brought to temples, … at five years old, feeling the transience of this world at the view of the seashore pine trees against the sunset glow and the ever changing shape of clouds, and at eleven … feeling fear at an eloquent and graphic paintings of hell, he even had a reliving experience of getting burnt himself” (Takahashi 2014: 23). Entering Shōinji Temple in his hometown at the age of fifteen, he was given the priestly name, Ekaku (慧鶴) meaning “wise swan,” and at nineteen, in 1703, he went on an rigorous training pilgrimage. (In 1707 there was the Hōei Earthquake regarded as one of the greatest earthquakes in Japanese history.) [8]

1-2　Long and intense “practice after enlightenment”

When he was twenty-four, Ekaku concentrated on Zazen (sitting meditation) for seven days and seven nights without a break at Eigenji in the Echigo province (now Niigata prefecture, facing the Sea of Japan), and became enlightened all of a sudden at dawn, listening to the sound of a bell from a distant temple. Ekaku became conceited enough to think: “It is said that it took some decades for ancients to get enlightened, but how strange it is! Look at me. Thus, I became enlightened just in some years, didn’t I?” (Muraki 2003: 12-13). 

1-3　Zen Sickness and Recovery through Breathing

When he visited Oldman Shōjuat Iiyama in Shinshu (now Nagano prefecture at the center of Japan), however, such conceit was shattered completely. (“Oldman Shōju” or “Shōju rōnin or rōjin” was an endearing nickname given by the nearby villagers to hermit zen master Dōkyō Etan, who was known for his severe dealings with those who sought his teachings.)  According to his own recollection: “Since I was not admitted no matter what kenge (view about a kōan) I bring to Shōju Master, I was leading despondent days, practicing zazen always with tears in my eyes.” Even if I practiced zazen without a wink of sleep and tackled with kōans, he scolded me away: ‘This cellular bonze!’”. 

Furthermore: “When Ekaku went out to ask for alms in town while lost in doubt, he was struck vehemently on the head with a broom by an old woman in front of her house. He passed out, but he regained his consciousness by the raindrops that started falling down on his face, and at the very moment he opened his eyes Ekaku, he became enlightened” (Hakuin 1999a: 37-39). 

And this was recognized by Oldman Shōju immediately. Ekaku was twenty-five years old, and it was eight months after coming to the place of Oldman Shōju. It is a very impressive turnout that Ekaku was to regain enlightenment just several months after his conceit was shattered completely once, but what is even more noteworthy is his following trajectory after he was taught by Oldman Shōju that “practice after enlightenment is more important than anything else.”     

Ekaku fell into the so-called “Zen sickness” as a result of applying himself to excessively intense practices. Losing the body-mind balance, he suffered from “a state of grave nervous breakdown and depression.” Eventually, he would overcome this crisis                two years later in 1710, when he was taught a method for introspection and tanden (lower abdomen-centered) breathing by Hermit Hakuyū secluded in the deep mountains near Kyoto. It was by acquiring a body technique mediated by language and image that Ekaku recovered his own “nature.”    

1-4　Saving Others First

Continuing his pilgrimage around the country, Ekaku returned home and entered Shōinji Temple when he was thirty-three years old. From that time onward he called himself “Hakuin” (白隠), literally meaning “white-concealment” or “hidden in white.” His hometown Hara was located near Mount Fuji, and Hakuin would depict the snow-concealed mountain as a symbol of “Buddhahood.” As Hakuin’s fame became widespread, people began to praise him with the following tanka (short poem): “There are two things too good for Suruga: Mount Fuji and Hakuin at Hara.” Thus, the name “Hakuin” expresses Hakuin’s deep thoughts, personal and religious, for Mount Fuji as a symbol of enlightenment.     

However, his seeking continued as expressed in his saying: “great enlightenment eighteen times, small enlightenment countless.” And, finally at the age of forty-two years old, Hakuin came to realize that Bodaishin (the enlightened mind) is nothing but to aspire to save shujō or all sentient beings (Yoshizawa 2008: 172). Also, in his autobiography written during his last years, Hakuin writes at the beginning: “Even if thou succeed to enter the Funimon (non-duality gate of enlightenment), you are bound to fall into the path of evil.” In fact, over the forty years of his later life, Hakuin devoted his remaining days to the far-reaching ideal of saving all the suffering people by helping them reach the country where the true teachings of Buddha would be practiced (Yoshizawa 2012: 13).

1-5　Various Kufū (Devices): Kōan and Zen-ga

Through such acetic and long trainings Hakuin acquired or invented a variety of “kufū ” (ingenuous devices or ways) and endeavored to put them into practice. They were “devices for training and health-care” including new kōans such as “Sekishu-no-onjō” (隻手音聲: the sound of one hand) , which Hakuin created as a simple device most suitable for Japanese people, as well as the “bodily introspective method” imparted by Hermit Hakuyu. However, as epitomized by his motto “devices in moving are a million times better than those in quietude,” they were also flexible and creative “devices for conveying Buddhist teachings” to enlighten and save shujō (all living beings) at various situations in everyday life.    

    As already mentioned at the beginning, Hakuin left many pieces of zen-ga (zen-painting), which is estimated to number in the tens of thousands, in addition to sermons written in the simple kana notation, without using Chinese characters, to convey Buddhist teachings in ways that are easy to understand. Many of Hakuin’s “zenga” are accompanied with “gasan,” words related to the painting’s intent, and they are filled with ingenuous devices and tricks. According to Yoshizawa, “such tricks as ‘scrolls-within-scrolls’ in addition to allusion, intimation, parody, and pun, are quite modern” in terms of making use of, so to speak, “intertextuality [9].” 

Though it can be quite hard for people alive today to decipher them, their implicit messages were meant to reach people who shared common “intertextual” horizons of understanding. Some examples of such “intertextuality” and unique “devices” combined together in wonderful fusion are: a painting of Hotei spreading out a Möbius-formed cloth with the kōan, “All phenomena return to the One” [10] ; a scene of two pilgrims scribbling the graffiti of “Scribbling forbidden at this temple”, with the gasan of “The rapid falling water echoing throughout the Nachi Mountains,”a Buddhist hymn expressing Buddha’s ever compassionate mind; a large scroll depicting a sumptuous samurai procession at the foot of Mount      Fuji as the symbol of Buddhahood.        

When one is immersed in these paintings which depict, with an objective but compassionate eye, this mundane world fraught with contradictions and injustices, a certain radical “perspective change” is to be brought about inside the viewer.      These paintings are meant to cause a “Gestalt change” in ourselves so that we can look at our own figures now under new “joint-attention.” [11] When the viewers are drawn into the scenes depicted, they are to gaze together at the figure of themselves as living and acting in this common mundane world. Or, in phenomenological terms, one may say it is the moment when one’s fundamental assumptions operating in everyday life is “bracketed” or brought under a reflective mode of “epoche” [12] that now calls into question our common life-world itself.  

Hakuin’s zenga was varied and flexible in spirit, including, not only those with such elaborate devices, but also the snow-covered Mount  Fuji as the symbol of Buddhahood or the very humorous “sutasuta bonze” - which was the very embodiment of Hakuin himself [13]. Thus, many of Hakuin’s zenga have extraordinary artistic appeal. For instance, one might say that the dynamic vitality of the Daruma’s face with the wide-open, glaring eyes resembles what we feel in some of Picasso’s work. In this context, however, it should also be emphasized that Hakuin’s zenga pieces were not meant to be “art work” as such, but they were created as religious “devices” for the sake of a particular person or persons, quite unlike Ukiyoe printworks that were made as items for sale addressed to a large number of unspecified people [14]. 

1-6　Vehement Political Critique and Intervention

However, Hakuin’s “ingenuity” was not limited to training in Zen, but it was also manifested in his active critique of and attempt to intervene in the political affairs of his times. Many of the peasants, suffering from disasters and misrule, had no choice but to resort to riots. Hakuin not only remonstrated, repeatedly in his writings, the foolish rulers and cruel officials to return to benevolent governance, but also tried to coordinate his lay disciples, from feudal lords to prominent figures in villages, to intervene in the mundane politics. Hakuin’s criticisms of the authorities put his life at risk; as evident from the fact that one of his books was banned posthumously.  

In 1754 Hakuin submitted, at the age of seventy, a petition to the lord in the Okayama domain. Though it had a very humble title [15], it was a series of harsh criticisms of bad governance and merciless officials, containing concrete and straightforward proposals for reforms [16]. In those days it was not allowed to argue openly about the rights and the wrongs of the Shogunate governance. Though proper names were carefully avoided, we can surmise Hakuin’s determination. Indeed, this petition was included in a list of prohibited books only three years after his death [17].      

Also, it is to be noted that Hakuin’s various activities were carried out, not only as his actions as an individual, but also as part of the communal activities of his religious order. It is said that, hearing Hakuin’s repute, many priests gathered at Shoinji Temple, and the number reached into several hundred at its peak. Many of his disciples became masters of important temples, and the lay followers, including samurai and merchants, supported Hakuin in various ways. For instance, Yotsugi Masayoshi, a wealthy merchant in Kyoto, provided a base for Hakuin’s activities in Kyoto while offering his personal assets to provide relief for the poor [18].    

--Interlude

Naturally, the question of how to coordinate between the existential concern for one’s own self and the need to engage with socio-political situation is not specific to the Zen tradition. On the contrary, most people would agree that it is a universal question running through various genealogies of human thought; it would be apt here to remember that the history of Western philosophy has much to do the fact that Socrates, who exhorted to care for the self, chose to die to follow the apparently unjust verdict of Athene’s court. Furthermore, this question is becoming more and more acute and complicated in modern times. 

1) Nietzsche on “Hygiene for Life”

In “On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life” written in 1874 [19], Friedrich W. Nietzsche (1844-1900) discusses what he calls the “human malady” and “hygiene for life.” His diagnosis is that our life is suffering from the “excess of history,” and he goes on to propose his prescription to cure it. Nietzsche’s writing is characteristically provocative, but I believe it highlights the core of our dilemmas as historical beings. Let us listen to what he has to say in his own words:  

“But it is sick, this unfettered life, and must be healed. Many ills ail it and it does not only suffer from the memory of its fetters---it suffers...from the historical malady. The excess of history has attacked the plastic powers of life, it no longer understands how to avail itself of the past as hearty nourishment. 

Do not be surprised, [the medicines] bear the names of poisons: the antidotes to the historical are called---the unhistorical and the superhistorical.... 

By the word ‘the unhistorical’ I denote the art and the strength of being able to forget and enclose oneself in a limited horizon: ‘superhistorical’ I call the powers which guide the eye away from becoming and toward that which gives existence an eternal and stable character, toward art and religion…. It [scholarship [20]] lives in inner contradiction with the eternalizing powers of art and religion so far as it hates forgetting, the death of knowledge, so far as it seeks to remove all horizon-limitations and throws man into an endless-unlimited light-wave-sea of the cognized becoming [21]…. 

         …. Thus scholarship requires a higher supervision and guarding: a hygiene of life is placed close beside science [scholarship] and one proposition of this hygiene would read: the unhistorical and the superhistorical are the natural antidotes to the stifling of life by history, to the history malady. It is probable that we, the historically sick, will also have to suffer from the antidotes. But that we suffer from them is no proof that the treatment is incorrect (Nietzsche 1980:61-63). 

Nietzsche’s prescription is straightforward. We are hindered from “living here and now” because we are too much concerned about, and therefore constrained by, our past, whether its achievements or failures. In order to recover the power of free and creative life we should cultivate the strength of being able to “forget” by enclosing oneself in a limited horizon of living here and now. We also note that Nietzsche is aware that we would suffer from the antidotes of what he calls the unhistorical and the superhistorical. We may say, however, we are actually following Nietzsche’s prescription today; many of us immerse ourselves, if only for a limited span of time, in various activities such as sports and plays even when an egregious war is ongoing in      the world. In a sense, it cannot be helped. 

Nonetheless, we have to say that we are living in a far, incomparably more difficult period than Nietzsche’s time in the sense that our lives are not      only laden with the grave memories of modern history, but also faced with the accelerating climate disorder and the imminent nuclear crisis. Nietzschean antidotes of “forgetting” can be literally deadly for us today.

2) Mindfulness between “Acting” and “Being”

A popular “hygiene for life“ in our times is called “mindfulness.” It is widely practiced and there are many introductory books on its ideas and methods. One of such books, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (2007) by Mark Williams et al [22], clarifies the difference between the doing mode and the being mode of the mind as follows:

            This mode of careful analysis, problem solving, judgment, and comparison is aimed at closing the gap between the way things are and the way we think they should be—--at solving perceived problems. Therefore, we call it the doing mode of mind. It’s the mode by which we respond to what we hear as a call to action.  (40-41)

             There is an alternative strategy for handling the negative moods, memories, and thinking patterns in the present moment, as they arise. Evolution has bequeathed us an alternative to critical thinking, and we humans have only just begun to realize its power to transform us. It is called awareness. 

                  In a sense we’ve been familiar with this alternative capacity of ours all along. It’s just that the doing mode of mind has eclipsed it. This capacity does not work by critical thinking but through awareness itself. We call it the being mode of mind…. 

…The being mode is an entirely different way of knowing from the thinking mode of doing mode. Not better, but different. But it gives us a whole other way of living our lives and of relating to our emotions, our stress, our thoughts, and our bodies…

Being mode is the antidote to the problems that the doing mode of mind creates (45-46; original italics).

As the expression of the “antidote” indicates, “mindfulness” as a contemporary method can be regarded as belonging in the Nietzschean lineage of “hygiene for life”; therefore, we can recognize similar “advantages and disadvantages” in it. On the one hand, we cannot overemphasize its vital importance to cure our overly doing-centered way of life. 

On the other hand, however, many would wonder if it is an adequate or sufficient response to the “existential crisis” in which we all find ourselves today [23]. Our paramount task is to find ways to secure the very ground of our being by transforming our collective form of life. In Hakuin’s terms, we might say it is creative “devices in action” that are needed.  

In this vein we might as well remember that the clear-cut dichotomy between doing and being has been called into question with the increasing realization that the they are inexplicably intertwined with each other in our concrete lived experience. To mention only a few of such examples, we can refer to John Dewey’s understanding of experience’s “doing/undergoing” duality, Nishida’s notion of “acting-intuition,” and the “enactive approach” initiated by Francisco Varela et al.

2  Moritaki Ichirō (1901-1994): How to Be Mindful in the Nuclear Age 

2-1  In the Wake of the Kyoto School [24]

Hiroshima-based philosopher Moritaki Ichirō was a leader of the anti-nuclear movement in Japan. When we look at his life’s itinerary, we notice some distinctive features. For one thing, he entered the philosophy department at Kyoto Imperial University in 1927. Though Kitarō Nishida was to retire the following year, Kuki Shūzō would join the department in 1929, and the 1920s and 30s were the apex of the so-called Kyoto School formed around Nishida, who remained highly productive until his death in June 1945. 

      Some of the central figures of the Kyoto School such as Miki Kiyoshi（1887−1945）and Kuki Shūzō (1888—1941) were much older, but Moritaki belonged to the more or less same generation as Nishitani Keiji (1900—1990), Kōsaka Masaaki (1900—1969), and Kōyama Iwao (1905—1993). Graduating from Hiroshima Higher Normal School, Moritaki entered the Kyoto Imperial University at the age of twenty-seven after teaching two years at Miyoshi Junior High School located north of Hiroshima. He finished his undergraduate studies in three years and his master’s program in one year to go back to Hiroshima to assume professorship at Hiroshima Higher Normal School. It seems he was not in close relationship with Nishida’s disciples who formed the core group of the Kyoto School, but, as we will see later, some traces of the      important influence from his teachers, Nishida and Tanabe, can be clearly recognized in the formation of his postwar antinuclear views.    

2-2  On “Public Mind”: A Lesson Learned from British Philosophy  

Moritaki specialized in British ethical philosophy, though it was not a major field when German idealism was in the mainstream in Japanese academia. It would have been related to the fact that his first foreign language was English since his high school days, but this choice seems quite significant with regard to his later engagement as an anti-nuclear activist. 

   The doctoral thesis presented in 1950 to Hiroshima University was entitled “A Study in British Ethical Thought.” It consisted of 535 handwritten pages, and structured as follows: “1. Introduction; 2. A Study of Hobbes’s Leviathan; 3. A Study of Butler’s Theory of Conscience: Conscience and Self-Love; 4. Central Problems in Sidgwick’s Ethical Theory: Self-interest and Obligation.” As a study of British ethical philosophy, the structure is considered quite orthodox, and it may be considered quite suggestive that it starts with a discussion of Hobbes’s Leviathan, a work premised on the view of man’s natural condition as dominated by “desire for power,” and that the following chapters address the questions of “conscience” and “obligation” in reference to self-interest. Furthermore, although there is no direct reference to the nuclear problem or his own experience of the A-bomb, Moritaki adds an appendix entitled “The Fundamental Problems of Social Ethics: Public Mind and Self-interest” where he  states explicitly: “One of the practical lessons I could learn from British ethics,” was a resolve to look squarely at the post-war reality in order to seek visons for a “just society” despite the utmost confusion in post-war Japan. 

2-3  Some Traces of Nishida and Tanabe

However, we can recognize undeniable traces of strong influences he received from Nishida and Tanabe. In this sense we can regard him as belonging to the periphery of the Kyoto School. 

   Moritaki’s thoughts immediately after August 15, 1945, the day Emperor Hirohito admitted Japan’s defeat via radio, are presented in Witness of Moritaki’s Diary: 40 Years of Hiroshima [25] as follows:

“Once I was told by Nishida Kitarō Sensei that those who engage in ethics and philosophy have got to have the resolve of self-negation. It may happen that you have got to negate all of your views just before entering your coffin. At that time I was reminded painfully of this.”

   The articles written and the contents of the ethics I lectured to the students before and during the war….Were they wrong? I felt as if part of my soul had been wrenched off (Moritaki 1985:17).  

Or, the diary of February 20, 1965, when Moritaki gave his final retirement lecture at Hiroshima University:

“Cloudy and drizzling rain. Giving my last lecture in the large hall in the Department of Letters, which is associated with many memories of mine. The title: “The Way I Came.”

Started my talk from the teachings I received from the three professors of Nishi [26], Nishida, and Tanabe, and about the outlines of my ethical thought, and then, about coming to criticize the “civilization of power” after the war so as to emphasize the importance of the “civilization of love.” Then talked about my A-bomb experience that forced me to proceed from the stand of “species [race]” of Nishi’s [nation-centered] ethics to the stand of “genus [human species],” and talked about my inquiry of peace ethics based on the supreme imperative of “human species must live on” and my hope to stay engaged in praxis till the last day of my life….”       

2-4  Postwar Turn toward the Culture of Compassion

Moritaki’s indebtedness to Nishida and Tanabe can be recognized also in the fact that their key notions such as “place of nothingness” or “zange” (metanoia/repentance) are used in “Culture of Compassion,” in which Moritaki’s thought is expressed in a concise manner. For that matter, the very expression of “absolute negation” used in the title of Steps toward the Absolute Negation of the Nuclear [27] can be taken as a token of Moritaki’s connection to the Kyoto School.  

   When the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945, Moritaki was at the Mitsubishi Shipyard at Eba, about four kilometers south of the hypocenter, where he was staying with his students who were mobilized to work. He suffered grave damage on his right eye by a shard of glass blown away by the A-bomb’s blast. Though he lost his right eye sight, he could survive thanks to the devoted care given by his students [28]. 

While recuperating in his mountainous hometown Futami north of Hiroshima, Moritaki came to realize, in the core of his heart and soul, that the human species will tread the path of self-destruction due to the “civilization of power” with nuclear weapons as its apex, and he began to seek “a single way” to overcome it. Moritaki’s “Recuperation Records” contains a section entitled “thinking” which lists the themes of “the world of sorrowful prayers (悲念=hinen),” “being and indebtedness (恩=on),” “culture of compassion (慈=ji),” “state of compassionate love (慈愛=jiai),” “politics and religion (政教=seikyo),” and “recovery of faith (信=shin)” (Moritaki 1985: 23).

   In July 1958 Moritaki contributed to the Chugoku Shimbun, a Hiroshima-based newspaper, a short writing to uphold the proposition: “human species must live on,” which would become widely known. The core of Moritaki’s thought anticipated by almost two decades The Imperative of Responsibility (German original: 1979) by Hans Jonas (1903-1993), who advocated the permanence of human life as the new supreme principle in the contemporary world for which it has become a real possibility for humankind to perish because of science-technology. 

2-5  Sit-in Protest as Zazen

Moritaki continued engaged whole-heartedly in the anti-nuclear activities all through his life, to mention only a few of the most significant moments: working as secretary-general to organize the first World Conference against Atomic & Hydrogen Bombs held in Hiroshima in 1955; embarking on an around-the-world trip for the anti-nuclear campaign [29] in 1971; announcing the “Ideal of the Absolute Negation of the Nuclear [including power generation” at the 31st World Conference in 1976.

   What Moritaki continued most persistently was, among others, the sit-in protest against nuclear testing during the cold war years. According to a chronological record, he engaged in it more than four hundred and seventy times till 1993 - the year just before his death. An iconic photo shows Moritaki sitting-in in a zazen-like upright posture in front of the cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. One may feel inclined to say that the resolute look of Moritaki’s face with his eyes wide-open [30], resembles one of Hakuin’s zenga, particularly Daruma’s piercing look with his big eyes wide-open.

As a matter of fact, Moritaki used to practice zazen regularly. From his students’ recollections we can confirm a strong, natural continuity between his zazen practice and his sit-in protests. One of his students reminiscences as follows:    

It was Moritaki-sensei who rebuild the Zen Club, which had existed from the time of the Hiroshima Higher Normal School, after it became a new national university [in 1953]. It was held twice a month at the second floor of the Seifu Dormitory north of the main university entrance. Though the number of participants was small, we practiced zazen in silence and received teachings on The Blue Cliff Record and the abstruse contents of The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana…

   In the later years, when Sensei’s sitting-in was reported via TV, I was impressed deeply that it really was a figure of zazen in terms of posture and will.” （Hiroshi Takamura, “An Encounter through the Zen Club” in Yukiyasu 1991:124-25) [31]

According to Moritaki’s own recollection, however, we can see that Moritaki was not so certain about the significance of his sit-in protests in the beginning.

2-6  A Little Girl’s Question: “What’s the Use of Just Sitting-in?”

In an essay written in 1984 Moritaki reflects back on what happened when he was doing a sit-in protest against the nuclear test by France. Let us quote its most telling passages:

One day when I was sitting in, a girl walked back and forth in front of me and whispered: “You would not be able to stop it just by sitting in?” This whisper got stuck deep into my bosom, as the big question: “Can we arrest nuclear tests just by sitting still here?” To infer further, as the big question: “Can peace movement prevent wars at all?” While I was doing a sitting-in action at the risk of all my existence, I was called into question sharply by the small girl.

  I thought it over and over. If I could infiltrate into a test site, like a guerrilla action, to destroy a nuclear test system, it would be no different from a war action by “power,” not an action of peace movement. Peace movement must to try to evoke and strengthen public opinion through non-violent actions….

  Sitting in in front of the memorial cenotaph, I suddenly realized: I was somehow different from the everyday self. The everyday “I” does not move unless for its own sake…. As long as I am sitting in, however, I am not sitting in for my own sake if only for thirty minutes or one hour. …

  There is nothing harder to break than the “ego’s shell.” To break out of the shell of one’s ego is the most difficult thing. … However, the “I” who is sitting in in front of the cenotaph is different from the everyday “I” and sitting in for the sake of something other than oneself. … There was, so to speak, an atmosphere of a chain reaction of human spirit going on….

  This may be just a metaphor, but I wonder what sort of power can be exercised if we can break our ego’s shells and cause chain reactions of our spirit. Making up my mind and, in a sense, discarding the everyday self, I sat in in front of the cenotaph, and when I noticed the circles of sitting-in spreading day by day and realized what may be called “chain reaction of human spirit,” I thought; “This is it!” I expressed my feeling in the following words:

        Chain reaction of spiritual atoms

              Must overcome

              Chain reaction of material atoms. [the original in English]   

This was my answer to the question posed by that small girl, but it was, at the same time, my announcement of the “satori (enlightenment)” in my anti-nuclear movement…[February 15, 1984; at my home in Hiroshima]    (Moritaki 1994: 79-83)   

We understand very clearly what motivated Moritaki in his persistent sit     -in protests. It was his conscious attempt to induce other people to engage, so to speak, in the act of collective zazen so that the imminent reality of nuclear disaster can be brought into light in public as a joint-attention. In other words, Moritaki was tackling our Kōan of the nuclear age: how can we eliminate nuclear weapons? 

Needless to say, now that almost three decades have passed since Moritaki passed away in 1994, the nuclear situation appears even more critical and precarious. Moritaki himself had a very disheartening experience when he heard the news of the Chernobyl nuclear accident on the same day of a sit-in protest that he was doing against a French nuclear test. 

In Place of Closing:   

“Mindfulness” in TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons)

     As the case of Hakuin shows most clearly, it shall be indispensable for us to engage with socio-political problems if we are to secure and enjoy the miracle of our own individual existence. Certainly, it is not an easy task, not unlike a kōan, to stay “mindful” of global problems, such as the nuclear crisis, let alone solve them. The Kōan Moritaki tacked all through his life still remains ours, and this Kōan cannot be solved just by thinking or meditating. We need to change the structure of our political world itself. Needless to say, it is a very daunting task, and it would take tireless collaborations and ingenuous “devices.”

Let us close our essay on a hopeful note by highlighting a very significant step forward in the midst of the very precarious nuclear situation of our time, that is, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) that was adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in July 2017 and which came into to force on January 22nd, 2022. To use Hakuin’s term, this treaty is a legal “device (kufū) in action” to tackle our hardest kōan. Even this device may not be enough to solve it, but it can be encouraging that the TPNW acknowledges hibakusha’s essential contributions in “helping to create the ‘mindfulness’ and ‘public conscience’ out of which the document has come into being.” Its preamble states: 

Mindful of the unacceptable suffering of and harm caused to the victims of the use of nuclear weapons (hibakusha), as well as of those affected by the testing of nuclear weapons. . . [32]

We can recognize here that the “chain reaction of human spirit” did contribute to produce this international statement as a legal “device.” Let us acknowledge this document as an inauguration of the “chain reaction of human spirit” of which this international legal “device” is a manifestation. It is now incumbent on all of us to find new ways to apply this remarkable “device of action” to ignite the spiritual chain reaction that is its intended objective - from here on.  

References

Hakuin, Ekaku. 1999a. Hebi-ichigo & Wall-Lawsuits [Collection of Hakuin-Zenji’s Sermons, Vol.1] (in Japanese), edited and annotated by Katsuhiro Yoshizawa. Kyoto: Zen Culture Research Institute.

――1999b. Itsumade-gusa [Collection of Hakuin-Zenji’s Sermons, Vol.3] (in Japanese), edited and annotated by Katsuhiko Yoshizawa. Kyoto: Zen Culture Research Institute. (This collection of Hakuin’s sermons consists of 15 volumes.)

Jonas, Hans. 1984 (German original in 1979). The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, revised edition. University of Chicago Press.

Kazashi, Nobuo. 2017. “Metanoetics for the Dead and the Living: “Metanoetics for the Dead and the Living: Tanabe Hajime, Karaki Junzo, and Moritaki Ichiro on the Nuclear Age,” The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, ed. by Michiko Yusa. Bloomsbury.

Moritaki, Ichirō (1950; Ph.D. degree conferred in 1953). “A Study in British Ethical Thought (in Japanese)”, a doctoral thesis resented to Hiroshima Bunri University. Hiroshima University Library.

 ―― (1985). Hiroshima Forty Years: Witnesses of Moritaki Diary (in Japanese), ed. by Chugoku Shimbun. Tokyo: Heibonsha. 

  ―― (2015).The Nuclear and Human Species Cannot Co-Exist: Steps toward the Absolute Negation of the Nuclear (in Japanese). Revised and enlarged edition. Tokyo: Nanatsumori-shokan.

Muraki, Hiromasa. 2003. Hakuin’s Tanden (Lower-Abdomen)-Breathing Method (in Japanese). Shunju-sha Publisher. 

Natsume, Soseki. 2012. The Gate, trans. by William F. Sibley. The New York Review Books. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich W. 1954. Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben.München: Hanser. 

  ―― 1980. On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life,” trans. by Peter Preuss. Hackett.

Scarry, Elaine. 2014. Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom. Norton.

Takahashi, Satoshi. 2014. Hakuin: A Social Reformer of Edo (in Japanese). Iwanami-shoten.

Williams, Mark; Teasdale, John; Segal, Zindel V.; Kabat-Zinn, John. 2007. The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness. Guilford Press.                                         

Yoshizawa, Katsuhikro; Waddell, Norman. 2010. The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin. Counterpoint. [This is a revised translation of Yoshizawa’s Hakuin—The World of Zenga, Chūōkōron, 2005.]

Yoshizawa, Katsuhihiro. 2012. To Read Hakuin’s Zenga: The Depth Feels Funny at First, but its Sadness Sinks in Later (in Japanese). Wedge.

Yukiyasu, Shigeru, ed. 1991. Commemorating Moritaki Ichiro Sensei’s Ninetieth Birthday [in Japanese]. University Education Publisher.

Further Reading and Sources

Aviman, Galit. 2014. Zen Paintings in Edo Japan (1600-1868): Playfulness and Freedom in the Artwork of Hakuin Ekaku and Sengai Gibon. Routledge.

Beine, Steve. 2011. Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen. University of Hawaii Press.

Heisig, James W., Kasulis, Thomas P., Maraldo, John C., eds. 2011. Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 

Kazashi, Nobuo. 2021. “Thaumazein at the Nuclear Anthropocene: The Life and Thought of Jinzaburo Takagi as a Citizen Scientist,” Philosophy and Global Affairs, 1-1, 61-71. 

Kim, Hee-Jin. [1982] 2004. Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist; 3rd revised edition. Wisdom Publications.

Krummel, John W. M. 2019. Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader. Rowman & Littlefield International.

Matsumaru, Hisao; Arisaka, Yoko; Shultz, Lucy Christine, eds. 2022. Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitaro. Springer.

Muso, Soseki. 2015,  Dialogues in a Dream: The Life and Zen Teaching of Muso Soseki, trans. by Thomas Kirchner. Wisdom Publications.

Seo, Audrey Yoshiko; Addis, Stephen. 2010. The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin. Shambhala.

Stambaugh, Joan. 1990. Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality. University of Hawaii Press.

Shields, Mark James. 2011. Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought. Routledge.

World Nuclear Victims Forum (2015). 2021. For a Nuclear-Free Future: Global Hibakusha Report from Hiroshima to the World. https://www.nuclear-free.net/en/# 

1. This essay is based partly on my talk, “Our Koan  How to Be Mindful in the Nuclear Age” given at the Uehiro Graduate Philosophy Conference at the University of Hawai in March 2017 and at the “Phenomenology and Mindfulness” Conference at the Ramapo College of New Jersey in May 2017.I am grateful to James Morley of Ramapo College for his assistance in proof-reading this essay.

2. A most well-known kōan would be: “Your original face prior to your parents’ birth.” This is the kōan novelist Soseki was given when he practiced at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura, and this experience is allegedly reflected in the following episode in The Gate: 

   “Well, it’s really all the same, wherever you begin,” said the Master as he turned toward Sōsuke. “’Your original face prior to your parents’ birth---what is that?’” Why not mull this one over a bit?....

     [coming back at night]

Seated in front of this face, the spiritless Sōsuke exhausted what he had to say in a single phrase.

     The response was immediate: “You’ll have to come up with something sharper [more glaring] than that! The voice boomed. “Anybody with even a bit of learning could blurt out what you just said.”

     Sōsuke withdrew from the room like a dog from a house in mourning. From behind him reverberated a vehement ringing of the handbell (Natsume 2013: 183; 194).

3.  It concerns the kōan known as “manpo-kiitsu” (万法帰一；All beings return to the one)” included in The Blue Cliff Record: 

A monk asked Chao-chou, “The myriad things return to the one. Where does the one return to?” 

Chao-chou said, “When I was in Ch’ing-chou, I made a cloth shirt that weighted seven pounds” (Yoshizawa 2009: 212-215).

Apparently, the answer is irrelevant and dodging the question, but, according to an interpretation, it is intimating, by the metaphor of a heavy luxurious shirt made in the past, the insignificance of “enlightenment,” which can be a form of self-attachment without regard for others’ sufferings.

4. “Sutasuta” is an onomatopoeic expression, which is used as in “sutasuta aruku,” meaning “to walk briskly.”

5. See the video record of The Hakuin Exhibition: Messages Contained in Zenga [Hakuin-ten: Zenga-ni komerareta messeji] (held in Tokyo, Dec.2012-Jan.2013) at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPB40HHR1ds

6. Along the Tokaido Route connecting Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto there were fifty-three of such “shukuba” towns where travelers can rest and eat. It took about two weeks for travelers to cover the whole route on foot. Originally started as post stations and official check points where travelers crossing domain (han) borders had to present a permit, they developed into lively nexus-spots, which were depicted in Ukiyoe such as The Fifty-Three Stations by Hiroshige.  

7. The Nichiren sect, initiated by Nichiren (1222-1283), is characterized by upholding of the paramount importance of chanting the Lotus Sutra, vehement criticism of the other Buddhist schools including Zen, and active attempts to intervene in the governance of the Kamakura shogunate, which was troubled with incessant internal conflicts as well as the Raids of Yuen China in 1274 and 1284.                

8. The details of Hakuin’s life and career are based on some of the recent, fascinating research such as Yoshizawa 2012 and Takahashi 2014.

9. “Oldman Shōju” or “Shōju rōnin or rōjin” was an endearing nickname given by the nearby villagers to hermit zen master Dōkyō Etan, who was known for his severe dealings with those who sought his teachings. 

10. See Yoshizawa 2012: 18-21.

11. It concerns the kōan known as “manpō-kiitsu” (万法帰一；All beings return to the one)” included in The Blue Cliff Record: 

A monk asked Chao-chou, “The myriad things return to the one. Where does the one return to?” 

Chao-chou said, “When I was in Ch’ing-chou, I made a cloth shirt that weighted seven pounds” (Yoshizawa 2009: 212-215).

Apparently, the answer is irrelevant and dodging the question, but, according to an interpretation, it is intimating, by the metaphor of a heavy luxurious shirt made in the past, the insignificance of “enlightenment,” which can be a form of self-attachment without regard for others’ sufferings.

12. See Yoshizawa 2009: 179-182. The expression of “joint-attention” is used in the original Japanese book (Yoshizawa 2012:134).

In recent research in developmental psychology the phenomenon of “joint-attention” is regarded as essential in the formation of our common life-world; for instance, the familiar phenomenon of an infant turning her or his gaze to an object pointed to by mother appears so natural, but it shows the taken-for-granted but most fundamental fact that we are living together and engaged together in the common world.  

13. “Epoche,” meaning or “suspension of judgment’ in Greek, is a basic phenomenological operation in Husserlian phenomenology  thereby to  try to try to suspend our taken-for-granted beliefs and assumptions that are operating in our taken-for-granted way of our natural attitude taken in everyday life. Husserl considered it necessary to grasp the wayhow our consciousness is constituting our life-world is constituted by our consciousness. As is well known, however,  later phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty came to reflected on the pregnant implication of the fact that it was actually extremely difficultimpossible to perform such an epoche completely. (cf. Merlearu-Ponty, Preface,  to Tthe , Phenomenology of Perception.)

14. Yoshizawa 2008: 77-81.

15. Yoshizawa 2012: 18-20.

16. It was entitled “hebi-ichigo” or false strawberries allegedly eaten only by snakes.

17. Hakuin 1999a: v-vi.

18. In 1758, four years after the publication of this petition, Takeuchi Shikibu, a Confucian-Shintoist scholar, was expelled to Ise for criticizing the Shogunate governance as being “perilous” and storyteller Baba Bunko was beheaded for taking up political topics (Takahashi 2014: 78-79).

19. The original Yoshizawa 2008: 178-180; Takahashi 2014: 121-143.

20. The original title is “Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben.”

21. The original term is “die Wissenschaft,” which is translated as “science” in the English version (Nietzsche 1954: 71).

22. The original expression is “des erkannten Werdens,” which is translated as “of known becoming” in the English version (Ibid.)

23. This excellent work has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, German.

24. Maybe we feel such inadequacy partly because the climate crisis is accelerating so rapidly these years.

25. The introductory parts of this section are adapted from my article, “Metanoetics for the Dead and the Living: “Metanoetics for the Dead and the Living: Tanabe Hajime, Karaki Junzo, and Moritaki Ichiro on the Nuclear Age,” The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, ed. by Michiko Yusa, Bloomsbury, 105-131, 2017.

26. This book was edited on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the A-bombing in 1985. Moritaki’s own words are put in quotation marks to distinguish them from the editor’s comments.

27. “Nishi” is Nishi Shinichiro (1873-1943) who left many works regarding the so-called Kokumin Dotoku-ron [National Moral Theory]. In his last years he was referred to as “Two Nishis” together with Nishida Kitaro. Moritaki received Nishi’s close guidance since his high school days and married Nishi’s second daughter, Shige, as well. The Confucian culture Moritaki acquired through Nishi retained great significance after the war, too [Moritaki 1951: 7].

28. A collection of writings by Moritaki posthumously published in 1994. Its enlarged second edition was published under the title of The Nuclear and Human Species Cannot Co-Exist: Steps toward the Absolute Negation of the Nuclear in 2015. 

　Nishida’s influence can be recognized also in Moritaki’s postwar thinking as follows:

 “Having arrived at the apex of power, we are now finding ourselves in the destruction of power. Only after facing the crisis of self-destruction, we seek the principle for its salvation in what transcends our self’s power. If the working of negating oneself and letting others exist can be called love, what negates itself absolutely must be absolute love. The place of nothingness, which is absolute nothingness itself but let all beings exist, is, as it is, the world of absolute compassion” (Moritaki 1994: 103-106).

29. Although it was mid-summer, festering of the affected part could be avoided thanks to the intensive care given by his students who somehow managed to get ice, which was very hard to procure during the wartime, to cool the affected part (Yukiyasu 1991: 172).

30. Meeting with some of the leading scientists concerned about nuclear effects during this trip, Moritaki understood clearly the risk of low-level radiation and nuclear wastes and became convinced of the deeply misleading character of the “magical” expression of the “peaceful use of nuclear power.” For more detail, see Kazashi 2017.

31. Moritaki lost sight in his right eye when he was exposed to the explosion of the A-bomb.

32.  This memory is included in the collection of essays published in commemoration of Moritaki’s ninetieth birthday in 1991. The editor, another student of Moritaki’s, also writes: “When I see the figure of Moritaki-sensei still doing a “sit-in” against nuclear tests in front of the A-Bomb Victims Memorial Cenotaph, I cannot help but think that the “sit-in” is a protest expression coming from Sensei’s long practice of zazen“ (Shigeru Yukiyasu, “Moritaki-sensei and the Zen Club at Hiroshima University” in Yukiyasu 1991: 84).

33. In her preface for the forthcoming Japanese translation of her book, Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom, Elaine Scarry highlights the significance of hibakusha being mentioned in this way in the preamble of the TPNW. Cf. Scarry 2014.