by BRIAN DAIZEN VICTORIA
Japanese author Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) PHOTO/Wikipedia
The always contentious, sometimes highly emotional, debate over D.T. Suzuki’s relationship to Japanese fascism continues unabated. Among other things this is shown by reader reactions to a recent article in Japan Focus entitled “Zen as a Cult of Death in the Wartime Writings of D.T. Suzuki”. This debate can only intensify by the further assertion of a wartime relationship between D.T. Suzuki and the Nazis or, more precisely, a positive or sympathetic relationship between Suzuki and the Nazis. This article, in two parts, will explore that possibility though conclusive proof of such a relationship will not be included until the second part.
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I took up the suggestion and not long afterwards met Dr. Suzuki in his house on the grounds of Engakuji monastery in Kita Kamakura. . . . Dr. Suzuki welcomed me, took the letter of introduction from Graf Dürckheim, and led me inside his house, where he adjusted his spectacles and read the letter. He was slender and a bit frail, with a face dominated by huge eyebrows that curved upwards and outwards. When he had finished the letter, Dr. Suzuki asked me about Dürckheim and the other prisoners at Sugamo.”3 (Italics mine)
While I hadn’t paid much attention to this passage when I first read it, now it brought a flood of questions to mind, first and foremost who was Graf [Count] Dürckheim (1896-1988)? And why was Dürckheim imprisoned as a suspected war criminal? Further, why had a suspected German war criminal been studying with D.T. Suzuki during the war years?
More important, why had Suzuki accepted a suspected German war criminal, almost certainly a Nazi, as his student if, as Sat? claims, Suzuki “clearly had little regard for the Nazi leader, disapproved of their violent attitudes, and opposed the policies espoused by the party.” Something didn’t add up. And as if all of these questions were not enough, I was particularly struck by the following comments posted on Wikipedia’s entry for Dürckheim:
Stunkard later became Suzuki’s physician. That visit started a chain reaction of visitors to the Suzuki residence, one of whom was Philip Kapleau, author of The Three Pillars of Zen and founder of the Rochester Zen Center. Dürckheim thus was directly responsible for launching Zen into the American mainstream.4 (Italics mine)
Is it possible, I remember thinking, that a Nazi, imprisoned as a suspected war criminal, was “directly responsible for launching Zen into the American mainstream”? Perhaps this was just another of Wikipedia’s many inaccuracies or at least a rhetorical overstatement. Or was it? These were just a few of the questions that drove me to examine the record more carefully.