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

"Let me just start by saying that I like to ask my students why they became interested in Japan and Japanese history. Many of them say Japanese martial arts sparked their interest, which is very relevant when we come to this book. There’s a real interest in Japan that is motivated by the notion that Japan, the martial arts, and Japanese culture more generally are potentially sources of spiritual fulfilment. What this book does, in a way I find really quite compelling, is to think carefully about how Japanese culture and the martial arts came to be associated throughout much of the world with a kind of spiritualism—in this case with Zen. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Basically, what Yamada is doing is trying to understand the origins of this whole genre of writing about Japan, which he sums up as ‘Zen and the Art of… [fill in the blank].’ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one well-known example. He sees the origin of it in a book that appeared in the 1940s called Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, a German professor obsessed with mysticism who travelled to Japan and later joined the Nazi Party. The book is written a bit like a detective novel. Yamada peels away the layers of myth surrounding Herrigel’s experiences in Japan, in order to track down how Japanese culture came to be associated with Zen. There are two case studies here. The first focuses on the 20s and 30s, when the writer of this book on Japanese archery travels to Japan and later writes about his supposed spiritual experiences there. The other focuses on trying to disentangle the relationship between Zen and rock gardens after the Second World War. Again, there is this assumption that the rock garden is a spiritual place, and that spirituality is somehow connected to Zen. He really scrutinises that idea and shows how it wasn’t taken for granted until relatively recently. It’s really a mid-twentieth century phenomenon. I have to admit it’s difficult for me to tackle that question as well. It’s important to disentangle the long history of Zen, a branch of Buddhism that arrives in Japan via China, from the accumulated meanings that become associated with it. There’s this assumption that Zen manifests itself in all kinds of branches of the Japanese arts but that’s somewhat separate from Zen as a religious practice that we can pin down and locate. It becomes something that supposedly infuses all kinds of different practices. I think that there is something to that but, at the same time, it really does start to take on a life of its own in the 20th century, owing to the fascination that a number of visitors from Europe and North America experience, or perhaps project upon their experiences in order to sell books! Yes, it does become associated with that. Herrigel is part of the myth-making. It’s about letting oneself go, getting outside oneself. While learning archery in Japan, Herrigel writes that he has to hit the target with his bow in the dark, but instead of shooting the arrow, he has to let the arrow shoot itself. There is this kind of subjective release, this escape from the self-governance of the self. This annihilation of the self becomes associated with Zen spiritual practice."