SHOEBAT EXCLUSIVE

By Theodore Shoebat



Buddhism will soon be just as dangerous as Islam, and will be a threat to all of Christendom. Just as the threat of Islam will reach its peak through Turkey, the threat of Buddhism will reach its summit through Japan.

For the first time since the end of WW2, Japan has given itself the right to take part in foreign wars. In the beginning of this month, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, and his administration, ended the policy of pacifism that America imposed on Japan upon the end of WW2, now allowing Japan to take part in international conflicts.

The policy of pure peace imposed on Japan by the US states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” and that “the right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” But now this law has come to the end for the first time in its post WW2 history.

The new measure will permit Japan to defend other countries, including the United States, against supposed enemy nations, even if Japan itself is not under attack. While Abe is masquerading the decision as a strategy to advance peace, saying that it was done “to better protect Japan in a region dominated by an increasingly assertive China” the real intention is to subtly and gradually enable Japan to revise its imperial empire through war. As Japanese scholar Hiromi Shimada said:

By exercising the right to collective self-defense, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces can fight to protect other countries. This could mean that the government will cross the boundary of Japan’s “global contribution to peace” and lead the country to war.

As Japan gets closer to ultimately attempting its utopian vision of an imperial empire, we will see a Japan-Turkish alliance. Shinzo Abe said in October of 2013 that Japan and Turkey will not only work together in economic matters, but in matters of security, which implies of course war. He also described Turkey and Japan as the wings of Asia that will make Asia fly, implying that the two nations will control the continent:

Turkey, which has now achieved a robust economy, and Japan are partners in the G20. In May of this year, our two countries pledged as strategic partners to deepen our dialogue and our cooperation of course diplomatically but also in security and economic matters, and to work together for the sake of the world. Turkey and Japan, who are working to bring peace and stability to the world, are the two wings that support this vast Asia from East and West. This image has recurred to me time and again as I set foot in the great city of Istanbul that connects East and West on this day on which you have realized the dream you have held for 150 years. Bringing peace to Asia, as well as prosperity. Turkey and Japan are the two wings that will make Asia soar.

Shinzo Abe is using a growing China as a pretext to invade it, because ultimately, Japan has nothing but enmity for China. Shinzo Abe, alongside many Japanese politicians, have denied the holocaust Japan committed against the Chinese, and are in complete denial of the hundreds of thousands of rapes committed by Japanese imperial soldiers during WW2.

This collective denial of major massacres and mass rapes is only a reflection of the superiority complex, and the hatred for non-Japanese people, that Shinzo and his ilk have, and it reveals truly the real intentions of Abe’s administration.

There are those in Japan who have tasted the bitter herb of its fanatic imperialism, and who are now warning the world on the impending consequences of Abe’s actions, in that it will lead to a war and thus to another devastating defeat.

Former Kamikaze pilot Nobuo Okimatsu recently gave a speech forewarning how Abe’s rewriting of Japanese war history and his new policy of “collective self defense” will result in a second defeat for Japan:

If many Japanese have no correct attitude toward history and do not reflect on themselves, or even deny the history of Japanese aggression, there will be no genuine friendship between Japan and China … Abe lacks international common sense. If he continues the current dangerous path, I am really concerned that Japan will suffer another defeat

In other words, Abe’s new war policy is a stepping stone to reviving imperial Japan, and that will only lead to another defeat for the warlike nation.

A Chinese analyst also made a similar observation in which Japan’s current actions, under the light of its history of cunning and deceptive warfare, is concerning the world:

Japan has a history of making sneaky attacks, as it did in launching wars with China, Russia and the United States in the recent 100 years… Now, Japan, with greater freedom to use military force, is making the world more worried.

Abe committed this measure without first going through any constitutional procedures. The decision was solely done after a series of meetings between Abe and his hand picked advisors, who had no legal authority, and after a number of conferences between his Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition party, the Buddhist political party, New Komeito.

The Buddhist New Komeito party accepted the new measure to rid Japan of its purely pacifist restrictions. Now, New Komeito has been portraying itself as the party of peace, and the media has frequently been portraying the party as the restrainer of Shinzo Abe’s fanaticism. But this turn of events now reveals the true colors of New Komeito. Now analysts are shocked to see the Buddhist party accept a policy that enables Japan to partake in war. As one Japanese analyst puts it:

Political observers are trying to determine why New Komeito abandoned its pacifist ideals by accepting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense.

Shoebat.com was the only one to point out that New Komeito was dangerous, in our in depth article on the coming rise of Japanese Buddhism, Why We Must Focus On Buddhism As A Threat To America. What was the basis for our conclusion?

Simple: New Komeito is Buddhist, Imperial Japan was Buddhist, and since Abe wants to revive imperial Japan, Buddhism will soon become the ideological foundation for a revived Japan.

Buddhism will be a threat, and Japan will be its vehicle, just as Islam will be the greatest threat with Turkey as its vehicle.

In order to understand the dangers of Japan, we must first comprehend its historical connection to Buddhism, how Japan applied this religion onto its own empire, and how the reemergence of this religion is taking place in various fragments here and there.

In a recent interview Shinzo Abe promoted the ritual of Zen meditation, saying:

…it’s important for people to come up with ways — Zen meditation or others — to release their stress with their own efforts.

While this may seem to be what modern Americans perceive as harmless meditation, one must understand what the political philosophy of Zen consists of, and what it means to idealists such as Abe and those like him.

Before deeming his promotion of Zen meditation as mere talk of one’s nominal hobby, we must understand that Shinzo Abe is a very religious man, his own inclinations being seeped into Japan’s Shinto Buddhist ideology.

After a failed political career in 2007, Abe was told by an associate that he should make a religious pilgrimage to the Shinto Buddhist site of Kumano Sanzan, which consists of three temples that together enshrine three revered mountains. The three shrines are associated by worshippers with the three buddhas, “Amida-nyorai”, “Yakushi-nyorai” and “Senju-kannon”.

It was in this pilgrimage site where Abe received ‘political rebirth.’ According to a report:

Months after resigning in September 2007, Abe visited Kumano Shrine deep in the mountains of western Japan, known since ancient times as a place of healing and resurrection. Few thought then he would be politically reborn as one of the country’s most popular leaders. “It is said that if you make a pilgrimage there, you will be restored to life,” said one government source close to Abe. “I said, ‘Let’s go there and you will surely come back.'”

Shinzo Abe is not an American Zen practitioner, but a fanatic whose soul is wholeheartedly rooted in the violent nature of the Japanese spirit. To men like Abe, Zen is not considered a hobby, but an ideology, the entire nature of which a traditional Japanese man must plunge his entire being.

We must understand Zen if we are to comprehend Japan. Zen was founded by a Central Asian man by the name of Bodhidharma, and it is in his writings where we will find the true goal and nature of Zen Buddhism.

The purpose of Zen is not relaxation, or “inner peace,” but to make yourself absent of all desire, all love and sympathy; its ultimate intention is to make oneself utterly indifferent to human suffering. In other words, the goal of Zen is to make one callous. Bodhidharma wrote that one’s goal should be to realize oneself, or “your real body,” and that this true self is void of any love. He wrote:

Despite dwelling in a material body of four elements, your nature is basically pure. It can’t be corrupted. Your real body is basically pure. It can’t be corrupted. Your real body has no sensation, no hunger or thirst, no warmth or cold, no sickness, no love or attachment, no pleasure or pain, no good or bad, no shortness or length, no weakness or strength. (1)

Notice that he says one will have “no good or bad,” indicating the belief in no absolutes within the Zen system. After Saburo Aizawa, a Japanese soldier, murdered a Japanese general by hacking him with a Samurai sword (because he supposedly was jeopardizing the military), he explained that Zen training empowered him to commit the slaughter because it enabled him to forget about good and bad, and right and wrong:

I was in an absolute sphere, so there was neither affirmation nor negation, neither good nor evil. (2)

D.T. Suzuki, Buddhist authority and the head ideologue on Zen in Japan during WW2, described the absence of moral foundations and absolutes within Zen, and how it assisted the ferocity of the Japanese:

Zen did not necessarily argue with them [warriors] about the immortality of the soul or righteousness or the divine way or ethical conduct, but it simply urged going ahead with whatever conclusion rational or irrational a man has arrived at. Philosophy may safely be left with intellectual minds; Zen wants to act, and the most effective act, once the mind is made up, is to go on without looking backward. In this respect, Zen is indeed the religion of the samurai. (3)

With such precepts, it is simple to understand the ideological underpinnings behind the cruelty of Japan’s imperial soldiers: why they could rape hundreds of thousands of women, massacre millions without any ounce of mercy, without ever reflecting on their evil actions, but rather, boasting of them. Omata Yukio provides his own first-hand account of the mass beheadings the Japanese conducted in China:

Those in the first row were beheaded, those in the second row were forced to dump the severed bodies into the river before they themselves were beheaded. The killing went non-stop, from morning until night, but they were only able to kill 2,000 persons in this way. The next day, tired of killing in this fashion, they set up machine guns. Two of them raked a cross-fire at the lined-up prisoners. Rat-a-tat-tat. Triggers were pulled. The prisoners fled into the water, but no one was able to make it to the other shore. (4)

Azuma Shiro, the first Japanese soldier to make a public admission to the crimes of rape by himself and his fellow troops, described how the ravishment and butchering of Chinese women was done without any shame or feelings of guilt:

At first we used some kinky words like Bikankan. Bi means ‘hip,’ kankan means ‘look.’ Bikankan means, ‘Let’s see a woman open her legs.’ Chinese women didn’t wear underpants. Instead, they wore trousers tied with a string. There was no belt. As we pulled the string, the buttocks were exposed. We ‘Bikankan.’ We looked. After a while we would say something like, ‘It’s my day to take a bath,’ and we took turns raping them. It would be all right if we only raped them. I shouldn’t say all right. But we always stabbed them. Because dead bodies can’t speak. (5)

The Japanese beheaded and mutilated, and such violence is not contrary to Buddhism, for there is a Buddhist scripture called the Milindapanha, in which “amputation, mutilation, torture, and execution” are promoted. (6)

In the Arya-Satyakaparivarta, a scripture of the Mahayana school of Buddhism (the school adopted by Japan), “Torture can be an expression of compassion.” Violence for the advancement of Buddhism is supported in this same book, in that it praises “campaigns of conquest to spread the influence of Buddhism, and kings vested with the dharma commit mass violence against Jains and Hindus.” (7)

In Zen, the destruction of the human body is praised as leading to “the Way” to enlightenment, life is nothing, and one is not to love life. In the words of Zen’s founder:

If you’re looking for the Way, the Way won’t appear until your body disappears. It’s like stripping bark from a tree. This karmic body undergoes constant change. It has no fixed reality. Practice according to your thoughts. Don’t hate life and death or love life and death. (8)

Bodhidharma also wrote: “The body neither exists nor doesn’t exist.” (9) If the body’s existence is both absent and not absent, then the destruction of a body, either your own or someone else’s, means nothing, and entails no moral violation. This enables one to dictate whether or not the killing of a person is murder, and this is exactly what Buddhism teaches. The Buddhist text, the Abhidharma-mahavibhasa, states:

The sin of murder exists only insofar as one has the notion of a living being, even though such a thing does not exist. (10)

The Japanese were influenced by such beliefs, believing in precepts that were in accordance to the Buddhist text, Treatise of Absolute Contemplation, which teaches that whether killing a human is murder or not depends on the perception of the murderer:

If every living being is just a phantasm or a dream, is it a sin to kill them? –If one “sees” them as living beings, it is a sin to kill them. If one does not “see” them as living beings, then there are not any living beings that can be killed; as when one kills another man in a dream: upon awakening, there is absolutely no one there. (11)

D.T. Suzuki adopted this view, writing that one creates his own morality “outside of good and evil” which permits him to indulge in whatever evils he so wishes, without the worry of being guilty or breaking an absolute moral precept. (12)

One can kill, and feel no remorse just as long as he “sees” his victim as not being human. This worldview resinated within the depraved souls of the Japanese soldiers. It is why Japanese veteran Toshio Mizobuchi, after being asked by a rabbi if he felt any guilt about committing human experiments on Chinese people, angrily said:

No… The logs [a reference to Chinese victims] were not considered to be human. (13)

Toshio was a member of Unit 731, a group commissioned by the Japanese government to conduct human experiments on their victims, who they referred to as “maruta” or logs. One member of Unit 731 reflected the Buddhist doctrine of subjective perception on human life when he said:

…we believed that maruta were not human beings. They were even lower than animals… No one in Unit 731 ever had any sympathy for them. To all of us, they deserved to die.

Shinzo Abe is an admirer of Unit 737, he himself proudly posing for a picture while on a WW2 Japanese fighter plane named after Unit 737:

The enabling of murderous actions is done through a subjective view on what is and what is not human life, while the justification of murder is through Buddhist dogmatism, in which the victim is deemed as an infidel worthy of death.

Within Buddhist thought, there is the term used for people who are enemies of the Buddha, called icchantikas. As an illustration, this term would be the equivalent to the Islamic kafir when describing infidels.

According to Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, it is permissible to kill an icchantika:

By doing the opposite of what he [Buddha] intended, such people blaspheme the Buddha. Killing them would not be wrong. The sutras say, “Since icchantikas are incapable of belief, killing them would be blameless, whereas people who believe reach the state of buddhahood.” (14)

In accordance with such fanaticism, D.T. Suzuki referred to the Chinese as “unruly heathens” who needed to be punished “in the name of religion.” (15)

The apathy for the human body and for love, taught by Zen and its founder Bodhidharma, lead to one thing: the glorification of death. It is the philosophy of absolute indifference to the human body, to good and evil, and to life and death, taught by Zen, that became the foundation for the ideology of the kamikazes, Japan’s suicide bombers who crashed their airplanes into American and other Allied forces.

Shaku Soen, a Zen Master and the first to bring Buddhism into America, praised suicide for the sake of war and Buddhism as such:

Let us, therefore, not absolutely cling to the bodily existence, but when necessary, sacrifice it for a better thing. For this is the way in which the spirituality of our being asserts itself. (15a)

Till this day, praise for the Kamikazes, and their absolute indifference to human life, exists within the Japanese government at the highest levels. One of Shinzo Abe’s most prominent advisors, Etsuro Honda, weeped in an interview as he lauded the Kamikazes. As a report of the interview tells us:

Tears well up in Mr. Honda’s eyes during an interview as he talks about the “sacrifices” made by kamikaze pilots during the final stages of World War II.

This year a film was produced in Japan romanticizing the kamikazes, and Shinzo Abe most certainly took pleasure in the movie, not hesitating to see it. As one report tells us:

According to one of Japan’s leading newspaper, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spent part of New Year’s eve watching a movie that celebrates the life of a pilot from the kamikaze team. The film tells the story of a Japanese pilot who launched a suicide attack on the US military during the Second World War. Abe told the newspaper he was “moved” by the drama. “Eien no zero” tells the story of Kyuzo Miyabe, a young Kamikaze pilot who is obsessed with life and terrified of death. He is repeatedly scolded by his superior officers for being reluctant to participate in the war in the pacific. |In the end Miyabe follows orders and carries out a suicide attack against a US aircraft carrier. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was moved by the story.. a comment that has attracted critics who believe the film casts the country’s militarist past in a positive light.

Why would films praising kamikazes be appearing all of a sudden in Japan? It appears that the culture of Japan is shifting to Zen fanaticism, and the pagan culture of death.

Nakajima Genjo, a Zen master and soldier who fought in WW2, wrote on how he used Zen in order to disregard life and death in battle, living in accordance to the teachings of Bodhidharma:

I single-mindedly devoted myself to making every possible effort to survive, abandoning all thought of life and death. It was just at that moment that I freed myself from life and death. This freedom from life and death was in reality the realization of great enlightenment (daigo). I placed my hands together in my mind and bowed down to venerate the Buddha, the Zen Patriarchs, their Dharma descendants, and especially Master Genpo. … As I was a priest, I recited such sutras as Zen Master Hakuin’s Hymn in Praise of Meditation (Zazen Wasan) on behalf of the spirits of my dying comrades. (16)

Shinzo Abe likened his new policy on allowing Japan to participate in war, to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, an era of history that marks the beginning of Japan’s ascension to empire. The Meiji Restoration saw the end to Samurai feudalism, the unification of Japan, the pre-eminence of the deified emperor as the head of the state, and most importantly, Buddhism was the ideological underpinning of its wars.

It was under the Meiji era in which Japan had its first wars against China and Russia, and Buddhism played a most significant role in the entire scheme.

In Meiji Japan’s war against Russia, called the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, Inoue Enryō, one of the most influential Japanese Buddhist scholars authorities of the Meiji Era, deemed Russia as an enemy of the Buddha and Buddhism as the religion of the Japanese warriors:

In Russia state and religion are one, and there is no religious freedom. Thus, religion is used as a chain in order to unify the [Russian] people. Therefore, when they [the Russian people] see Orientals, they are told that the latter are the bitter enemies of their religion. It is for this reason that on the one hand this is a war of politics and on the other hand it is a war of religion. …If theirs is the army of God, then ours is the army of the Buddha. It is in this way that Russia is not only the enemy of our country but of the Buddha as well.

One Buddhist cleric of the Meiji Era, Yatsubuchi Banryu, even likened the Buddhist spirit of war to the warlike spirit of the Muslims of the Crimea when they defeated the Russians:

Flashing like a sword and glittering like a flower… the imperial army and navy can, like the faithful Muslims who defeated the Russians in the Crimea, or the soldiers of the Honganji who held the armies of Nobunaga, face all trials and tribulations with confidence and strength.

The Meiji period also saw an intense anti-Christian spirit, with Buddhist writer Hirai Kinzo writing a paper entitled, The Real Position of Japan Toward Christianity, in which he pushed for the outlawing of Christianity. (18)

If we are to learn from history, then we should expect this same antichrist spirit to inundate Japan.

What emerged within Meiji Japan was a very well organized Buddhist group called the United Movement for Revering the Emperor and Worshipping the Buddha. The founders of this new organization desired to drive out all Christians from any political office or positions of power, and it even went so far as to violently attack Christian church gatherings. They also succeeded in inducing about 130,000 Buddhist priests throughout Japan to get involved in politics. The aspiration of the organization was written as such:

The goal of this organization is to preserve the prosperity of the imperial household and increase the power of Buddhism. The result will be the perfection of the well-being of the great empire of Japan. …The time-honored spiritual foundation of our empire is the imperial household and Buddhism. (19)

Inoue Enryō, who was amongst the Meiji Era’s topmost Buddhist scholars, promoted a belief which can be deemed as Buddhist Jihad, upholding the ideal of self-destruction for the sake of Buddha and the Japanese empire, writing:

From ancient times, sacrificing one’s physical existence for the sake of the emperor and the country was akin to discarding worn-out sandals. (20)

This Buddhist Jihad, like Islamic Jihad, also upheld the idea of eternal paradise for those who died fighting for the Buddha and the empire. On July 31, 1894, the Nishi Honganji branch of the Shin sect wrote:

Believing deeply in the saving power of Amida Buddha’s vow, and certain of rebirth in his western paradise, we will remain calm no matter what emergency we may encounter, for there is nothing to fear. …We must value loyalty [to the sovereign] and filial piety, work diligently, and, confronted with this emergency, share in the trials and tribulations of the nation. (21)

D.T. Suzuki laid out the rules concerning war that all Buddhist leaders would adhere to until 1945. These precepts are rendered by Buddhist monk Brian Victoria as such:

(1) Japan has the right to pursue its commercial and trade ambitions as it sees fit; (2) should “unruly heathens” (jama gedo) of any country interfere with that right, they deserve to be punished for interfering with the progress of all humanity; (3) such punishment will be carried out with the full and unconditional support of Japan’s religions, for it is undertaken with no other goal in mind than to ensure that justice prevails; (4) soldiers must, without the slightest hesitation or regret, offer up their lives to the state in carrying out such religion-sanctioned punishment; and (5) discharging one’s duty to the state on the battlefield is a religious act. (22)

Such guidelines are eerily reminiscent to Japan’s current and subtle actions. The first rule gives absolute indulgence to Japan’s commercial desires, while the rest concerns protecting these ambitions from “unruly heathens”, a term which Suzuki used in referring to the Chinese. Today, Japan is expanding its control of the seas for the purpose of commercial gains and dominance over oceanic resources, while deeming China as the threat to this enterprise, and growing its military might for the purpose of fighting for this very reason.

Just days ago it was reported that Shinzo Abe decided that Japan will expand its continental shelf with the intent of dominating marine resources, as one Asian report informs us:

The Japanese government has decided to enact legislation to formally extend the limits of Japan’s continental shelf and assert its exclusive rights to marine resources, the Tokyo-based Nippon Hoso Kyokai reported on July 5.

Abe, no doubt, is relaxing Japan’s supposed pacifism in order to gain more control of the seas from China’s grasp. In light of Japan’s history, Zen Buddhism will play a very active factor in the nation’s attempt to recreate its empire. From being a seemingly economic endeavor, Japan’s goal to control the seas of the Far East will escalate into a war in which soldiers will be told to sacrifice themselves for the glory and the expansion of Japan.

This Buddhist jihad was predominant in Meiji Japan, and was greatly promoted by Shaku Soen. In 1904, during Japan’s first war against Christian Russia, Soen connected Buddha with self-sacrifice in battle, and saw it as not only a means to crushing “evil,” but to enlightenment as well, writing:

The moral principle which guided the Buddha throughout his twelve years of preparation and in his forty eight years of religious wanderings, and which pervades his whole doctrine, however varied it may be when practically applied, is nothing else then the subjugation of evil. …Here is the price we pay for our ideals — a price paid in streams of blood and by the sacrifice of many thousands of living bodies. However determined may be our resolution to crush evils, our hearts tremble at the sight of this appalling scene. …Were it not for the consolation that these sacrifices are not brought for an egotistic purpose, but are an inevitable step toward the final realization of enlightenment, how could I, poor mortal, bear these experiences of a hell let loose on earth? (23)

During the Japanese War Time tribunal of Class A war criminals, the only judge who gave a ‘not guilty’ verdict to Japan’s top wartime leaders was an Indian man named Radhabinod Pal. A factor that played a role in Pal’s sympathies toward the Japanese holocauster was an immense common ground that both Japan and India have with Buddhism, the latter being its original home, and the former one of its most enthusiastic receivers.

According to Indian political analyst, Dr Arvind Kumar, “the lone dissenting judgement by the Indian judge Radhabinod Pal during the War Crime tribunal of Japanese Class A war criminals and the cultural impact of Buddhism, which originated in India, has endeared India to the Japanese.”

Japan erected a monument in dedication to Pal, and it is placed in the pagan Yasukuni Shrine where all of Japan’s war criminals are literally deified as gods. Abe praised Pal in the following words:

Justice Pal is highly respected even today by many Japanese for the noble spirit of courage he exhibited during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East

Much evil has been done because of Buddhism. It is the religion of the careless, the apathetic, the callous. The sword of the Samurai will soon unite with the scimitar of the Muslim Turk, and it will only take the Sword of the Savior to vanquish them, for “with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron” (Revelation 19:15).

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(1) Bodhidharma, Bloodstream Sermon, trans. Red Pine

(2) Quoted in James W. Heisig and John C. Maraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), p. 22, in Victoria, Zen War Stories, ch. 3, p. 33)

(3) Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p. 84, in Victoria, Zen War Stories, ch. 3, p. 37

(4) Quoted in Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (London: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 48, in Victoria, Zen War Stories, ch. 1, p. 12

(5) Quoted in Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (London: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 176, in Victoria, Zen War Stories, ch. 1, p. 13)

(6) Stephen Jenkins, Making Merit Through Warfare and Torture According to the Arya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upayavisaya-vikurvana-nirdesa Sutra)

(7) Ibid

(8) Bodhidharma, Wake up Sermon, trans. Red Pine

(9) Ibid

(10) Quoted by Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Juergenmeyer, Buddhist Warfare, n. 144 for Paul Demieville’s essay, Buddhism and War

(11) Ibid

(12) Ibid

(13) Peter Li, Japanese War Crimes, ch. 17, p. 297, ellipses mine

(14) (Bohidharma, Wake-up Sermon, p. 37, trans. Red Pine, brackets mine

(15) See Victoria, Zen at War, intro, p. x

(15a) Shaku, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, quoted by Victoria, Zen At War, ch. 2, p. 28)

(16) Nakajima Genjo, as quoted by Victoria, Zen War Stories, ch. 1, p. 9, ellipses mine

(17) As quoted in Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, p. 168, in Victoria, Zen At War, ch. 2, p. 16

(18) See Victoria, Zen At War, ch. 2, p. 16

(19) Quoted in the 11 March 1889 issue of Daido Shimpo (No. 1), in Victoria, Zen At War, ch. 2, p. 18

(20) Inoue Enryo, Chuko Katsu Ron, p. 71, in Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 2, p. 19)

(21) See Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, p. 231, in Victory, Zen at War, ch. 2, pp. 19-20

(22) Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 2, p. 25

(23) Shaku, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, p. 203, in Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 2, p. 27

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