Today the Soto Zen monk Dogen Kigen enjoys such instant name recognition as a pivotal Japanese Buddhist philosopher that it's hard to imagine there was a time when his importance in those terms was not taken for granted. However, this high profile is a modern innovation traceable to the readably philosophical essay "Shamon Dogen" published by Watsuji Tetsuro in 1926, a groundbreaking study that forcibly extracted the figure of Dogen from sectarian hagiography while recasting him as an exemplar of national cultural development. As the seminal source of the Dogen we all know and love, then, Watsuji's work has been long overdue for the attention it gets in this translation and commentary.
The translation is solid and reliable, effectively capturing Watsuji's deceptively approachable prose style. Indeed, in some ways "Shamon Dogen" suffers from its own success in this regard--the portrait of Dogen it paints has so pervasively influenced us that the text seems unremarkably commonplace rather than radical. Only the preface reminds us that Watsuji was really stepping out on a limb, and it still serves as a powerfully eloquent articulation and justification for the deep significance of studying religions without necessarily being religious oneself per se.
Nevertheless, with the situation such as it is, most of the heavy lifting in appropriately contextualizing this essay is going to fall on the introduction and commentary provided by the translator, and here "Purifying Zen" (as the title forebodes) drops the ball somewhat. The commentary after the translation detailing the place of this essay in Watsuji's own philosophical trajectory is thoughtful enough, but the introduction beforehand is marred by several glaring lapses. The ineluctable force of Watsuji's rhetoric coupled with the translator's evident reverence lead him to take Watsuji's characterizations of institutional Buddhism as corrupt and degraded at face value--to be matters of fact rather than matters of narrative strategy. At one point the derogatory language is actually jarring and unworthy of scholarly discourse: referring to Kamakura Buddhism as "something of a mongrel" and "mishmash" hardly does justice to the fascinating complexity of Japanese religious life during this time, and plenty enough sound work in this field is available that such careless ignorance is simply inexcusable. In a similar vein, the real-world necessity for Buddhist temples to secure funding in the socioeconomic environment of the day is apparently an instant sign of decay and inauthenticity, surely a strange claim for an academic who doubtlessly has had to apply for research grants to make or agree with. Basically, it's one thing to accurately report that Watsuji accuses the Soto Zen establishment of figuratively "murdering" Dogen, quite another to close the case guilty as charged merely on his testimony.
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