Shaku Sōen and Rinzai Buddhism in Modern Japan

With clarity and precision, Aihua Zheng chronicles the activities of Shaku Sōen, a conservative reformer and modernizer who helped introduce an understanding of Japanese Buddhism to the world. This book will take its proper place as an important contribution to the study of the modernization of Buddhism and the global impact felt and exerted by Rinzai Zen. – Steven Heine, author of Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher
A deeply engaging, insightful, and richly detailed account of a prominent Zen master who envisioned nothing less than a national and global Zen movement. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the aspirations, transformations, and global horizons of modern Buddhism. – Hwansoo Ilmee Kim, author of Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912
Aihua Zheng’s book fills key gaps in our understanding of how Shaku Sōen navigated Japan’s early twentieth-century challenges. With meticulous historical detail, Zheng reveals new dimensions of his travels abroad and encounters, suggesting they shaped Buddhism’s international outreach to this day. This must-read complicates our understanding of Japan’s early globalization. – Michel Mohr, author of Buddhism, Unitarianism, and the Meiji Competition for Universality
Connecting sweeping institutional transformations to the daily lives of Rinzai monks in Japan and Theravāda communities across Sri Lanka and Thailand, this groundbreaking book reveals how Buddhists engaged sociopolitical forces to navigate modernity. Sketching Shaku Sōen’s influence on Sōtō Zen, Zheng demonstrates the pivotal roles of his disciples in institutionalizing monastic reforms in Japan and building a transnational Zen and Buddhist movement through the twentieth century. – Joseph Walser, author of Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism: Emptiness, Power and the Question of Origin

Aihua Zheng is an interdisciplinary historian of modern Japanese religion and Buddhism. She is currently affiliated with the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith.

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