Brian Daizen Victoria is an ordained Zen priest, and his Zen at War seems to have been written for an audience of Zen enthusiasts and practitioners. It is not primarily a scholarly work. Nonetheless, Victoria's extensive research—along with translations of lengthy quotations—substantially adds to our knowledge of the relationship between Buddhism and Japanese nationalism and imperialism. Though Victoria covers some of the same ground as Robert Sharf, James Ketelaar, and Richard Jaffe, his main contribution is to explain how, prior to 1945, modern Japanese used Zen thought and Buddhism more generally in the preparation for and prosecution of war.
Victoria's book is pedagogically suitable for courses on modern Buddhism, but it should be assigned alongside the works of noted scholars of prewar Japan Buddhism, such as those just cited. Otherwise, teachers risk giving the impression that Zen was disproportionately responsible for Japan's imperialist violence, obscuring the fact that in the...
