Since the publication of Carol Gluck's Japan's Modern Myths in 1985, much has been written by Japan scholars from various fields on the issue of “invented tradition.” They argue that many arts and beliefs assumed to be quintessentially and timelessly Japanese—for example, sumo, mingei pottery, and an inherent appreciation of harmony—were in fact developed or “discovered” during the Meiji era or later, and used to solidify the modern construction of the Japanese nation as unified and unique. Shoji Yamada offers a study along similar lines, but with a fascinating new wrinkle: in these cases, traditions are refined overseas before they are passed back to a receptive Japanese public. His focus is how Westerners (especially Germans and Americans) came to create a particular version of Zen Buddhism with the assumption that it underlay all Japanese arts. He then demonstrates how Japanese intellectuals proved eager to reimport these new interpretations of their own culture. Yamada compares the process to a “magic mirror” that distorts the viewer's image like those found in funhouses but, unlike the funhouse mirror, alters it in such a way that it actually appears more flattering than an actual reflection.
The first half of the book addresses Eugen Herrigel's 1948 autobiographical work Zen in the Art of Archery, in which the German author, while visiting Japan, uses his archery lessons with kyudō archery master Awa Kenzo to uncover the secrets of Zen mysticism. Translated into English in 1953 (and into Japanese two years later), the work initially became extremely popular among American and European adherents of the late 1950s “Zen Boom,” which was later taken up by followers of the New Age movement, and most recently influenced a bevy of self-help authors who chose to play off its title. As a kyudō adept who admits to not fully understanding Zen, Yamada is quick to point out the many inaccuracies that pervade Herrigel's book as a guide to archery. Most significantly, he divulges that Awa's peers considered him to be outside the mainstream of the sport. Moreover, not even he ever taught using the phrase “it shoots,” the doctrine of spontaneous action that forms the basis for Herrigel's spiritual philosophy. Yamada offers several possible explanations for why this discrepancy may have occurred—misunderstandings in translation, Herrigel's personal preoccupation with mysticism—but argues that ultimately it is not the “realness” or falsity of the story that matters. Instead, it is the power that Herrigel's myth ultimately took on in the West, and the appeal that it held, in turn, for the Japanese intelligentsia.
The second half of the book examines the rock garden at Ryoanji temple in Kyoto, now prized in both the West and Japan as the pinnacle of Zen spirituality, expressed in the form of a dry riverbed garden. But after examining numerous historical guidebooks, textbooks, local histories, and treatises on gardening, Yamada discovers that there was little association made between Zen and the garden in Japan prior to World War II. In fact, up until that point, the garden was most commonly described in the more prosaic terms of a mother tiger crossing a stream with her cubs, and the notion of its perfectly balanced transcendent “beauty” was not universally accepted, but instead the subject of fierce debate. Once again, he is at a loss to discover precisely how the myth began. However, he does explain that it was spread through the United States by Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi and British American Zen promoter Alan Watts. He further suspects that their original influence was D. T. Suzuki, a prolific Zen scholar who achieved widespread popularity in the West, and had long promoted the idea that Zen provided the cornerstone for all Japanese culture.
To illustrate the process by which Japanese scholars have reimported the particular mythical view of Zen found in both Herrigel's book and Ryoanji, Yamada points to other Western interpretations they decided to reject. These include Harvard Japanologist R. B. Acker's far more technical, straightforward, and realistic guidebook to kyudō published in 1937, as well as Hungarian-born journalist Arthur Koestler's critiques of Zen, published during the height of its international boom. He further shows how kyudō is no longer considered a sport on par with Western archery in Japan, as it was in the mid-twentieth century, but has been reinterpreted as a far more spiritual art form. He argues that this shift was ultimately attributable to the influence of Herrigel's ideas. He concludes that Japanese felt compelled to accept such images of their nation at a time when they were beaten down by defeat in World War II. The temptation to accept any form of praise from the West proved too great, even if it was, as Yamada claims, a “cramped and stifling … stereotype” (p. 242) of their own culture.
Despite his background in engineering and informatics, Yamada succeeds in crafting his book in such a way that it rarely gets bogged down by his meticulous attention to detail and evidence. Instead, he manages to maintain an engaging tone, often bringing his subjects to life through vivid anecdotes. There are some points, however, when this tone can become more strident, especially toward the targets of his critique. In his chapter that attempts to debunk Herrigel's “spiritual” side by uncovering his association with the Nazi party, readers may start to wonder whether the author has a personal ax to grind. The book also commits a minor error in referring to renowned Columbia classics professor Gilbert Highet repeatedly as “Hyatt” (although this may have been an issue of katakana translation). Despite such stylistic shortcomings, Yamada succeeds in offering a highly valuable contribution both to the understanding of Japan's self-image as a nation, and the processes of international exchange. By transcending the dichotomy of real and fake, lost and found in translation, he deftly illustrates how modern myths can transform and circulate around the world and back again.
