The importance of examining the role of the Ōbaku school and its prominent monks in the story of Edo Buddhism cannot be overstated. Buddhism during the Edo period, and in particular the Zen school, faced a new challenge and stimulus with the rise of the Ōbaku school and its Ming Buddhist models. The reaction to the new infusion of Continental culture was to leave an indelible print on the face of Japanese Zen. This story, a glaring scholarly lacuna, had been largely overlooked in the West until the publication of Helen Baroni's important book, Obaku Zen: The Emergence of the Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000). The work under review, Iron Eyes: The Life and Teachings of Ōbaku Zen Master Tetsugen Dōkō, is another welcome addition by Baroni to the growing corpus of Ōbaku scholarship.

Broadly, the book comprises two main sections. The first, “Historical Biography and Analysis,” is divided into four chapters: “The Life of Tetsugen,” “Carving the Scriptures,” “The Teachings of Tetsugen,” and “The Myth of Tetsugen.” Together, these four chapters provide an effective portrait of Tetsugen both as a human being and as a Zen master. Among the chapters, “The Teachings of Tetsugen” is especially rigorous, as it details Tetsugen's religious thought and practice, particularly focusing on his views of scripture, precepts, analysis of mind, and the True Pure Land school. Baroni discusses the text Kōmori bōdanki, which, although perhaps spuriously attributed to Tetsugen, nonetheless highlights Ōbaku's polemical stance toward the True Pure Land school's practice and teachings regarding Buddhist precepts.

The attention given to Tetsugen's background and connection to True Pure Land Buddhism—the school of Buddhism in which he received his early education and training—is one of the highlights of the book. Tetsugen became a priest in the True Pure Land school, although the lax attitude toward precepts would eventually move him to seek out the more precept-minded Ōbaku monks. The connection between the Japanese True Pure Land and the Ōbaku school is a topic that remains to be explored in greater depth, and this book lays valuable groundwork. It was the charge of practicing an adulterated form of Zen “contaminated” by Pure Land elements that was to plague the Ōbaku school in the eyes of certain segments of the early Edo Zen world. While the Ōbaku school was steeped in the culture of Ming Buddhism, which un-self-consciously included what Japanese monks would see as “Pure Land elements” within its practice, it was certainly no less “Zen” than what was being practiced in contemporaneous Japanese Zen temples.

If what may be considered “Zen” is supposed to include a rigorous meditation curriculum, the use of koan, and adherence to the precepts, then the Ōbaku school would have stood above reproach. Even so, perhaps because of the nenbutsu practice, which superficially appealed to the True Pure Land monks, a number of monks from this school gravitated toward Ōbaku. Even in the Meiji period, one sees prominent Ōbaku figures who had started their careers as monks of the True Pure Land school. Baroni demonstrates that the discourse between the True Pure Land and Ōbaku school not only centered around the practice of the nenbutsu but also focused on the issue of precepts, as this is what attracted Tetsugen toward the Ōbaku school in the first place.

The second section of the book—the longer one by far—consists of a series of translations divided into four parts: “Teaching Texts,” “Texts Related to the Buddhist Scripture Project,” “Poetry,” and “Other Letters and Historical Documents.” These translations offer a first glimpse for Western scholarship into the actual record of the teachings and activities of this remarkable monk. The appendix includes three biographies of Tetsugen: “The Deeds of Master Tetsugen, Founder of Zuiryūji Temple” (1714); “The Monk Tetsugen,” Biographies of Unusual People of the Early Modern Period (1790); and “Tetsugen's Edition of the Complete Buddhist Scriptures,” The Elementary School Japanese Reader (1918), published by the Japanese Ministry of Education. All of the translations are vivid and very readable, which is not an easy task, as my own familiarity with the Ōbaku school's primary materials has shown me. One of the highlights of this book is the attention devoted to the translation of source material, something not always found in monographs that treat a particular figure. While theory-based analysis certainly has merit, lest we forget what is being analyzed, translation of the primary source material—the actual words of the figure in question—is the most fundamental, and perhaps the most important, element in publications in this field of scholarship.

The sections translated here paint a balanced portrait of Tetsugen, while at the same time leaving the reader with a clear understanding of his Buddhist practice and teachings. If pressed to identify any shortcomings of this work, the only thing that readily comes to mind is the absence of kanji—which may have been at the behest of the publisher rather than the author's preference. On the whole, what the book brings to the field of Ōbaku studies and Edo-period Buddhism greatly outweighs what it leaves out.