Most Western people first came to know Zen in particular and Buddhism in general
through Daisetsu T.Suzuki’s writings in English. Though he held with Erich Fromm
a symposium on psychoanalysis and Zen in 1957, he, mainly leaning upon the Prajna
thought, mystified Zen in a sense and made it something beyond Western psychology.
Zen was later introduced to the West also through translated writings by Japanese
Zen masters like Zenkei Shibayama (1974) as well as by Japanese religious
philosophers of the Kyoto School such as Keiji Nishitani (1980). They all emphasized
on the whole a less psychological than religious character of Zen. In this respect we
must not overlook what King critically remarks in his foreword to Nishitani’s book:
‘Yet this relationship [between Buddhism and psychoanalysis] or lack of it is of some
consequence because part of the...interest in Zen has been attributed to the strength
of the psychological-psychiatric “tradition” in America’ (quoted in Molino 1998:xii).
In this chapter I would like to present studies by a number of Japanese Buddhist
psychologists who were antecedent to or contemporary with Suzuki but have been
much less known in the West than he. I taught psychology for many years at Toyo
University, a key agency in the development of Buddhist psychology in Japan.
Western psychologists today who are pursuing the integration of Western psychology
and Buddhism will find in them both pioneering works possibly relevant to the trend
in psychology today and works specifically relevant to the Japanese development of
Buddhist psychology so far. I hope my historical presentations will fill a gap between
the West and Japan in the understanding of Buddhism.
Stances of early modern Japanese psychologistsIn the Meiji Reformation (1868), early modern Japan, not long after the opening to
the West in the middle of the nineteenth century, adopted for its survival in the
rapidly changing world, seemingly opposing stances toward its own cultural tradition
and modern Western civilization. In order to strengthen and modernize the country
so as not to be colonized by the West, on the one hand, it had to absorb Western
science and technology as much and as soon as possible. In order to maintain and
reinforce its national identity, facing the threat of being assimilated to the Western
civilization, on the other, it had to defend and assert its cultural traditions distinct
from the latter. The result was the combination of Western science and technology
with Japanese mind.
This seems to be also true of the development of psychology in Japan. During the
initial phase Western books in psychology, mostly academic and professional
psychology, were translated into Japanese. In one of these translations Amane Nishi
coined shin-rigaku, the knowledge of principles governing mental phenomena, as a
Japanese word for ‘psychology,’ and it was to be used thereafter. Then, Yujiro Motora
(1858–1912) and Matataro Matsumoto (1865–1943) imported Western
experimental psychology to Japan by studying respectively with Stanley Hall (1844–
1924) in America and Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) in Germany. As early as in
1903 Motora established, in collaboration with Matsumoto, the first psychological
laboratory in Japan. So they were the founders of Japanese scientific psychology.
236 THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY IN MODERN JAPAN