Dear all,

It’s snowing in Tokyo today, which makes this the perfect time to sit still for a second, something I could not manage during zazen this morning. I’m writing from a Zen temple in Shinagawa, a large suburb, where I arrived yesterday, marking the start of a two week stay. My room is in a back corner of the guest house which used to host the gaikokujin who came regularly for retreats and sesshin. Since the onset of the pandemic, the temple’s schedule is paused for all but two lay practitioners, who sit every morning, excepting national holidays. As luck would have it, tomorrow and Sunday are both holidays, meaning instead of a 4:30am wake up, we start at 6am, dusting, sweeping, and mopping the meditation hall.

After a week in Japan, the need to write things down is almost a burden, but I’m coming up short. I also know that a revelation, something prescient to say, will not spawn without consistent reflection (i.e. it won’t spawn at all). I should say that I’m not on a meditation retreat, or at least not by my own design. I’m working for room and board, a traditional Japanese breakfast in the morning. The buildings are nearly freezing, the floors either tatami or gleaming hardwood, and there are shoes in every corner, all serving a different purpose. For my own movements, I have no less than five pairs of slippers: for being in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in my own room, outside, and upstairs, in the main altar room. While cleaning, I wear only socks, and during zazen I go barefoot. There are only two rooms with heat, the kitchen and this bedroom, where I slept very comfortably last night on futon. The other bedroom on this floor, which my host calls the best room, is occupied by another tenant: the abbot’s pet rabbit. One of my chores is to feed Haru-chan a slice of apple, lovingly peeled and sliced by the abbot’s wife, twice a day. I’m very grateful for a return to routine.

For the afternoons, I have some appointments and hope to make more. This first stage of my Ted Wang internship focuses on “International Zen” in Tokyo. Part of what drew me to this temple was the abbot’s role in bringing Zen to Italy. (There, he also developed his passion for pizza making.) Around Tokyo, temples offer English-language “meditation experiences” for tourists, and I want to know more about the market. While I hoped to continue on at a temple in Nagasaki, the site of “part two” of my research, I will settle for a student hostel. There my focus will shift to Japanese Christianity, and I plan to take a self-guided audio tour of Shusaku Endo’s Silence, visit the site of the martyrdom of 26 16th-century Catholics, and see Takashi Nagai’s former residence. Finally, I’ll take the shinkansen to Kagawa prefecture to visit Kappa dojo, which functions as both a monastery and a rehabilitation and professional development program for youth. I’m humbled by the hospitality extended to me so far.

This project is advised by Prof. Drott at Sophia University, and I’d like to thank both him and the Ted Wang Committee for their generous support. I will continue to write things down, in hopes that observations from the individual days of the next several months may amount to something. And I will follow up with interviews of individuals who are teaching, studying, and living a comparative religious approach here in Japan, including, I hope, a conversation with Deguchi-sensei. Until then, お元気で.