Sutra and Bible: an Interview with Duncan Ryūken Williams

Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration is an exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, CA, co-curated with Emily Anderson. In this interview between Dana Takagi and Duncan Ryūken Williams the important history of the role of faith in the Japanese internment camps is explored, as well as the context for this exhibition within the body of his own work. It is important to note that his work is shaped by his roles as both a Japanese born Soto Zen priest and as an academic scholar in an American context. The flavor of this is quite strong in the material he presents in this interview, and together with Japanese American Soto Zen priest and academic scholar Dana Takagi the conversation is lively and warm with interest, concern, and the mobilizing of heart. As a way to illustrate the diligence in purposeful and compassionate mind, here is the poem that serves to introduce an earlier book by Duncan Ryūken Williams, American Sutra:

Parting

Thus have I heard:
The army ordered
All Japanese faces to be evacuated
From the city of Los Angeles.
This homeless monk has nothing but a Japanese face.
He stayed here thirteen springs
Meditating with all faces
From all parts of the world,
And studied the teaching of Buddha with them.
Wherever he goes, he may form other groups
Inviting friends of all faces
Beckoning them with the empty hands of Zen.

-Nyogen Senzaki, May 7, 1942

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You can read more about Duncan Ryūken Williams here. The poem by Nyogen Senzaki is found on page 1 of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, Harvard University Press, c,. 2019. Images from the exhibition that are shown in the video interview are:
1. Heart Mountain sutra stones, Japanese American National Museum, Gift of Leslie and Nora Bovee, 94.158.1
2. End pages of the first Kitaji Bible, completed by Captain Masuo Kitaji at Poston concentration camp, 1944, Courtesy of Kitaji Family/Hoover Institution Library & Archives