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石川力山 Ishikawa Rikizan (1943-1997)

 

PDF: The Social Response of Buddhists to the Modernization of Japan: The Contrasting Lives of Two Sōtō Zen Monks
by Ishikawa Rikizan

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 1998 25/1-2, pp. 87–115.

[Takeda Hanshi 武田範之 (1864-1911) and Uchiyama Gudō 内山愚童 (1874-1911)]

 

PDF: Transmission of Kirigami (Secret Initiation Documents): A Sōtō Practice in Medieval Japan
by Ishikawa Rikizan
In: The Koan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism (New York, 2000), Chapter 9

 

PDF: “Colloquial Transcriptions as Sources for Understanding Zen in Japan,”
by Ishikawa Rikizan
tr. by William M. Bodiford
The Eastern Buddhist,
Vol. 34, No. 1, 2002

 

IN MEMORIAM ISHIKAWA RIKIZAN (1943-1997)
by Richard Jaffe, North Carolina State University

(PDF)

It is with great sadness that we report that on 4 August
1997,Professor Ishikawa Rikizan, a tireless researcher,
teacher, and social activist, died suddenly of acute heart failure
at the Tokyo Number Two National Hospital. Born 4
November 1943,in Nakaniida Village in the Kami District of
Miyagi Prefecture, Professor Ishikawa was ordained as a Sōtō
cleric by Sugawara Kan’ichi at the temple Gosei-ji in 1962.
That same year, immediately after graduating from high
school, Professor Ishikawa entered Eihei-ji for two years of
monastic training. After leaving Eihei-ji he spent an additional
year training under the renowned Sōtō master
Hashimoto Ekō at Hōkyō-ji. Following this period of monastic
practice, Professor Ishikawa entered Komazawa
University, where he completed his B.A., M.A., and all the
course work for a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies. (The Japanese
academic custom usually allows only well-established scholars
to receive the Ph.D. degree—Professor Ishikawa was putting
the final touches on his dissertation at the time of his
death.) He became a research assistant at Komazawa
University in 1976,the year he received Dharma Transmission
from Sugawara Kan’ichi. In 1981 he began his teaching
career at Komazawa University, where he became Professor
in 1991.
Professor Ishikawa was a prolific scholar with a wide
range of interests and skills. Over the course of his academic
career he wrote, coauthored, and edited several books and
over two hundred articles in fields as varied as classical
Chinese, Dogen studies, medieval Chinese Zen, medieval
Sōtō Zen, Buddhism and human rights, and the history of
nuns and convents in Japan. Professor Ishikawa was also the
coeditor for important scholarly publications, including the
Eihei-ji shi, the Sōtōshū sensho, and the Nihon Bukkyō jinmei
jiten
. In addition to his writing and editing work, Professor
Ishikawa was deeply involved in the recovery and preservation
of primary source materials related to Buddhism. He
participated in, and led, many research trips throughout
Japan to survey the huge quantities of unclassified documents
housed in temples and archives, so that scholars in the future
could have greater access to documents that have gone
largely unexamined.
At the heart of Professor Ishikawa's scholarly work published
throughout a decade in numerous short articles was a
comprehensive, pioneering study of medieval Sōtō secret
initiation documents (kirigami). Collecting, classifying, and
interpreting these and other Zen colloquial sources,
Professor Ishikawa produced a multifaceted account of the
practical realities of medieval Sōtō Zen practice and the
spread of Sōtō institutions into rural Japanese society. In his
work Professor Ishikawa detailed the dissemination of funeral
rites, memorial services, and clerical ordinations in rural
life, as well as the synergistic enrichment of these Zen rituals
and practices with elements derived from such folk and
shamanistic traditions as Shugendō and Onmyōdō. Of particular
concern for Professor Ishikawa was the infiltration of
Buddhism into the practical realities of medieval life, especially
the important role Buddhist doctrines and practices
played in the consolidation of medieval notions of social status.
This essential research will become more readily available
later this year when a synthesis of these articles on
medieval Zen will be published by Hōzōkan as Zenshū shōden
shiryō no kenkyū
[Studies of Zen Transmission Documents].
Just as Professor Ishikawa’s pioneering work on kirigami
served as a springboard for research into such diverse topics
as clerical marriage, Shugendō, abortion, and discrimination
against various minority groups, his studies became the
platform for his own concrete social activism. During his
tenure at Komazawa University, he regularly gave a course
on Buddhism and discrimination against women, people
with disabilities, and burakumin. Professor Ishikawa also lectured
to groups throughout Japan on Buddhism and social
issues, especially concerning Buddhism and the social status
of women and burakumin. In addition, he worked actively to
ameliorate the centuries-old legacy of discrimination within
Buddhist institutions, devoting his profuse energy and talent
to helping to establish the Sōtō Zen denomination's
Central Bureau for the Protection and Promotion of
Human Rights [Jinken Yōgo Suishin Honbu].
Through his academic studies of Japanese Buddhism in
the post-Restoration era—an example of which is contained
in this journal—Professor Ishikawa came to see the role that
Japanese Buddhists, including those of his own Sōtō denomination,
had played in supporting Japan’s colonial expansion
in Asia from the late-nineteenth century until the end
of the Asia-Pacific War in 1945. As a result, he encouraged
his fellow clerics to acknowledge their denomination’s
active participation in the Japanese imperialist policy.
Professor Ishikawa was particularly active, along with other
members of the Central Bureau for the Protection and
Promotion of Human Rights,in the effort to restore the
honor of Uchiyama Gudō, a Sōtō cleric who was executed
because of his antigovernment activities. Professor
Ishikawa’s effort came to fruition in July 1993,when
Uchiyama was posthumously reinstated as a cleric by the
Sōtō denomination.

Professor Isnikawa was impressive not only for the
breadth of his scholarly activities, but also for his generosity
and kindness. Although extraordinarily busy, Professor
Ishikawa happily served as a mentor to a variety of graduate
students and researchers. A patient but demanding teacher,
Professor Ishikawa shared his vast knowledge with all who
were sincerely interested in the study of Buddhism, male or
female, Japanese or non-Japanese, whatever the level of
their competence. While at Eihei-ji, Professor Ishikawa had
worked in the monastery kitchen, where he acquired a facility
with a chefs knife that proved useful at the many gatherings
he hosted for his students and colleagues. He had the
ability to nourish people on many levels through his teaching,
scholarship, and friendship. Professor Ishikawa was a
shining example of the Joyful Mind, Magnanimous Mind,
and Great Mind about which he wrote in his commentaries
on Dōgen's Instructions for the Chief Cook (Tenzo kyōkun).
He will be sorely missed.