Miyoshinji must be a sub-sodo of Miyoshinji, and he would like to go to America. He talks about going there to teach. I think he's rather given to drooling from the mouth, as a matter of fact, that's my opinion of him, although the first time I ever met him, I had an entirely different experience with him. After I came back after the war, this is rather amusing, Professor Kimura, who is the wheel horse out at Hanazono, telephoned and asked if he could bring Mumon Roshi to call on me, and they arrived, and I'm devoted to Professor Kimura, one of the nicest men that ever lived.

[01:06]

And they came in, and after they go Aisatsu, they sat down there, and for 30 minutes Mumon sat in absolute and complete and utter quietude. He never opened his mouth at all, he just sat like this, and at the end of 30 minutes, Professor Kimura, having gone through all that he and I had to talk about, then said goodbye, and Mumon came too, and said goodbye, and off he went. Not one word after the original go Aisatsu did he address to me. Now unfortunately that gave me the, I had the feeling when he was doing that, that this was nothing but a demonstration, he had no, nothing else but, and so I never had, never had any sense of relationship with him at all.

[02:11]

He's asked me to come, he's met me on the street, which I thought was very bad manners, and in Ryoan-ji I'd be coming down from Goto Roshi's, I'd met him a couple of times, and he'd asked me, oh please come to my Teisho, please come to my Teisho, why do you never come to my Teisho? To my Teisho? Yeah. Oh. Which was, when he knew that I was coming from Sanzen in the early morning, he'd be coming, going someplace, we'd meet about the railroad track, you know, he'd be coming over from Ryoan-ji and I'd be coming down from Ryoan-ji, he knew where I was and what I'd been doing, and then he'd stop and we'd chatter for a little bit, because he's very chatty, the very opposite of what he was demonstrating to me that day. I think he's, so then he would say, you never come to my Teisho, please come to my Teisho, I have so-and-so and so-and-so, please come to my Teisho. And I understand from what I have heard and what people have told me around here, that

[03:17]

he's, his invitations are just handed out hit and miss to anybody, and that anybody who will go, any foreigner who will go and live in Shofuku-ji can live there for free. He will, they can have everything, and he's very eager to have foreigners, and the discipline given foreigners there is very haphazard and hit and miss, and they're allowed to get up during the Zazen period and to go out and to move around, and they're not subject to the same discipline as the monks are, and they, that's, there's a young man from San Francisco who's down there now, and you can ask Irmagard about that, because Carly told her what a problem he is in sitting, because he can't sit in the Zendo, and how disturbing

[04:24]

he is with his getting up. And about two years ago, there was a German woman of some 60, whom I think Mumon had met in the course of going around the world or something, invited her, anyway, she was living down in Shofuku-ji, and she was there for about six months, and they allowed her to do the same thing, to get up and down off the Tan during Zazen periods and so forth. I don't think that there's a very tight hand on anything down at Shofuku-ji, and I don't think there has been for a very, very long time, it doesn't have the reputation of having a very tight hand. Now, then you have the men at, of course Morimoto Roshi you know, you probably know better than I do, really. The, there, you know the Roshi at Ibuka, at, at, what is it, Sogen-ji?

[05:29]

Kajiura. Oh, that's the Roshi where Glenn Grosjean's at. That's right. I know very little about him. His name is Kajiura. Kajiura Roshi, yes. That's the name of that, Sogen-ji, isn't it? Sogen-ji at Ibuka, outside of, in the mountains outside of Gifu. Right. Well, he has, he's a very ambitious man, and I think that he's, as he gets older, he's, he's about 72 by now, I mean about, also about 70. And he's not quite so exuberant as he used to be. He looks like an Italian. He's short and at one period he was quite stout and had quite a double chin and large, very large black eyes. And he was very eager to be Kancho of Miyoshi-ji and been mixed up in some various political

[06:31]

things. He comes from a middle class, perhaps even upper middle class Japanese family, and has had an excellent education and his social connections are excellent. And he has, all his, since he's been a Roshi, he has been in charge of Sogen-ji, he has made a great deal of, of these social connections, and he moves around and apparently is able to raise quite a good deal of money among the upper class people in Tokyo and so forth with whom he's on excellent terms. Some members of the Fujiwara family, Konoe family, and people of that sort that he has among his personal followers. He's not a very, I think, I think he's rather a volatile person.

[07:35]

He's always wanted, he wanted originally to go to America, and he was, I have to go back a tiny bit. You remember I told you, I spoke the other night about the, about a man who was the Osho-san, Aon Osho, had been a disciple of Sokatsu and was the priest of a temple in Chiba, let me see what was it now, and who had helped Soke-yan become a Daitoku-ji priest. You said he had a friend, yeah. Yeah, Aon Osho was his name, he's dead now. But, the priest of Manman-ji. Manman-ji. Now, because he had been Soke-yan's sponsor at the time he became a Daitoku-ji priest,

[08:38]

on Soke-yan's death, he decided, or somebody decided for him, that he alone could appoint the next Roshi for the institute in America. And when I came over in 1948, he met me and informed me that he was the only one who could appoint a Roshi, and he had appointed a Roshi. And he immediately took me to Sogen-ji and introduced me to the Sogen-ji to Kajiura. Yes ma'am, Kajiura. And Kajiura was all, practically had his bags packed to go to America. His idea was that he would spend part of the year in America, and the rest of the time he would spend in Sogen-ji, which is a great temple, and great Sodo. At that time there were 60 monks there, and that he had buildings, he showed all the buildings

[09:49]

that he was going to make into the foreigners' living quarters in Zendo. He had it completely planned out. And I, in the first place, Aono Osho, I would not permit to decide who the next Roshi was to be. And my own view was that Kajiura was, thought he, it was a very rich arrangement that he could travel back and forth every year and there would be plenty to build up to this rather famous place for himself in connection with Sogen-ji in this position. And so then the morning, the following morning at breakfast, or after breakfast when we were waiting for the car to come, he said, well, to me, and Aono Osho was there, and my interpreter,

[10:56]

and I expect to come to America very shortly, and I replied, well, Roshi, do come and call on me when you come. And he was smart enough to get what I meant by that. Nevertheless, then after that, he began to work on Goto Roshi, and he did everything that he could to break me down and to... Aono Osho did. Aono Kajiura. And finally, Goto Roshi, after discussing the matter with me at some length, told him that it was futile and to lay off. So we were not, when we would meet, because I used to go occasionally to services of one

[12:06]

kind and another, sometimes at Miyoshi-ji, and I'd meet him, and we weren't at such awfully good terms. But, oh, for the last ten years now, we've become very good friends. What was your actual objection to Kajiura Roshi? Well, the first objection was that I didn't want any Roshi who was going back and forth and expected... Trying to maintain... Both things, exactly what, and he wanted to go back and forth every year. I mean, stay so many months in America and so many months here, and he had this great big temple here with 60 monks. He couldn't possibly undertake the kind of life that, in those days in America, that was right after the war, and the Institute had little or nothing, and to a man of such obviously extravagant habits as Kajiura was, because in seeing the way his, well, the way

[13:13]

the temple, the guest rooms of the temple were fixed up, and he's an extravagant man, and then it was largely his personality. I don't suppose you... He just took too much for granted. Well, and physical personality, too. When you were in Burma, did you go to Burma? No. You didn't. Well, then you didn't meet a monk, a Burmese monk whose name was Lokanata? No. You never met him when he was in America? No. Is he real Burmese? No. A German or something? No. He is an American. Oh. And his brother is a monsignor in Brooklyn, and he's a kind of a scapegoat of one kind or another, and he ended up as a monk in Burma, and at one point about, well, I don't know,

[14:16]

not too long after Sogheon died, they either sent him, the Burmese people did, or let him come to America on a Buddhist pilgrimage and preaching trip. Well, Kajura Roshi, he could have been brothers. I tell you, he was a squat Italian with a big belly and a double chin, big black eyes, swarthy, and that is what Kajura Roshi was. I say he slimmed down these last years, but that's what he looked like, a fat, greasy Catholic priest, Italian Catholic priest, not American. Well, that man had to leave America under, well, he was pushed out because of his actions. And he's still flourishing in Burma, the last I heard. But Kajura later, because his things weren't going very well at the temple, he had a big

[15:27]

ruckus with his monks. Morimoto was there for a long time. Was that where Morimoto was? That's where he was. He was under Kajura? Yes. And, you know, he got one Inca, was supposed to have gotten one Inca from the old Roshi at Shokokuchi, and then he went from there to Ibuka. And he was there a long time at Ibuka. And he is said to have gotten a second Inca, or, well, no, he didn't get the second Inca. He was about to get it when this happened. And this was right after I was there in 48, 49. I tell you, he had 60 monks. And the place is huge. You should go. 60 monks? 60 monks after the war. You should, you must go and see Shokenji. That's where Asagi's interest was about, too. Is that so? Was it Shokenji? Well, you should go to Shokenji. It was the one, it's the temple founded by Kanzan, or not founded by Kanzan.

[16:33]

It was erected in the memory of Kanzan. But Kanzan, the founder of Miyoshinji, did all of his after-satori practice in that district there. And back of the monastery is a rock on which his meditation seat, a cliff rock. And they have a full, larger-than-life statue of him there, wooden, beautiful statue. Beautiful face. Looks like almost a Gothic statue. And they have a special room for it. And in the days when they had 60 monks, they had one monk who was this statue's onji. And he washed his face and hands every morning, and he brought him his breakfast. And he washed his face at noon, he chanted his sutras for him, and he put him to bed at night.

[17:36]

Well, he couldn't put him to bed, but because he sits up in a chair like this, a magnificent figure. And it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of woodcarving, and it's well worth seeing. But that is what one monk did, was to do nothing but be a tenant. That was one of the jobs at Shokenji. Well, he, Kajiura, had the idea that it would be that they must make some money. And Shokenji is in the mountains, and on the side of a mountain. And it is in the pine woods. And he conceived the idea that they should go into the business of raising shitake. Do you know how they raise shitake? They raise them on rotten logs. That's it. So they have to, so he had all the monks out cutting trees down and digging, digging trenches.

[18:40]

And then they had to lay these logs partway down in the trench, you know, till they got good and wet and rotten. And then the bark is impregnated with this mushroom spawn, and that's the way they grow. That's how they start. Yeah, that's how they start. And some farmers apparently in the district had been fairly successful with this. And he spent so much, had the monks spending so much time and energy on the shitake business that that brought a kind of a revolt. And a whole bunch of them left, including Morimoto. And he left before he, so the story goes, before he got, Kajiura gave him his income. It was quite a ruckus. And the first crop of shitake, which they had all hoped to make a little money for the temple out of,

[19:46]

was all picked and shipped to Kajiura's swanky friends in Tokyo, which made them madder than anything. How did he win a sodo? Any word about that? I couldn't answer that. Asai said it was very tough. Well, how long ago was he there? Quite a long while ago. Right after he got out of the army, that's where he went. Well, that would be, he must have been there about the time I was there, then Morimoto was there. Yes. Because I was there in 1948, in October 48. And he would get out of the army in 45 or 46 anyway. Yeah. So he probably was there. He was probably still there. Then he went to Nakagawa's place after that. Oh, I see. Then he went to Shokokuji. I see. Well, I guess it was tough, because I think life was hard there. It was awful cold, awfully cold there.

[20:50]

But in later years now, Kajiura has started a school, a kind of a junior, what, not junior high school. It would be a kotogaku, I suppose. His idea was to, or a junior university. That's where Glenn was hired to teach. That's right. That's where he was hired to teach. Did he tell you all of his problems? Oh, told me quite a number of them. He used to come back and forth here. We'd give him a good meal and so forth. He used to tell me a little bit about it. Yeah. He was the one that told me that the monks used to go out and bathe in the pond in the middle of the winter. Well, I wouldn't be surprised. It was supposed to be good shugyo. That they had that sort of thing. Break the ice and jump in. Because they were, at least many of them, were pretty rough bunch when I was there. But I have a lot of photographs of shogenji that I took at that time. A lot of photographs.

[21:53]

And now he, the school, it was a, it's a kind of something like Hanazono. The idea that the boys can, that they can study certain university studies, or what, minor university studies, and do, be in the Sodo at the same time, have a certain amount of Sodo life. And Sanzen also, he tries to combine the two in some way or other. And I don't know much about the school. And he comes here from time to time to see me. And when he went to, he was in America. He made a trip to America and had a lovely time. Somebody gave him a very elaborate and very expensive camera. And when he came back, he came to see me. And we're very into, he's always asking me, inviting me down to shogenji and so forth. We're very, very good friends now. And he's, I think, taken, well, I know he has long ago, taken it all in his stride.

[22:58]

And we're excellent friends. But that is definitely a place. Well, I must tell you another thing that he did. That night of the first day that we got there, he had a huge kuyo for Soke-yan. That was also, he had it all, it was all fixed, you see, all set up. Great big kuyo for him. And he appeared in his gold brocade, golden white brocade robes, and goodness knows what else. It was great to do. And of course, with 60 monks, it was quite a sight. They have the biggest fish head drum in Japan there. They have the biggest everything. Everything is the biggest at shogenji. It's a beautiful place. Very fine, if it's been kept up as it used to be. But that is really some place for you to visit. We'd like to see that then. And there's another roshi at a place called Heirinji, which is a totally different place.

[24:05]

And you must go to Heirinji, H-E-I. It's outside of Tokyo, in a totally different direction from Hachioji. Opposite way, I should say. Toward Chiba? Well, I really don't know. But you wouldn't have any trouble finding it. Now that was quite a temple that was built rather late. And I can't remember what family, a famous daimyo family built it. And the buildings are rather simple, and all have thatched roofs. Beautiful thatched roofs. It's a very, very lovely place. It's set in a woods, in a piece of flat ground. There are no hills or anything. As far as you can see, when I was there, I've been there two or three times,

[25:06]

there were nothing but flat fields, vegetable fields. Top of the plains. Yeah, a regular plain. And it's set in the woods. And these beautiful, beautiful buildings were there. Small, and not in any way elaborate, but still very beautiful, with their beautiful thatched roofs. I think that Heirinji has gotten some kind of government, comes under some kind of government supervision now, because of this architecture there. The man there is the older brother, dama brother, of this Kajiura. And he is just as different as is possible for, of course they're not blood brothers naturally, and in a sense just as different as Tofukichi Roshi is from the present Miyoshinji man. This man is a square farmer.

[26:09]

Absolutely square. And is considered one of the very finest Roshis in Rinzai-zen, if not the finest. Now he's just a farmer. His boys, when I visited him, and I went several times at one time, I would like to have had him go to America. They have quite good-sized fields that they cultivate, and he went out and cultivated with them. I was particularly, I won't say fond of, but I went to see a couple of times the old priest of that temple who was blind, and who had been a very good painter, and whom he took such lovely care of. And he also is a man who has nothing to do with the outside world at all,

[27:12]

so I'm told. He's still just the same. He is completely limited or limits himself to his monks, and it's a real country temple. And it is very, very interesting to see. Everybody regretted that he was willing to take He Rinji rather than to... I guess he's a younger brother of Kajiura. I guess Kajiura was the older one. That's how he happened to get Shogenji. And there's always been... I mean, if you want gossip, you hear that, that, well, if Kajiura gets to be Kancho Miyashinji, which he's been angling for for years, I mean, it's a race between him and Mumon, who's going to take the old fellow's place. And the old fellow keeps on living, you know.

[28:15]

The two of them are still neck and neck race behind him. But how wonderful it will be for Shogenji when this He Rinji man goes back to Shogenji, because he's too big for, really, I mean, as far as attainment and, how shall I say, a synthesis within himself of the teaching and temple priest and the work, farm work and his work. It's an integrated personality and integrated completely into the form of life that he leads. Apparently no spectacular ceremonies of any kind, no going out and lecturing, no this or no that, no advertising, nothing. He's just a country Roshi living in this nice old temple with his boys about him. They're cultivating the fields.

[29:16]

I think I've heard more respectful things, remarks made of him than of anybody else I know. I think he's really considered, has been considered, in how he's getting on. March 29th, 1966. Rule 4, side 1. Well, Sogyeong was born in 1882. I think the correct date of his birth was March 15th. But because he wanted to have his birthday celebrated on the day of the Buddha's nirvana,

[30:17]

he changed it to the 15th of February. So his birthday, in my experience, was always celebrated there. When he changed it, I have no idea. And I think in the Zen sect, that they celebrate the Buddha's birth and the Buddha's nirvana the same day, February 15th, don't they? December 8th, of course, is the Satori. Well, they told you they have that thing on April 8th down at the Butsu-den. Do they? The sweet tea-pouring ceremony. Well, anyway, he changed his to the 15th of February so that from the time I knew him, the 15th of February was celebrated as his birthday, though it was not his birthday. He was born in the town of Takamatsu, Ichikoku,

[31:23]

and his father was a priest at the shrine of Konpira, which is a very, very famous shrine for seagoing men. The patron goddess of that is Benten, that shrine. It's a very beautiful shrine and very, very famous. The facts of his birth are rather interesting. His father's wife, whose family name I believe was Kojima, and it was a very good family, and later one of the Kojimas became quite a wealthy man. The father's family originally were samurai,

[32:30]

and even as long as his father lived, he had a certain stipend which the family had received at the time of the Restoration. And that is, you may know that samurai families or the heads of families were given a kind of equivalent in government bonds at that time for their rice stipend. And that supported the family during all of the father's life and the mother until her own death, and she even left a little bit of that money when she died many, many years later. I don't think it was a great deal,

[33:33]

but at any rate, it was something. His wife had no children, and that was a great sorrow, and he wanted very much to have a son. And so with the agreement of the family, of the Kojima family, his wife's family and his family, his wife retired as his wife, and he took a concubine. He took as a concubine a young woman. She was in her late teens, 17 or 18, when he took her as a concubine. And she came from a tea family in Osaka. Her father was a tea teacher,

[34:36]

and there was flower teaching in the family and so forth. And she was taken as a concubine with the understanding that she would stay with him until she produced a son, and that she would stay a year after that, and after the son was produced. And at that time, she would retire and leave the child or children with him as his children, and she would be given a lump sum, which would be a dowry for her own marriage. She evidently was quite a pretty girl and a sweet girl, and she quite promptly had a son. She had no other children,

[35:39]

and she stayed with Mr. Sasaki three years with the father and then went home, and the money was given her, and she married, and there's some more to her history later on. Then the wife came back, and because she was not Sokaian's mother and everybody knew it, I mean, there was nothing surreptitious or hidden about this at all. It was apparently a generally known fact. But she was a very conscientious woman, and she always lived in fear that she wasn't giving him as much love and affection as she would have had he been her own child. So she showered him with love and affection, of course,

[36:41]

and he was completely and utterly devoted to her. He loved her very much. He was very, very close to his mother. Soon after, I don't know just when, the father left Takamatsu and left Konpira Shrine. He was particularly well-versed. He was an excellent Confucian scholar, and he was particularly well-versed in the old Japanese language of the Shinto scriptures and hymns, the one thing they call their prayers, Norita, I think they call them. And so he was sent, I don't know whether directly from Takamatsu, but in the course of some time,

[37:46]

he was sent to the Shinto college in Sendai. At any rate, even immediately after he left Takamatsu, he went to some school, to a Shinto school to teach this. And then eventually he was sent up to Sendai, to a Shinto college in Sendai. But his problem was that he was a very heavy drinker. He was a very big man, six feet three, and with somewhat reddish hair. And he was a very heavy drinker. And it was necessary, eventually he was forced because of this to leave the school at Sendai. And whether he had any other appointment between Sendai and his appointment as a priest

[38:46]

of the village shrine at Goi, which is a small town in Chiba, the peninsula going out into Tokyo Bay, across the bay from Tokyo City. That I don't know, but at any rate, he finally did settle in this town of Goi. And his sister was living in Goi. She was married to a school teacher in that area. There was lots of fishing nearby, the peninsula's narrow and so forth. But he began, the father began to teach Soke on Chinese when he was four. He brought him up on the Confucian classics. And apparently was a very devoted father.

[39:49]

Soke always spoke of him with great affection. When Soke was about 15, however, the father was taken with a stroke, as he always said, as a result of this heavy drinking. And at the same time, the day before he died, he received an appointment to Ise as a priest at Ise. And of course, that was a great disappointment to the family that he had to die at that point. But he did die when Soke was 15 and left Soke and his mother pretty much on their own, except for this money which they had. She returned to her own family

[40:52]

in the sense that there seemed to be no Sasaki family for her to remain in. And so she became a member again of the Kojima family. And that was rather a serious matter for Soke-yan because as a Sasaki, he would have been his father's heir. At least he would have been in the position, he would have inherited the position of the head of that family. But when he was taken into the Kojima family, he was the least important member of the Kojima clan. And he often has told me about when they had questions to decide, particularly questions which concerned what they would do with him,

[41:53]

that the Kojima family would sit around in the room in their, according to rank, the elder male at the head of the line and so on down the line according to their rank. And he was always the cow's tail, the very last one in this long line of family members. And the responsibility for educating this boy and so forth now was with the Kojima family. And they didn't see any particular reason for educating him particularly well. And he showed some inclination, at least, for work with his hands. So they decided that he better be a carpenter.

[42:59]

And so they apprenticed him to a carpenter, somebody, I think, in Kamakura, because the family was located around Tokyo. And he was apprenticed for the carpenter about two years, I think. But before he had been apprenticed too long, it was discovered that he could carve. And so instead of working as a common carpenter, he was permitted to learn the trade of carving little bits and pieces that were used on buildings, ornaments for buildings and so forth. For instance, he was taught to carve elephant's heads and dragons. And if you remember that picture that Ken had of a village shrine or temple,

[44:08]

do you remember it had the crossbar with an elephant head? That kind of thing was what he could carve. So after he had been with the carpenter for a couple of years, he then started out to earn a living for himself. And he had begun to think about writing poetry a little bit. And he took a whole year, and he went walking through the mountains of the Shinshu district. And there were quite a few temples being restored or built, and he heard about one where they wanted a dragon head carved or something else done. And for the whole year, he moved from one place to the other,

[45:14]

one village to the other, earning his livelihood by this temple carving, whatever it was he was able to do. At the end of that year, he always spoke about that with great pleasure. He enjoyed it very much, this walking. He loved to walk anyway. When he got back, that would be about 1900, 1901, the family decided that he could go to the university, and he went to the Imperial Academy of Art, which was connected with Tokyo Government University, and it was situated in Ueno. He had his mother then moved very close,

[46:15]

took a house or rooms or something close by, and he had to help out with his money for education. So holidays, he worked in the post office. He had two things happened as a result of that. The first one was that he entered into the art class of a man by the name of Takamura Koen, who was at that time the leading modern style sculptor in Japan, and he became quite famous. He had studied in Paris, studied under Rodin, and he was considered tops in that field. And Takamura Koen took a great fancy to him, to Soke-yan,

[47:16]

and after the first year, invited him to live in his house as a house student, or at least to spend some of his time there because he never did live there entirely. And after the war, of course, Takamura Koen was dead long before that, but after the war, when I came back, one of the first people I contacted because of letters and things I'd found among Soke-yan's things was Takamura Koen's son, who is the very greatest bronze caster in Japan. And the two men were just about the same age as young fellows, both going to the Imperial Academy and were, of course, being in the same house, in the same atelier with the old Takamura.

[48:20]

The little kanon that I have in my shrine, in my tokenoma, is one of Takamura Koen's, the father's, which the son gave me at that time as a gift. The other thing, well, there were three things at that same time. He began to meet poets, and I wish I could remember right now the name of the famous poet whose disciple, whose deshi he became, as he said, whose briefcase he carried. And he also I met after I came back after the war. He was then a man nearly 80. He's long since died. But he was one of the leading classical poets, Tanka and so forth, of Japan. And through him and under his tutelage, Soke-yan studied portrait painting.

[49:25]

And then, of course, in the course of his stay, the first couple of years after he'd been at this Imperial Art School, he heard about Zen and Sokatsu. And he always told that story the same way, that one of his ways of earning of arbeit was working in the post office. And a number of boys from the art school worked together in the vacations at this same post office. And they used to have great conversations and discussions about this and that and the other thing. And they were given one of the major Western philosophical works that they art,

[50:28]

philosophy or art that they had to study. Now, wait a minute. As a German, I've got it in the library. I found a copy of it years ago here. I have it just because I've never read it. But you would know the name. Well, I'll think about it. No, no, it was later than that. Well, at any rate, one day they were... The two words that came up in the course of this study, which were new to them, were the words objective and subjective. And these two words and what these two words meant was a matter of great, great interest particularly and struggle to understand on the part of Sokatsu.

[51:32]

So one day they were having a discussion about this and he was in the post office in their lunch hour. And he said about the struggle he was having to understand and so forth. And one of the boys said, Oh, well, if you want to understand subjective and objective, you want to study Zen. And then he told him about Sokatsu, who had this Zen master who had this place in Ueno Park, not far from the University for the Art Academy, and to whom a good many students went for Zen study. So Sokatsu went right off to him and that is how he began his Zen study. And in 1905, he graduated from school.

[52:40]

In the meantime, he had studied Zen apparently with Sokatsu for some two or three years. He graduated in April and he was immediately called up for the Manchurian War or the Russo-Japanese War and he was sent to Manchuria. In the beginning, he was put in a supply company. But very soon, they discovered that he could... Very shortly, the war came to an end, as a matter of fact. And in order to keep the troops interested or keep them from being too bored, the troops that couldn't be immediately sent back to Japan

[53:46]

and demobilized, they organized dramatic companies and things like that over there. And he was put to painting scenery, doing things like that for this dramatic business. But he was very shortly, he was in the next year, he was in spring of the next year, he was demobilized himself and came back to Tokyo. He hadn't been back here very long. He went immediately back to Sokatsu and he hadn't been back here very long when Sokatsu told him that he was planning to go to America with this group of some 14 people and suggested and arranged for Soke-yan to marry

[54:50]

one of his girl students. Her family were people who lived in Sakhalin and they had salt fields. Sakhalin was a big salt producing... They produced sea salt and refined it in some fashion up there. And she had some little money. Apparently, after their father and mother died, her brother continued to run the business and the two sisters came down to Tokyo and in the course of time, she got connected up with Sokatsu in some way. And she was very bright, a tiny little bit of a thing, but bright and energetic

[55:53]

and so Sokatsu arranged this marriage. Then of course, I think I've already told you, they all went off in the fall of 1906 for America, including Goto Roshi, there were some 14 of them. And they settled at Hayward and you have the story of their strawberry experience and so forth there. But Soke-yan felt after that, after the first year, that it was useless for them to try to do that sort of thing because the boys were trained for... were just university students who knew nothing about farming or anything. And he had a serious quarrel with Sokatsu and he was thrown out of the group. Then he went to Tokyo, to San Francisco with his wife and I don't know what he did for a livelihood

[56:57]

or whether she had money or what, I don't know. But at any rate, among other things that he was able to do was to enlist in the... or to, not enlist, but to enter the art school, I think it's called the San Francisco Institute of Art or something like that, to study Western painting. Now what else he did or what he did to support them during that time, I don't know. At any rate, after a bit, within another year, the Sokatsu decided to come back to... that the farm was impossible. So they came into, or the whole group came in and took a big house in San Francisco and then Soke-yan was admitted to the Sanzen again

[57:57]

and part of the group and he continued his art studies and as I say, I don't know what he did for earning a living and I think his son was born at that time, during that period. Then of course, 1910, Sokatsu returned to Japan and Soke-yan went up to Seattle. He stayed there for about four years or more, about four years, and to support himself there and his wife had another child, a daughter, he became a... worked for a picture frame maker. In those days they had hand-carved frames

[59:02]

with carving on the corners, leaves and things like that and he had an arrangement with the frame man and with his wife that he would stay home about six or seven months of the year and the other four or five months he could have free to do what he wanted. And so, among other things, there was a paper, a Japanese paper called the Hokubei Shimpo and in Seattle, a Japanese language paper and there were quite a good many Japanese people, farmers who were on isolated farms way back in the country in Oregon and Washington

[60:04]

up to Columbia River Valley and things like that. So, to make a little money and to make a reason for moving here and there, he would go and collect the money for their yearly subscriptions to this Hokubei Shimpo and make a walking trip out of it. One year he went up the Columbia River Valley, spent the summer in the Columbia River Valley, walking up that and stopping at these farmhouses and staying there and getting his lodging and food and going on to the next place and so on. Another year, I think probably, I don't know which was first, he went to some valley in Oregon. Some man he knew had some kind of an orchard there

[61:06]

and he used to tell how that man he knew

[61:10]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ