I'll tell you the story, as I know it, of Sokatsu Roshi. It has its shadowy parts, as well as its brilliant parts, but I think he's not totally uncharacteristic of certain Japanese Roshis over a long period, perhaps. He was originally a layman who was engaged in making, and very good at making, what is known as Kamakura lacquer. Do you know what Kamakura lacquer is? Yes. It was produced right about Kamakura. It's a red, thick lacquer that is very deeply incised. And at that time, he became interested in studying with old Kosen Roshi.

[01:25]

And later, after Kosen Roshi died, he went to Soyen Roshi. He was still quite a young man at the time. And under Soyen Roshi, he decided to become a monk. He gave up his layman status. And he was adopted by Sokatsu, and given the name of... He was adopted, rather, by Soyen Roshi, and given the name of Shaku, which is a family name which Soyen took for himself. It was not his family name, but it's one that he took for himself. And he legally adopted Sokatsu as his heir. How old was Sokatsu at this time when he became a monk and was adopted? Roughly? Well, let me think back. Soyen died, I think, about... When did Soyen die? 1918?

[02:32]

Or was it later than that? I think it was about 1918 when Soyen died. And I suppose when Sokatsu was... Sokatsu was very young. He was 30, 32, when he finished his Zen study. And... Did you ask me when he became a monk? How old he was? Well, I would think probably about 25. About 25. I'm curious. He wasn't married then, was he? No, he hadn't married. And he was the apple of Soyen's eye. And Sokyan has often said, though, that his pride was his shortcoming, and that Soyen had...

[03:37]

He used often to come from Sanzen with his head cut and bleeding from Soyen's having hit him with his nyoi to try to destroy, in some fashion or other, try to destroy this violent arrogance of his. At any rate, after Soyen retired as Kansho... Well, when Sokatsu finished his Zen study, he was in his early 30s. And he then went to Burma and Siam, India, Ceylon, and he made the whole trip, he told me this himself many years later, dressed like an itinerant monk, and he picked up his living as he went, begging from door to door. He was gone, I think, about two years. Then he came back. And as...

[04:39]

During Kosen Osho's life, you remember Kosen was the teacher of Sokatsu, of Soyen. Well, Kosen had founded a very aristocratic society called the Ryomo Kyokai, which was for the study by lay people, study of Zen by lay people. He had many friends in the palace group, and many of those very important men were original members of this and were his Sanzen students. Later, Kosen died, and Soyen was not interested particularly in the society, and it died down into nothing.

[05:40]

But when Sokatsu came back from Burma, he was too young to do much of anything, to get much of a job, because it was expected that he was going to become the Kancho of Enroshi at Engakuji on Soyen's retirement. Soyen suggested that he take up, that he revive this Ryomo Kyokai of Kosen, which he did. And he started a... He built a very nice house with a dojo near the pagoda in Ueno Park. It still exists. And there he began to teach. He had among his disciples a doctor who was quite well-to-do.

[06:42]

And this doctor was a widower with a daughter. And the daughter was in her, what, late teens, and was brought to Sokatsu with the idea of his giving her Sanzen also. And then, quite suddenly, the doctor died, and it was found that he had left his estate to his daughter, which was a considerable estate, and he had left Sokatsu as her guardian. Well, that's the way it began. And the next thing we know, Soyen has retired from Engakuji, and the young lady is compromised with Sokatsu, secretly compromised,

[07:45]

and the time comes for the election of a new Roshi, or evidently Roshi and Kancho, that I can't answer exactly, of Engakuji. And nobody thought for a minute that there would be the slightest problem about Soyen's heir being elected. The day before the election, however, the major newspapers in Tokyo broke out with a story of this man, this priest of Engakuji, who had misled this ward of his, who was living with her, and was making great use of her fortune. So, of course, the thing went to pieces. He lost the election, naturally, and he shook the dust of temples off his feet.

[08:49]

It was a curious thing. He would never take off his koromon, and he always shaved his head, and he continued to live with the girl, whose name was Echokusan, until his death at 81. They were the most devoted couple that you ever saw. She was utterly devoted to him. She was a wonderful woman. But he never would marry her, though his students often urged him to take off his koromon and become a lay teacher, I mean a real lay teacher. But he refused to do it. He always wore his hair shaved, but he always wore his koromon. And in public, well, except with the most intimate friends, Echokusan took the role of his onji,

[09:50]

waited upon him with the utmost formality, and he addressed her with the utmost formality. He then concentrated on teaching lay people, and he had a number of temple men, monks, we'll say, or priests, come to study under him because he was considered such a brilliant teacher, and I have no doubt that he was, of his time, probably the most brilliant of any of the Zen roshis of his particular period. But he was bitter, bitter, bitter against temples and temple Zen. And when Goto Roshi came to him as a disciple, he had already taken off his koromon. Goto Roshi had entered temple life as a little boy

[10:53]

and then had gone up north to Sendai to high school and decided he didn't want to be a monk. So when he came to Sokatsu, he was a university student. He was in the philosophy department of Tokyo University. When Soke-yan came to him, he was a student at the art department of the university in Tokyo. At other times, though, he had several priests whom I had met in the course of years who studied under him for a time, who came back to work further on their koan study or something like that. But the main group of his students were all lay people, and he especially liked the university students. And I think that Keio University, if I'm not mistaken, is up in that area. And whichever university is in that area

[11:54]

was the university from which he grew a large number of his students. Later, he moved further out in the country, and eventually he built this quite large dojo out in Chiba at Ichikawa. And that still exists, and it is that that Eizan Roshi is the head of. That's still a lay dojo. Oh, yes, entirely a lay dojo. Eizan Roshi. Eizan Roshi. He was Sokatsu's disciple? Now, Eizan Roshi came to him in fairly early days. Well, Eizan now is about my age. He's about 72, I think now. Eizan Roshi is the Roshi with the little beard? That's right. And he came here with his wife? That's right.

[12:54]

And Eizan Roshi was a university boy when he went to Sokatsu first, and he came from a very good and quite wealthy family. And he met his wife. What's her name now? Well, I forget now. But they both became very much interested in taking Sanzen. Eizan himself was a professor of natural science and natural history, something like that, a combination of science. I mean, could there be a professor of natural science? I don't know. In the old days, especially. He taught for many, many years in that, in one of the universities near Yokohama. And as a youth, he told me, Eizan Roshi, told me that after some period of study,

[13:56]

when he was about 19 or 20, that he took three months off in the summer and went up to Matsushima in the north and lived most of the summer in a cave by himself to do Sanzen. And that is where he made his real breakthrough into Zen, was during that period of the summer vacation that he'd taken up there. Well, after he was married, he went to live in the dojo with Sokatsu or in a house in the same compound. And he remained with Sokatsu until just before the war. As I say, his family were very well-to-do. And Sokatsu, who was a very extravagant man,

[14:57]

managed to go through Eichokusan's fortune and to go through Eizan's fortune. How could he do it? Well, he liked robes, for one thing. He liked to build for another. He liked to collect antiques for another. He was an excellent painter and calligrapher, a very fine painter and calligrapher. And he liked to have his things elaborately published, printed and published. And there was always something. Well, building. Building and that sort of thing. And Eizan could not have been a more devoted student, nor could his wife. They had either, I think, three children, and their entire married life was lived in the same compound with Sokatsu. And Eichokusan. Did Sokatsu and Eichokusan have any children?

[16:00]

They had two daughters. And one of them, at one period in 1906, wasn't it, that Sokatsu went to America. And this is very amusing. According to Sokatsu's story, Sokatsu told him that he would have to get married because he was taking Eichokusan to America with him, and he couldn't take her without proper chaperonage of another married couple. So among his students, he picked out a wife for Soke-an. And that was how Soke-an and his wife went to America. And as the chaperones for Sokatsu and Eichokusan.

[17:02]

And there was another woman who was now Mrs. Matsumoto. She's about 90 years old and still alive in San Francisco. Who either went with him from here, or had already gone to San Francisco and was associated with him in San Francisco. I think now out on the farm. And of course Goto Roshi went. There were 10 or 12 of them altogether. But after they'd been there two years, Eichokusan became pregnant. And I'm telling you all the dirt, or all of the way this story really is. And...

[17:44]

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