Yoel Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, compiled with an Introduction and commentary by Yoel Hoffmann (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1956) (By Enni Ben'en: "All my life I taught Zen to the people-- / Nine and seventy years. / He who sees not things as they are / Will Never know Zen." Id. at 96. By Kozan Ichikyo: "Empty-handed I entered the world / Barefoot I leave it. / My coming, my going-- / Two simple happenings / That get entangled." Id. at 108.).
Kazui Kasahara, ed., A History of Japanese Religion, translated from the Japanese by Paul McCarthy & Gaynor Sekimori (Tokyo: Kosei, Publishing 2001).
Yagyu Munenori, The Life-Giving Sword: Secret Teachings from the House of the Shogun, translated from the Japanese with an introduction by William Scott Wilson (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2012) ("We say that this Emptiness of the mind cannot be seen, and so is nothingness. But if it moves, it does a variety of things: it grasps with the hands, steps with the feet, and accomplishes a variety of wonders. This is the movement and manifestation of this emptiness of this mind." Id. at 53.).
G. B. Sansom, Japan: A Short Cultural History (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1978).
Ihara Satkaku, Five Women Who Loved Love, introduction and translated from the Japanese by W. M. Theodore de Barry, with a background essay by Richard Lane, and the 17th-century illustrations by Yoshida Hambei (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1956) (From the "Introduction": "There is here, no doubt, a defiant rejection of the traditional Buddhist view that all is dust and subject to corruption, that nothing escapes the universal law of change. But the protest bears a strong resemblance to one which had already come from within Buddhism itself, proclaiming salvation through moving faith in the Buddha Amida, whose abiding mercy and redemptive power alone could be relied upon to rescue men form the suffering of this world." Id at 15.).
Yoshiro Tamura, Japanese Buddhism: A Cultural History, translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Hunter (Tokyo: Kosei Pubishing, 2000) ("Japan is often described as having a hybrid culture. But this does not mean that disparate cultural elements were simply embraced indiscriminately; rather, they were vigorously assimilated and skillfully made over into Japanese cultural artifacts. The same thing happened with Buddhism: It was absorbed into Japanese culture and reconstituted as Japanese Buddhism. Thus it is impossible to separate Japan's Buddhism from the nation's cultural matrix, or to explicate the one without understanding the other." Id. at 7.).
