This description sounds appropriately meditative, the falling off of body and mind, but it did not bring him to the serenity he was looking for in his haiku, his travels, and his sake.

Amy Heinrich reviews The Life and Zen Haiku Poetry of Santoka Taneda

Our “doing” seems to be free from the static social narrative of the grand “to be” of the past. Instead, it is entrapping us in the ever-smaller understandings of “to be,” as if each of them were the grand narrative.

Takeshi Morisato on being and doing within Japanese modernity

What we see in Japanese modernity, according to Maruyama, is a national franchise of these “idols of the market place” through the continuous specialization and internal diversifications that multiply these groups.

Takeshi Morisato on how Japan became trapped in a hyper-specialized version of modernity

Because Japan had grafted what was available in Anglo-European modernity onto its socio-political and cultural milieu (i.e., fūdo 風土), Japan ended up with a strange mixture of ‘super-modernity’ and ‘pre-modernity’ as their peculiar form of ‘modernity.’

Takeshi Morisato on the thought of Maruyama Masao

In the parallel spiritual journeys of its characters, Endo’s The Samurai reflects a typically postmodern yearning for transcendence and synthesis of values beyond the conflict of cultures.

Katy Carl on Shūsaku Endō’s The Samurai and finding transcendence beyond the postmodern