This is Part 2 of a two-part series with historian and Sōtō Zen priest Brian Daizen Victoria, discussing his groundbreaking book Zen Terror in Prewar Japan. In this episode, we dive deeper into the unsettling reality that Zen—often romanticized as a path of peace and detachment—was, in 1930s Japan, deeply entangled with ultranationalist ideology and acts of domestic terrorism. Through the story of Inoue Nisshō and his band of “patriotic youth,” Victoria reveals how spiritual rhetoric and militarist fervor collided in dangerous and surprising ways. If you haven’t heard Part 1 yet, click here to listen.

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Thanks for listening, fellow travelers of the ear. 

Yoroshiku and rockets. 🚀