Dharma Lesson from Yuri Kochiyama

From “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” March 2017

When I talked up the showing of the film, “Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice,” I thought half the Japanese American community would be filling up the auditorium at the Block Museum on the Northwestern University campus last month. But only a handful of the folks I knew showed up and the total audience for the film showing was pretty thin.

Maybe just as well – it wasn’t a well made film (it seemed like in the mid-1990s sound recording for film must’ve been pretty primitive). But for me, the life of Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014) illustrated the Dharma lesson I try to impart at every memorial service – “That feeling of respect and gratitude you feel for your deceased loved one should carry over to a widening circle of compassion for the lives around you.”

Yuri Kochiyama lost her father to the World War II hysteria against the ethnic Japanese in America (after Pearl Harbor he was jailed despite his poor health and died the day after he was released). Her passion for justice is a directing of her outrage over her father’s loss into the energy to fight for all people in the United States who are mistreated by the majority white society and the government.

Her story is a rare exception among Japanese Americans. While she raised her family in Harlem and got involved in the parents’ group which led her to activism with the black and Latino liberation movements, most Japanese Americans followed the white flight out of the inner cities to more affluent neighborhoods. They left the south side in the mid-1950s to move to the north side during the time of real estate fear-mongering and redlining. And in the 1970s, there was a strong push to get away from the black, brown and red people of city neighborhoods such as Uptown and relocate to the suburbs.

Right now there are a lot of young Japanese Americans saying they’re against the “Muslim registry” (such as my cousin’s daughter http://www.facebook.com/nationalcouncilofasianpacificamericans/photos/a.532706786770092.122765.532675646773206/1527469653960462/?type=3&theater), but I don’t hear many calling for reparations for African Americans as Yuri Kochiyama did. It’s good that young JAs relate to the recent immigrants, such as those from Muslim countries, but I wish more Asian Americans would relate to those whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. as slaves, to those who were here first and saw their lands taken away from them and to those vast numbers of descendants of Europeans who are in or near poverty due to shifts in the economy.

For many Americans, Yuri Kochiyama is seen as unpatriotic for her anti-government remarks (see the furor over the May 19, 2016 Google doodle), but she reminds us that the mindset of powerful interests that incarcerated the ethnic Japanese during World War II is still prevailing in policies and procedures that violate the rights of people of color and lower-income whites and deny them the opportunities easily accessed by residents of affluent areas. Yuri Kochiyama’s life reminds me of the Dharma teachings of considering myself and all beings as “we” - not to be divided into us (“we work hard and have morals”) versus them (“they’re lazy and just want to kill and rob”). My hope is that the Japanese Americans at Buddhist temples can become Dharma friends with diverse ethnicities and those of differing socio-economic statuses and that we categorize less and emphasize more with all the lives around us. That is, genuinely hearing the call of Namu Amida Butsu instead of just giving it lip-service.

“Vertigo” and the Thirty-Fifth Vow

from “Taste of Chicago Buddhism” December 2016

[This article assumes the reader is familiar with the Alfred Hitchcock film “Vertigo.”] The 35^th vow from the Larger Sutra has been problematic for Jodo Shinshu but the inaccuracy of the existing English translations has led to a lot of misunderstanding about the Pure Land teachings. One example of this is found in Rita M. Gross’ book Buddhism After Patriarchy where she relied on information from the scholar Diana Y. Paul. Dr. Paul strikes me as one of those Japanese Americans such as Rich Dad author Robert Kiyosaki who seem disconnected from their cultural heritage, especially from the energetic Buddhism of the common people (as opposed to the austere Zen of the samurai). Back in the 1990s, if Dr. Gross had done an internet search instead of researching academic papers, she might have come across my article (which I recommend to those who aren’t familiar with the 35^th vow). 

 https://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/womenbuddhist.html

(in 2018 the original link to LivingDharma.net isn't working)

I saw the movie “Vertigo” a long time ago and I remember it left me with a sour feeling about the story. I thought it showed the Kim Novak character as an evil woman who deserved to be punished. When the temple’s movie club group announced they would be showing “Vertigo,” I looked up some feminist analysis of the movie to prepare myself for watching it again.

What I found is that the story can be seen as the depiction of the James Stewart character’s devolving view of women. Then it hit me – the three women in the story could be correlated to the three terms in the 35^th vow: nyo-nin, nyo-shin and nyo-zo, which are all rendered as “women” in the English translations.

In an early scene of “Vertigo,” the James Stewart character Scottie is with his good friend and former fiancée Midge. She is nyo-nin, the female person – a whole personality who relates as an equal to Scottie and maybe a bit maternally. Then Scottie becomes obsessed with Madeleine – not as a person but for the perfection of her surface beauty. She is nyo-shin, the female body, for him to look at and possess. After he believes he’s lost Madeleine, he finds Judy and despite her protests, he proceeds to mold her into a copy of Madeleine. Judy to him is only a nyo-zo, a female image, a reproduction of what he once possessed.

In the 35^th vow, it is nyo-nin, the female person, who hears Namu Amida Butsu and awakens bodhi-citta, the heart/mind aspiring for awakening. Those female-persons then “renounce the state of being” nyo-shin, female bodies for males to gaze at and possess. They also refuse to be reborn – reconfigured by men – as nyo-zo, female images.

In the film “Vertigo,” Judy has a chance to assert her personhood and confess to Scottie her involvement in the scheme with Madeleine’s husband, but she throws it away in order to win his love by becoming his reproduction of Madeleine. To me, this is her real sin – to throw away her own life to satisfy her selfish craving for “acceptance” by someone who claims to be her superior. It speaks to the dilemma of women from Buddha’s time, from Shinran’s time and even our mothers’ time – we put ourselves one lifetime away from awakening by handing over our lives to those we believe are necessary for our validation.

Jodo Shinshu is not a teaching that says women are inferior because they must be reborn as men to gain Buddhahood. Instead, the 35^th vow in the Larger Sutra is a warning to women that they lose their chance for Buddhahood in their lifetime if they succumb to the dominant male view of women to be only nyo-shin (bodies) or nyo-zo (images). All persons can be reborn in the Pure Land – but historically women didn’t get to see themselves as persons during their lifetimes and had to wait for that after-life liberation from gender.

Now I can appreciate the film “Vertigo” as a feminist teaching lesson. As much as society pressures us to be the perfect embodiment of physical beauty, we will only end up with the misery Judy suffers if we dedicate our lives to pleasing the male gaze. Just as the Jodo Shinshu teachings freed the working classes from feeling subservient to the ruling class, the teachings also are for waking up women to their own personhood, to not let ourselves be ruled by the devolving view that some men will have of us as their objects to possess and control.