Abstract:hanks to a recent spate of articles, coupled with such books as Rude Awakenings and my own Zen At War, the close and suppor tive relationship existing between Japanese Zen-affiliated leaders and the J...hanks to a recent spate of articles, coupled with such books as Rude Awakenings and my own Zen At War, the close and suppor tive relationship existing between Japanese Zen-affiliated leaders and the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific war (and before) is be coming better known and understood.There remains, however, one major gap in this history.That is to say, what was the role of such Zen leaders, if any, in the domestic repression that took place in concert with Japan's expansion onto the Asian continent?Did, for example, Zen masters and their lay disciples play a role in the domestic assassi nations that were such a prominent feature of Japanese public life during the early to mid-1930s?1The following is an introduction to this question.It examines the roles played by two prominent Zen masters, Fukusada Mugai and Yamamoto GempQ, in the events surrounding the assassinations of three major military, political, and financial leaders.While neither of these masters pulled the trigger of an assassin's pistol or wielded an assassin's sword, they were nevertheless convinced, like their lay dis ciples, Lt. Colonel Aizawa Saburd and Inoue Nissho, that Zen Bud dhism as they understood it justified the killing of fellow Japanese in the name of "destroying the false and establishing the true" (haja kensho).2This said, I would caution my readers that what they are about to read is not intended to be a statement about the nature of Zen (Buddhism) in any theoretical or abstract sense.Rather, it is a de scription of what a number of prominent Zen leaders believed or inter-Read More