In the years after World War II, Westerners and Japanese alike elevated Zen to the quintessence of spirituality in Japan. Pursuing the sources of Zen as a Japanese ideal, Shoji Yamada uncovers the surprising role of two cultural touchstones: Eugen Herrigel s "Zen in the Art of Archery" and the Ryoanji dry-landscape rock garden. Yamada shows how both became facile conduits for exporting and importing Japanese culture.

First published in German in 1948 and translated into Japanese in 1956, Herrigel s book popularized ideas of Zen both in the West and in Japan. Yamada traces the prewar...