A Dream for America and the San Jose Samurai
By Gregory Wada | He/Him/His | Orange County Buddhist Church and Northern California Koyasan Buddhist Temple
Every summer at San Jose Obon, there is a man who dresses like a samurai and walks among us peasants, sword at the waist. But then again, there are also San Jose Police, guns in holsters. Searching his eyes, I try to imagine the colors of his dreams. As he tilts his head up to look out at the field of dancers, halos of the setting sun outlining their hair and yukata, I wonder if he imagines himself a protector, a self-appointed guardian of this beautiful reflection of the human condition – love, loss, heartache, renewal; the cycle of birth reenacted in dance and music. While we dance, he watches on. Perhaps he is a fallen soldier, struggling to recall the days when his spirit could dance free, doing the best he can by watching over those who still remember. Or perhaps, underneath the armor, he is a vine reaching for something to hold on to, still searching for belonging.
This year, as the dancers lined up to begin, he passed near me, so I decided to ask.
“Hey!” Perhaps I sound too eager. He slowly turns his head and acknowledges me so I continue, “I was wondering about your costume.”
“I’m a samurai.” His voice is dry and final.
“Oh, why is that? Is it for something?” is what I manage.
Without answering, he turns away from me, slowly and smoothly, back to the task of patrolling 5th Street, or perhaps his imagination.
In conversations with other young, race-conscious Japanese Americans in the Pacific West1, there seems to be a growing discourse about cosplay at Obon2, particularly in larger, public gatherings where it may be more prevalent, though still not a large percentage of participants. For some, this is clearly a case of cultural (mis)appropriation, a gross plastering of a rapid and uncontrolled Japanophilia over a living tradition.
While these critiques are important and valid, particularly on the level of society, as Buddhists, we must also consider the individual and find compassion for them. It’s hard to know an individual’s full circumstance. Do we see the care and attention to detail as the cosplayer prepares their outfit? Do we feel their trepidation as they worry if anyone will like what they have created? Do we feel their shyness? The joy they feel when they see someone else in costume? If we feel anger when we see Goku and Sailor Moon in line for udon, perhaps we have missed a moment to exercise compassion, feel human connection, and see the world as it is.
I believe that compassion is a powerful ally. It is not a concession towards a type of moral relativism where we do not ask others (and ourselves) to change. Lies are still lies, and harms are still harms. But the challenge that we face as a society is in reconciling Truth and Justice with Mercy and Compassion. You cannot anger someone into the truth, nor can you beguile them into compassion. We must look for a middle path, where we can both set the course and care for the weary traveler.
Turning now to a more serious topic - the sword the samurai carries. There are times in the imagination (particularly of men in this society) where we may make ourselves out to be the hero, perhaps forced to carry out regrettable but necessary violence when backed into a corner or on behalf of the innocent. How often is this type of mythologized combat playing like a movie in our heads? How often does that numb our other senses? Whether we carry a sword or a gun, whether we intend to use it or not, how much of our capacity for compassion has been sacrificed to the competing processes of suspicion and preemptive self-defense? I mean this more than rhetorically - when I listen to music with lyrics, it’s hard for me to write my own thoughts. Can we feel the sensations of hot and cold simultaneously? Can we hold loving-kindness and violence in the same moment?
America is in the midst of a gun violence epidemic. At this moment in America, where ideological conflict seems to prevent even basic agreement on facts, both those calling for gun control and gun apologists somehow agree (though perhaps for different reasons) that the violence epidemic is related to mental health. I worry, though, that what is being uncritically agreed upon is that these terrible acts of violence are the product of unknowable minds, rare and extreme events beyond our control. Though perhaps not as extreme, I think we may know the same taste of rage and perpetuate it on others when we get mad in traffic or feel slighted by others. This is not an excuse for those who commit terrible harms, but a calling for us to recognize their humanity, and for us to work to curb such emotions, using our own understanding of the human experience. That is to say, these are not monsters as much as reflections of the samsara we already know. This is a calling for all of us to address our mental wellbeing and what we unload onto others. We must learn to exercise compassion, so that it may be felt in others as well.
Without diminishing the (growing) need for emergency and personalized mental health services, we all can take part in collectively taking care of each other and beginning to consider the mental health of communities. To this end, cultivating compassion may be our greatest tool. Instead of resigning ourselves to the fact that violence will continue because suffering will continue, we can work to end the suffering of others.
America needs new policy. America needs reform. America needs smarter, more thoughtful discourse. But perhaps most of all, America needs kindness. While many of the challenges we will face this century will require feats of science, leadership, and engineering, I think our time will be defined by Great Acts of Compassion.
Advocating a “middle way” should not be confused with political centrism. The solution to America’s violence problem is not somehow an average of the policies currently on the table, many which are cynical, misguided, and in bad faith. But with where we are now dialectically, righteous reasoning has not softened the flames of bitter hatred in this country – what we thought was water turned out to be oil.
How do we turn back from this ledge? How do we show compassion for our adversaries in America’s culture war? One practice we might leverage is to focus on their humanity. We must imagine that even our fiercest enemies feel sorrow when they remember their departed parents or grandparents. Before plastering themselves with makeup and getting on TV, that politician you hate may have woken up with back pain. If you cannot find any charitable position towards a person, you might consider focusing on a desire to alleviate the suffering of their human condition. Cultivating this feeling of loving-kindness (metta) is a tool for our own survival and those around us. It’s as much a tool to deal with our own anger as theirs.
For the modern, socially conscious, Buddhist, this is as much a matter of pragmatism as it is about self-betterment. If it is anger that turns us towards Twitter, where might compassion lead us? We need sustained investment in communities, in advocacy organizations, in healing spaces, and it is here where compassion may draw more lasting action. Anger may, from time to time, draw our attention, and there are Bodhisattva-types, particularly among our elders, that can use it effectively, but even this type of righteous anger at injustice is often in deep conversation with a cultivated compassion. I am not implying that you should never feel angry, but that we must learn, individually and as a society, to not let anger control our destiny.
To explore this “middle way,” let me return again to Obon.
One day, when the sun sets low over the yagura, and golden threads of the dancer’s yukata glisten like the backlit clouds in the sky, Goku and Sailor Moon will be invited into the circle, as they are every year. Though reluctant at first, they will dance to “Tanko Bushi,” they will dance “Pokemon Ondo,” to “Shiawase Samba,” to “Ei Ja Nai Ka.” By the time they are fully immersed, everyone will forget what they are wearing. Seeing them dance, the samurai will wake up from his dream, watch an airplane hanging low on the horizon as it descends for an airport named for a guy who used to live on this street, see the smiling faces, and in his mind, it will be as if there were no sword at all.
1 My sense is that the conversation is slightly different in Hawaiʻi and in areas of the mainland away from the Pacific Coast. In Hawaiʻi, Japanese Americans and Buddhists are a larger percentage of the overall population, and there is a long history of inter-ethnic cooperation among the working classes. Away from the population centers on the Pacific Coast, Japanese Americans often find themselves a much smaller minority. Without exploring it here, I posit that the representational qualities of something like anime may function differently with distance from cultural hubs, particularly among youth.
2 For a quick read on the topic, here is an open letter by Jenna Yokoyama (2014).
