Born a temple son, scholar Ichikawa Hakugen (1902–86) emerged after the war as an uncompromising critic of his own Rinzai Zen institution and a committed social activist. In Imperial‐Way Zen, Ives offers the first systematic study of Ichikawa's work, along with his own assessment of the circumstances that shaped Japanese Buddhist support for imperialism. The book's first chapter details Buddhism's accommodation to state interests from 1868 through 1945; the second and third detail the metaphysical commitments and social values which Ichikawa holds responsible for encouraging Zen Buddhists to maintain an attitude of passive acceptance in the face of violence and inequality. In Chapter 4, Ives proposes (departing gently from Ichikawa and, more decisively, from Brian Victoria) that Imperial‐Way Zen reflects Buddhism's longstanding function of protecting the state. Chapters 5 and 6 bring us back to Ichikawa, looking at his call for Zen institutions to assume responsibility for their actions during the war and refashion themselves as agents of peace. Ives closes the book by arguing that the usual candidates put forward as the building blocks of a critical Buddhist ethics—nonviolence and compassion chief among them—are too polysemous to be useful in this cause; readers looking for reason to be hopeful might find alternatives in Ichikawa's own list of promising ethical resources contained within Zen, presented in Chapter 6. Entering a scholarly debate that has at times been tendentious, Ives succeeds remarkably at capturing Ichikawa's fiery voice while maintaining his own measured tone.
