Zen (2009 film) of Buddhism, which has had a huge cultural influence but is little understood — let alone practiced — by ordinary Japanese." The film premiered in Japan in 2009. The following year, it had its US debut at the International Buddhist Film Festival. The film was released on DVD and includes a short documentary entitled "The Zen of Dogen" with Kazuaki Tanahashi. Zen (2009 film) The film is a biography of Dōgen Zenji, a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher. After travelling to China to study, Dogen founded the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. The Buddhist Film Foundation described it as "a
Japanese Zen at war', did the Sanbo Kyodan express apologies for this support This involvement was not limited to the Zen schools, as all orthodox Japanese schools of Buddhism supported the militarist state. Victoria's particular claims about D. T. Suzuki's involvement in militarism have been much disputed by other scholars. Some contemporary Japanese Zen teachers, such as Harada Daiun Sogaku and Shunryū Suzuki, have criticized Japanese Zen as being a formalized system of empty rituals in which very few Zen practitioners ever actually attained realization. They assert that almost all Japanese temples have become family businesses handed down from father to son,