Director: Tim Graf, Jakob Montrasio
Country: Japan
Year: 2014
The documentary Souls of Zen – Buddhism, Ancestors, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan presents perspectives on Buddhism as practiced by clergy, lay adherents, and families in Japan by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the daily life of Buddhist temples, monastic education, prayer practice, mortuary rituals, and Japan’s tradition of ancestor veneration in the wake of 3/11. From March to December 2011, Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio filmed invaluable footage of the greatest religious mobilization in Japan’s postwar history. This film is the only documentary based on sustained attention to the everyday lives of Buddhist professionals in the disaster zone. In an ethnographic journey from Tokyo to the hardest-hit prefectures (among other regions in Japan) Souls of Zen covers insights and opinions from scholars, clergy, and lay adherents with a focus on Soto Zen and Jodo Pure Land Buddhism.
The film explores the unfamiliar institutional, doctrinal, and psychological challenges Buddhist clergy are facing in the wake of 3/11, re-evaluating the complex role of Buddhism in a society struggling with the sudden impact of these catastrophic disasters that have exacerbated and otherwise altered continuing dilemmas occasioned by demographic change and religious pluralism.