Kaiten Nukariya

Born in 1867 and dying in 1934, Kaiten Nukariya was a Japanese Soto Zen monk, Buddhist scholar, and professor. He is best remembered for The Religion of the Samurai, an early English-language study of Zen that brought Japanese Buddhist thought to a wider Western audience.

His writing focuses on Zen philosophy, discipline, and history, especially its development in China and Japan. Contemporary descriptions of his work also note that he lectured in the United States, and his book was written to explain Zen in a clear, accessible way for readers outside Japan.

Today, Nukariya is often read as one of the early interpreters who helped shape how Zen was introduced abroad. His work reflects both scholarly interest and the perspective of an insider to the Soto tradition, which gives it a distinctive place in the history of Buddhist writing in English.