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zen was developed so that the samurai could dehumanize their enemies? what the fuck kind of crazy orientalism is that? oh right, it's the Wayne Price kind, commingling with his strange ideas about some idealized fusion of marxism and anarchism. like other clueless westerners, Price is conflating the larger school of zen (chan in China, where it originated as a school of Mahayana Buddhism -- and also known as thien in Vietnam and seon in Korea) with one specific school of zen called rinzai, which is a kind of brutal zen, as opposed to the other two Japanese styles, soto and obaku. rather than how Prince understands it as a practice of dehumanizing others, the use of rinzai among martial artists is focused on not being concerned with the practitioner's own death.

as for the sloppy Blumenfeld/Blumenthal conflation, it reminds me of that old joke about the Jewish guy and the Chinese guy drinking in a bar. they're both pretty drunk, and the Jewish guy knocks the Chinese guy off his stool. the Chinese guy says, "hey, what was that for?" the Jewish guy says "Pearl Harbor!" "Pearl Harbor?! but that was the Japanese. I'm Chinese!" the Jewish guy says, "Chinese, Japanese -- it's all the same." the Chinese guy gets back up and they continue drinking. suddenly the Chinese guy knocks the Jewish guy off his stool. "hey, what was that for?" the Chinese guy says "The Titanic!" "The Titanic?! but that was an iceberg!" the Chinese guy says "iceberg, Greenberg -- it's all the same." so for Prince, Blumen-- is all the same, the same way that rinzai is the same as other forms of zen.

Price's brain is a strange place, where mundane distinctions are mashed up, where his own idiosyncrasies are elevated into social programs, and where his rhetorical skills are always brilliant. too bad for him, the rest of us have to live in the real world.