Blog post by Genie Guerard, Manuscripts Librarian for Library Special Collections.

Ruth Strout McCandless (1909-1994) was a close collaborator with Nyogen Senzaki (1876-1958), a Zen Buddhist monk and one of the first Zen masters to come to the United States from Japan. His texts and translations aimed to make Zen Buddhist principles understandable and accessible, and became a large influence in the popularity and adoption of Zen Buddhism in Western culture. McCandless was a major Western scholar on Zen Buddhism in Japan, particularly contributing to Zen Buddhist movements in California. While under the guidance of Soen Nakagawa at Ryutakuji, she became the first Western woman to stay at a Zen monastery. She was ordained as an Upasika of the Sangha under the mentorship of Senzaki in 1941.

After growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, McCandless studied art, literature, and science at Stanford University, where she graduated in 1932. She was married to John McCandless in 1932 (divorced in 1961), and together they had two sons, Duncan and Keith. Ruth became interested in Zen Buddhism through her study of comparative religion, met Senzaki in the early 1940s and worked with him studying Zen and translating manuscripts. With Senzaki, McCandless co-authored Buddhism and Zen (1953), a book that provided an elementary introduction to Zen Buddhism aimed for Western audiences, and edited The Iron Flute (1961), a collection of ancient Zen koans.

In 1943, Senzaki was interned at at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming. During that time, Ruth McCandless wrote to him, often to tell him about the children, and to provide him with a sense of everyday life outside the camp. A letter in McCandless’s archives (Ruth Strout McCandless Collection on Nyogen Senzaki, 1900-2015) from Ruth to Duncan and Keith reveals that, unbeknownst to her, Senzaki had Ruth’s letters printed out as an English Reader for Young Wives and Expectant Mothers, which he used to help teach young Japanese American women in the camp to read and write English. He recognized that the content of the letters would be interesting to his students, and would therefore help them in the learning process.

Some materials in the papers are shown here: the letter and reader, poetry by Senzaki translated and typed in English by McCandless, poetry written on leaves, and photographs of Senzaki and some of his disciples while at Heart Mountain, as well as portraits of him taken at a studio in Los Angeles before and after World War II.

The Ruth Strout McCandless Collection on Nyogen Senzaki, 1900-2015 was acquired by the UCLA Library Special Collections in 2015 and processed in 2016 in the Center for Primary Research and Training. It will soon be open for research with finding aid on the OAC. The collection is a rich historic archive reflecting the rise of Zen Buddhism in Western society in the 20^th century through Senzaki and McCandless’s translations of original and historical texts, including correspondence, photographs, books, art works and other personal papers.