Suzuki, like Radhakrishnan, places this understanding of Zen in the interests of a transparently nationalist discourse. Suzuki insisted that Zen is the wellspring of Japanese culture, and that the traditional arts of Japan — tea ceremony, mono - chrome painting, martial arts, landscape gardening, Noh theatre, etc. — are all ultimately expressions of Zen gnosis. Japanese culture naturally predisposes the Japanese toward Zen experience, such that they have a deeply ingrained apprecia - tion of the unity of subject and object, human being and nature. This is in marked contradistinction to the excessively materialistic and dualistic traditions of the West. Suzuki’s musings on the ‘Japanese mind’ must be understood in the context of Japan’s sense of technological and scientific inferiority vis-à-vis the Occident in the earlier part of this century. In the final analysis, Suzuki, like Radhakrishnan, attempts nothing less than the apotheosis of an entire people. And like Radhakrishnan, Suzuki’s emphasis on experience owes as much to his exposure to Western thought as it does to indigenous Asian or Zen sources.