Duncan Ryūken Williams

In 2019, Williams published his second monograph, American Sutra, with Harvard University Press.

Williams has organized “Hapa Japan Festivals". These are multiple days celebrating the multiracial Japanese experiences globally. They typically include academic conferences, comedy shows, musical performances, film screenings, interviews, receptions, book fairs, art and photography displays, and an exhibit on multiracial Japanese Americans in the United States at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Williams also published two edited volumes, Hapa Japan: History and Hapa Japan: Identities and Representations, in 2017. This is the first time so many essays have been published together on the history, identification, and representations of global mixed-race people of Japanese descent.

From 2016-2017, Williams served as the Executive Vice President and Planning Director of Japan House/LA, a public diplomacy initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In May 2015, Williams hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who met with staff and faculty at the Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture as part of his visit to USC, where Abe had spent three semesters as a student in 1978.

In 2011, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Consulate-General of Japan commended Williams for his work on a series of events at UC Berkeley’s Center for Japanese Studies. The event series deepened the relationship between the United States and Japan, which is why he was commended.

In 2004, Williams published his first monograph, The Other Side of Zen, with Princeton University Press. It was released in paperback in 2009. The title draws from Barbara Ruch's well-known essay, "The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan," which points out the importance of historical scholarship on "common culture" shared by the majority of the population."

Duncan Ryūken Williams was born in Tokyo, Japan. The child of a Japanese woman and a British man, Williams spent the first 17 years of his life in Japan and England. As an undergraduate, Williams attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. While attending Reed, Williams lived in a Zen Buddhist center, which inspired him to become ordained as a Buddhist priest. He was ordained as a Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest in 1993, when he became a monk at Kotakuji Temple in Nagano, Japan. At Harvard University, Williams was the university’s Buddhist chaplain from 1994 to 1996, before his completing a Ph.D. in religion in 2000.

Duncan Ryūken Williams (born September 19, 1969) is a scholar, writer, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest who is currently professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. His research focuses on Zen Buddhism, Buddhism in America, and the mixed-race Japanese (hapa) experience.

To understand and document this history, Williams conducted bilingual research, including translating four volumes of diaries written by a Buddhist priest incarcerated at a high-security camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1941-45 and obtaining and declassifying FBI documents that show that nearly 300 priests were picked up by the FBI after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Japanese American scholars have noted how the book provides a new perspective on a familiar topic because of the bilingual sources Williams uses and the Buddhist framing of, for example, the Japanese American soldiers who served in the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service during World War II.