Komazawa University, which was founded by the Soto school, is thought to take the motto “the unity of practice and study” as its guiding principle. However, neither the time nor the background from which this motto was taken to be the principle for the establishment of the university is clear. Slogans resembling this one are still used as school mottoes in prefectural high schools and other educational institutions, a fact that suggests that this motto may actually be unrelated to the Soto school. The slogan “the unity of practice and study” is thought to be based on the thought of Hashida Kunihiko (1882-1945), who was once a professor in the Department of Medicine at The University of Tokyo. Hashida, who was influenced by the thought of Dogen and Wang Yangming, took science and praxis to be two aspects of one thing, and theorized that science should be practiced as a kind of religious activity. Hashida served as Minister of Education for three years during war, and so the influence received from his advocacy of this position was great. When students were ordered to work in munitions factories due to labor shortages, the Ministry of Education justified this using slogans such as “the integration of study and practice” and “study and practice are the same thing”, and so forth. However, since these words in themselves originally have no militaristic connotations, they were probably taken as slogans for general usage, and imparted with a variety of meanings and utilized after the war.
