Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) was a Japanese translator, teacher, and constructive interpreter of Zen Buddhist thought to the West.

Teitaro Suzuki was born in Kanazawa in western Japan on October 18, 1870. His ancestors as well as his father, grandfather, and great grandfather were physicians of the samurai class. Suzuki was expected to follow in their footsteps, but with the death of his father while he was six his family was unable to bear the expense of a medical education. At about 17, he said, he began to contemplate the misfortunes of his family as manifested in the early deaths of his father, grandfather, and great grandfather. He turned to the Rinzai temple where his family was registered. Upon graduation from secondary school he became an English teacher in Takojima, a fishing village on the Noto peninsula, and later at Mikawa, a town near Kanazawa. From 1888 to 1889 he studied at Ishikawa...