Chronology

D. T. Suzuki and the Matsugaoka Bunko
1870 Born October 18 in Kanazawa, given name Teitarō.
1876 Enters municipal elementary school, father dies.
1882 Enters prefectural middle school.
1888 Accepted to national Fourth High School along with Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945). Soon forced to drop out due to family financial situation.
1889 Mother dies in April.
1892 Enrolls in special course in philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University. Engages in sanzen with Zen master Kōsen Imakita of Engaku-ji, an important Zen temple in Kamakura. After Kōsen's death, continues Zen practice under Sōen Shaku (1859-1919).
1894 Receives Zen koji name "Daisetz."
1896 Achieves first kenshō, insight into reality, under Sōen.
1897 Travels to America, where he remains until 1908. Employed by the Open Court Publishing Company, LaSalle, Illinois, as a member of the editorial staff. Focuses on Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhism.
1900 Publishes translation of Açvaghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, a work attracting the attention of the academic world.
1906 Meets future wife Beatrice Erskine Lane (1875-1939). Publishes Sōen's Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot.
1907 Publishes Outlines of Mahāyāna Buddhism.
1910 Appointed proffessor at prestigious Gakushūin, Peers School, Tokyo.
1911 Marries Lane in Yokohama.
1918 Sōen stipulates in his will that a Buddhist library be built on the hillside behind his temple, Tōkei-ji, and named the Matsugaoka Bunko.
1919 With Sōen's death, Suzuki foreswears any further sanzen.
1921 Appointed professor at Ōtani University, Kyoto. Founds the Eastern Buddhist Society, issues first number of the Eastern Buddhist journal.
1927 Publishes Essays in Zen Buddhism, the first of a three-volume series.
1930 Publishes Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra.
1934 Awarded doctorate from Ōtani University. Embarks on a forty-day tour of China in a semi-diplomatic capacity.
1936 Attends the World Congress of Faiths, London, as official representative of Japan.
1937 Young scholar Shōkin Furuta (1911-2001) calls on Suzuki with a question concerning a Buddhist translation.
1939 Beatrice dies in Kyoto.
1944 Publishes Japanese Spirituality (in Japanese).
1946 Establishes the Matsugaoka Bunko Foundation with himself as first chairman of the board of directors.
1949 Appointed member of the Japan Academy. Awarded Cultural Order of Merit. Attends Philosophy East and West Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, as official representative of Japan.
1950 Moves to the U. S. mainland, living first in California and then in New York, with occasional trips to Japan.
1958 Publishes his iconic Zen and Japanese Culture, an expanded version of his 1938 work. Begins to work on a translation of Shinran's Kyōgyōshinshō. Returns to Japan for good.
1959 Continues his life of research and writing while living at the Matsugaoka Bunko.
1966 Dies at St. Luke's Hospital, Tokyo on July 12  at the age 95. Sazō Idemitsu appointed second chairman, Matsugaoka Bunko Foundation Board of Directors.
1967 Shōkin Furuta appointed head of the Matsugaoka Bunko to oversee the Suzuki literary estate.
1968 First edition of the Collected Writings of D. T. Suzuki (in Japanese) completed in thirty volumes, followed by a second (1980) and a third expanded edition (1999) in forty volumes.
1981 Shōsuke Idemitsu appointed third chairman, Matsugaoka Bunko Foundation Board of Directors.
1987 Matsugaoka Bunko begins Annual Report of Researches of the Matsugaoka Bunko.
2003 Reverend Shōdō Inoue appointed fourth chairman, Matsugaoka Bunko Foundation Board of Directors.
2005 Matsugaoka Bunko monograph series begun.
2006 Matsugaoka Bunko publishes Tsuisō: Suzuki Daisetsu (Reminiscences: Daisetz Suzuki), a collection of essays to commemorate the fortieth year since his death.