Far from wishing to awaken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign control of his craft.

While Suzuki seems to endorse this identification since he wrote the introduction to the post-war edition of Herrigel's book he wrote later that "Herrigel is trying to get to Zen but he hasn't grasped Zen itself". In July 1929 he returned to Germany and was given a chair for philosophy at the University of Erlangen. Among his papers were found voluminous notes on various aspects of Zen.

In July 1929 he returned to Germany and was given a chair for philosophy at the University of Erlangen. Eugen Herrigel (20 March 1884 in Lichtenau Baden – 18 April 1955 in Partenkirchen Bavaria) was a German philosopher who taught philosophy at Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai Japan from 1924-1929 and introduced Zen to large parts of Europe through his writings.