Short answers, pulled from the story.
D. T. Suzuki was a Japanese essayist, philosopher, religious scholar, and translator born in Honda-machi, Kanazawa. He is best known for spreading knowledge of Zen and Shin Buddhism to Western audiences through decades of writing, translation, and teaching, including a professorship at Columbia University from 1952 to 1957.
Suzuki held a professorship at Ōtani University in Kyoto for two decades beginning in 1921, taught at Gakushuin University and the University of Tokyo from 1909, and later taught at Columbia University from 1952 to 1957. He also served as an exchange professor at the University of London in 1936.
Suzuki was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963.
The Buddhist name Daisetsu was given to Suzuki by his Zen master Soyen Shaku. The kanji can mean both "Great Humility" and "Greatly Clumsy".
Suzuki wrote extensively on Jōdo Shinshū, publishing numerous works and lectures on Pure Land Buddhism between 1949 and 1953. In his book Buddha of Infinite Light he declared Shin teaching the most remarkable development Mahayana Buddhism had achieved in East Asia, and he produced an incomplete English translation of the Kyogyoshinsho, the principal work of Shinran, founder of the Jōdo Shinshū school.
In a series of articles published in the Japanese Buddhist newspaper Chūgai Nippō in October 1936, Suzuki expressed agreement with accounts of contentment under Hitler's rule and wrote that Hitler's expulsion of Jews might be necessary for German national happiness, though he called it a very cruel policy. Scholar Brian Victoria publicized this record in lectures in Germany in 2012. Other scholars, citing Suzuki's private letters and public talks, argue he consistently opposed State Shinto and militarism.