Video artist Michael Goldberg counts himself lucky to have been able to work on projects that inspired him: those focusing on cross-cultural communication between Japan and the world.

But the nation's protracted economic slump has hit his business severely and is casting a shadow on his recent project, the first in-depth documentary in English and Japanese on Zen philosopher Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, who is credited with introducing Zen Buddhism to the West.

The 58-year-old Canadian has had to drastically downscale International Videoworks Inc., his production company of 14 years in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, because he and his wife can no longer afford the 720,000 yen in yearly rent.

"There is so little work that my wife, who supported my personal documentaries by (using) our children's education money, declared that the project has to be (put) on hold and that the office has to close," he said.

Goldberg had earned his living making corporate promotional videos and computer graphics, but he devoted his time, money and energy to his personal documentary projects, including "Hanayome Tachi ga Mita Nippon" ("Japan Witnessed by Foreign Wives"), a two-part film on foreign women married to Japanese in prewar Japan.

The film, broadcast on NHK in 1996, was highly rated by the media as a valuable record of the hardships and happiness of the women, who were torn not only by cultural differences but also by the war.

While that was about foreign women coming to and influencing Japan, his current piece is the opposite -- a man trying to get Westerners to understand and adopt Eastern ways of thinking.

"Better known as D.T. Suzuki abroad, the fame of the scholar, who lived in the U.S. for 12 years beginning in 1897, surpasses the recognition of most Japanese," Goldberg said. "He excelled at explaining Eastern thoughts in a way Western people could understand at a time when Japan was seen as a backward nation."

Suzuki influenced various Western intellectuals, including psychoanalyst Carl Jung, philosopher Martin Heidegger and composer John Cage.

He died in 1966 at age 95. Goldberg's film is an oral history, made up of interviews of people who personally knew or were taught by the philosopher. Mostly aged, they now live in Japan, Hawaii, the U.S. mainland and Europe.

"Making good documentaries never pays off," Goldberg said, adding that the foreign wives project, which received various grants, barely covered its expenses.

Goldberg is regarded as a pioneer in promoting video art in Japan, a medium he defines as free expression using video, including documentaries and image experiments.

Criticizing TV programs as "a mere one-way communication tool," Goldberg in 1970 began an international movement in Vancouver, British Columbia, calling on artists and community groups to make video artworks to express their views.

He said that although all of the equipment used, including the cameras, was made in Japan, no one responded from Japan because they had no concept of video art. Goldberg came to Japan in 1971 and co-organized an event in which he taught people how to film and edit videos. The works were later exhibited.

Japanese film experts say this marked the starting point in the nation's video art, creating leaders in the field.

Goldberg's current financial woes mark the first major crisis in his career, and the question now is how to complete the Suzuki project by 2005, when it will receive funding from the Japan Foundation.

He nonetheless feels the project is his mission, because he feels today's society can learn much from Suzuki's philosophy.

"Tension is very high in our world because people don't understand or respect different ways of thinking," he said. "But D.T. Suzuki was able to communicate to the West the Zen philosophy, (which) goes beyond all divergencies or polarities, such as East and West, or Christianity and Buddhism. I think his thought is especially relevant now."