[4] Her biographer, Karma Lekshe Tsomo, states that Arai "learned to code-switch at home, toggling between the language and perspectives of her Japanese mother...and the North American cultural norms and expectations of her Anglo father".
While in her Ph.D. program, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in support of her dissertation, which included ethnographic and historical research about Japanese Zen nuns.
While in India, she was introduced to the writings of Aoyama Rōshi, the abbess of Aichi Senmon Nisōdō, a monastic training center for Sōtō Zen nuns in Nagoya, Japan.
[17][18] She conducted field work while raising her young son, which although was challenging, helped deepen her relationships with the lay women she studied.
[17] Arai later told Tsomo that she experienced untenable working environments for women, especially for women of color, including reviews of 75 percent of the courses she taught and as Tsomo put it, "as is quite common in the academy, she watched male candidates with fewer awards and achievements sail through the tenure process, only to see her own tenure process aborted".
[1][5] The Institute of Buddhist Studies called Arai's appointment "an historic moment for the empowerment of women committed to the Dharma".
[23] Tsomo states that Arai's pedagogical approach to teaching "draws heavily on ethnographic methods she developed for her research, where self-reflexive interaction drives the interchange".
[5] The institute also stated, when they announced her position there, that Arai "blends a rigorous academic background with a compassionate, embodied, and person-centered approach to teaching".
[24] According to Arai's faculty page on the LSU website, the book "changes the face of Zen scholarship with the restoration of women to historical accounts and a reassessment of religious practice and institutional patterns in light of prevailing gender relationships".
[18] Anna Grimshaw, in her review of Women Living Zen, states that while describing female monasticism, Arai resists "the androcentrism of much Buddhist scholarship".
[26][27][24] She called her subjects, whose narratives made up her study's ethnographic foundation, "consociates"; she created close ties with each of them by disclosing details of her own life and experiences surrounding the death of her mother and considered them as partners in her work.
[24] As Tsomo states, Arai took a professional risk in conducting her research in this way, but it was successful because it unmasked "the colonial penchant in religious studies".
[5] Another contribution Arai makes in Bringing Zen Home is "her discerning awareness of how Buddhist philosophy becomes a source of personal healing".
[31] The book explores "the healing dynamics of visual scripture in Iwasaki's art"[30] and required ethnographic field research and fluency in written and spoken Japanese because Arai conducted in-depth interviews with Iwaskaki and read primary and secondary materials.