Japanese Zen: practice within a temple tradition

Community and temple activities

Zazen, or seated meditation, is connected with teacher–disciple relationships, precepts, study and ritual. Samu includes work such as cleaning within temple practice. Temples also conduct memorial services and maintain relationships with lay supporters.

A day in a training monastery

Sōtō’s account of a day in a training monastery places these activities within a daily routine. Early sitting is followed by chanting and worship; verses precede breakfast. Work, scripture study and lectures occupy parts of the day, with sitting again in the evening. Meals and work form part of this monastery’s religious routine.

Japanese encounters with Zen teachings preceded the Kamakura period, while distinct monasteries and networks developed particularly during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Eisai was an important transmitter of Rinzai Zen. Later arrivals and Japanese successors established further lineages. Japanese Rinzai’s branches thus descend from several transmissions.

The ranked temple network

Gozan, or the Five Mountains, organised temples through ranks and appointments. From the late thirteenth century, Hōjō authorities adapted a Southern Song model; Ashikaga Yoshimitsu revised the ranking in 1386, with the monastic office at Shōkokuji handling appointments. Warrior and court patronage, learning and cultural activity accompanied the monasteries’ religious life.

Growth outside the Five Mountains

Outside the Five Mountains stood lineages described as rinka, including the Eiheiji branch of Sōtō and Rinzai institutions such as Daitokuji and Myōshinji. These lineages expanded among regional communities during the Muromachi period, beyond the government-ranked network.

Dōgen’s return from China provided a major foundation for Japanese Sōtō. Successive disciples and Keizan helped extend its teaching and temple network. The school recognises both as founders, with Eiheiji and Sōjiji as its two head temples.

Rinzai traditions use kōan—questions or encounters from Zen teaching—in training guided by a teacher. Sōtō emphasises shikantaza, commonly translated as “just sitting”. Both traditions include seated meditation, texts and ritual, with practice varying between teachers and institutions.

Ingen arrived in Japan in 1654 and founded Manpukuji in 1661. Ōbaku brought practices and material culture associated with Ming-period Chinese Buddhism. Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) later gave renewed importance to kōan training in Rinzai, with lasting effects on its lineages. Exchange and reform continued long after the medieval transmissions.

Institutional changes and relocation

Zen temples have worked within political and local social structures. Sōjiji’s archival timeline records shogunal regulations in 1615 and a change from rotating abbots to a longer-term abbacy in 1870. After the 1898 fire, the temple moved to Tsurumi in 1911. Modern organisation, lay teaching and overseas dissemination form further stages.

Temples and local households

Relations between temples and households developed over time. Fumio Tamamuro’s study of the temple-parishioner system shows Sōtō temples conducting funerals for commoners as part of ordinary ritual life by around 1500. Under the Edo prohibition of Christianity, temples increasingly certified residents’ religious affiliation. Funerals, memorial rites and registration helped establish lasting household–temple relationships across several Buddhist schools.

Overseas missionary activity also became entangled with imperial expansion. In its statement of 20 November 1992, the Sōtō school acknowledged cooperation with aggression and colonial rule in its overseas activities from the Meiji period to 1945 and expressed remorse.