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School of Japanese Zen Buddhism

The Ōbaku shū (黄檗宗) is one of three main schools of Zen in Japanese Buddhism, in addition to Sōtō and Rinzai. It had a strong influence on Japanese Rinzai, which partly adopted Ōbaku practices, and partly reinstored older practices in response to the Ōbaku school.

Often termed the third sect of Zen Buddhism in Japan, Ōbaku shū was established in 1661 by a small faction of masters from China and their Japanese students at Manpuku ji in Uji, Japan. The development of the Ōbaku shū in Japan began somewhere around 1620, a period when Chinese emigrants were coming to Nagasaki due to a decree by the shogunate allowing Chinese traders to conduct business there. The Chinese traders, in turn, began to request that monks from China come to Nagasaki "to serve the religious needs of their community and build monasteries in the late Ming style with which they were familiar." The Chinese community was therefore thrilled when the founder of the Ōbaku, a master of the Linji school/sect named Yinyuan Longqi (J. Ingen Ryūki), arrived from China in Nagasaki in 1654 with a small group of his Chinese students. Furthermore, Yinyuan himself was happy to get away from China, which was then amidst a terrible war. Yinyuan was there with the explicit purpose of helping three underdeveloped temples founded by Chinese emigrants grow in the city. These Nagasaki temples were known as the three "temples of good fortune," respectively Kōfuku ji, Fukusai ji and Sōfuku ji. In time many Japanese heard of his teachings and traveled to Nagasaki to see him, while some came to join his community and become students. Having planned to stay in Japan for a short period of time, Yinyuan was persuaded by a group of his Japanese students to remain in Japan; this group secured him governmental permission to relocate to Kyoto, where his student Ryūkai Shōsen wished he would then become abbot of the Rinzai temple Myoshin ji. Authorities within the Rinzai organization were not keen on this idea, due primarily to a disagreement within the congregation as to whether or not Yinyuan presented a take on Zen that was too distinctly Chinese for Japanese tastes. ), the Ōbaku shu emerged to help revitalize Rinzai practice in Japan. The practice at Manpuku ji was different from that in other Rinzai temples and monasteries of Japan during this period, being much more Chinese in its approach. Yinyuan brought with him aspects of esoteric Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism. As Heinrich Dumoulin puts it, "For Zen practice in general, seated meditation and the practice of kōan are central, while cultic ceremony is of secondary importance. Insofar as the Ōbaku belonged to the Rinzai tradition, zazen and kōan practice were made part of daily life, but ritual was also accorded a place of considerable importance." and death in 1673, other monks who had come to Japan around the same time as he helped to carry on the tradition of practice at Manpuku ji. The foremost of his disciples was Mokuan Shōtō, who became 2nd abbot of Manpuku ji in 1664. During its formative years, Manpuku ji was very popular in Japan with many adherents coming to the temple for instruction. Perhaps the most important Ōbaku practitioner besides Yinyuan Longqi was Tetsugen Dōkō, a Japanese man who lived from 1630 to 1682. Tetsugen is remembered for having transcribed the entire Ming period Chinese Tripitaka to woodblocks—known as the Tetsugen ban or Ōbaku ban (ban meaning edition). Raised as part of the Jōdo Shinshū of Japan, Tetsugen first met Yinyuan in 1655 at Kōfuku ji in Nagasaki and eventually came to join the Ōbaku.

Monastic practices of the Ōbaku shū were once largely informed by the Ōbaku shingi (or, Ōbaku codes), composed in 1672 with ten sections outlining the practice regimen at Manpuku ji. Steven Heine writes that, "The text reflected a few evolutionary changes that had taken place in Chinese monasteries since the Yuan, but it was squarely in the tradition of classical rules of purity such as the Chanyuan qingui and Chixiu baizhang qingqui." The Rinzai branch Myōshin ji authored their own set of monastic regulations (penned by Mujaku Dōchū) in response to this later in 1685. The Ōbaku shū emphasized the taking of various precepts and also observed the Vinaya of the Dharmaguptaka tradition as well as sutra translation. But perhaps most obvious to the Japanese was their use of nembutsu and also their use of the "nembutsu kōan" which entailed the practice of reciting the name of Amitabha while holding in one's mind the kōan, "Who is reciting?" While foreign to the Japanese (despite this "dual practice" being introduced in Japan as early as the late 13th century), this was very common in Ming period Ch'an, where there was no sectarian divide between Pure Land Buddhists and Ch'an practitioners.

In addition to their contribution to Zen in Japan, the Ōbaku also "disseminated many aspects of Ming period culture" in the country. Many of the monks who came from China were accomplished calligraphers, and Obaku's founder Yinyuan Longqi and two other Ōbaku masters, Mokuan Shōtō and Sokuhi Nyoitsu, became known as the Ōbaku no Sanpitsu (or, the "Three Brushes of Ōbaku"). Author Steven Heine writes, "Areas where the influence of — or the reaction to — Ōbaku left an imprint on Japanese Buddhism is manifold, and its impact even reached the fields of Japanese cultural techniques, such as printing and painting. Chinese medicine and architecture were also introduced, as was the practice of "spirit writing", the latter practiced by Ōbaku monks who were said to communicate with Chen Tuan. The Ōbaku school is also well known for its style of vegetarian cooking known as (普茶料理), its version of Buddhist cuisine (in Japan known as (精進料理)). This is similar to usual shōjin ryōri, but with more Chinese influence. It was introduced by Yinyuan and his group, and served at the main temple of Manpuku ji, along with various subtemples such as Kanga an. The Ōbaku school also introduced loose leaf tea to Japan. This would later produce a variant of the Japanese tea ceremony which uses sencha leaf tea, rather than the more usual matcha powdered tea.

Manpuku ji – Construction began in 1661 and concluded in 1669. Located in Kyoto, Manpuku ji serves as the head temple of the Ōbaku school. It provides a "rare example" of a temple built in a purely Chinese Ming period architectural style in Japan.