Episode 547 – The Five Mountains, Part 1

September 27, 2024

This week on the Footnotes to the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: many describe Zen as the religion of the samurai. In reality, it was not–but samurai influence was crucial to making Zen a part of Japan’s cultural framework. That history is bound up in a system called the “Five Mountains”; so how did that system come to be?

Sources

Collcutt, Martin. “Zen and the Gozan”, in The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol III: Medieval Japan.

Collcutt, Martin. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan

Images

An Edo-period rendering of Hojo Masako late in life by Kikuchi Yosai.
Kenninji in Kyoto, the head temple of the Rinzai sect. Unlike Dogen, Eisai was willing to take patronage from the elite of Japan, and as a result for several centuries Rinzai as a sect was extremely connected and wealthy.
Kamakura’s Kenchoji, one of the Kamakura-based five mountains, founded by Rankei Doryu.
A portrait of Rankei Doryu, one of the most influential Chinese monks to come to Japan to spread Zen.