Eisai 1141 – 1215

Myoan Eisai was a Japanese Buddhist monk who is credited with introducing the Rinzai school of Zen and the cultivation of green tea to Japan. After two study journeys to Song China, he received the transmission of the Linji Chan lineage and returned to establish Zen monasteries in Kyoto and Kamakura. His Treatise on the Promotion of Zen for the Protection of the Country defended the new school against Tendai opposition, while his Drink Tea and Prolong Life popularized the medical and meditative use of green tea among the samurai. His teaching shaped the broader Kamakura-period reformation of Japanese Buddhism.

Myōan Eisai was born in Bitchū province in western Japan in April 1141 into a Shinto priestly family. He entered the Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei at the age of fourteen, took full ordination, and made two long study pilgrimages to Song China — a brief tour in 1168 and a more extensive five-year stay from 1187 to 1191 — during which he received transmission in the Linji line of Chan from the master Xu'an Huaichang at Mount Tiantai.

On his return he founded the temple of Shōfuku-ji at Hakata in 1195, the first Zen monastery on Japanese soil; later, under the patronage of the new Kamakura shogunate, he founded Jufuku-ji at Kamakura in 1200 and Kennin-ji at Kyoto in 1202. His writings include the Kōzen Gokoku Ron (Treatise on the Promotion of Zen for the Protection of the Country, 1198), arguing that Zen would strengthen rather than threaten the established schools, and the Kissa Yōjō Ki (1211), the first Japanese treatise on tea, written for the seriously ill shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo.

Eisai is the founder of the Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition and was instrumental in introducing the cultivation and drinking of green tea to Japan from his Chinese seeds. His combination of Tendai esoteric ritual with Linji Chan set the template for medieval Japanese Zen and shaped centuries of warrior, tea, and temple culture. He died at Kennin-ji in July 1215.