The Founding of Kenchō-ji: The Zen Tokiyori Planted in Kamakura

In 1253 (Kenchō 5), at Kamakura. Hōjō Tokiyori was twenty-seven. In this year, at the ground of Kamakura Yamanouchi, Japan's first full-fledged Zen temple — Kenchō-ji — was opened.

The founding abbot was the Song monk Rankei Dōryū. A starting point in the history of Japanese Zen.

Rankei Dōryū (1213-1278) was a Zen monk from Fu Prefecture in Southern Song, and came to Japan in 1246.

Japanese Zen had already been transmitted in the early Kamakura period by Eisai and Dōgen, but Rankei was one of the first eminent monks to bring the full Song Rinzai Zen directly.

Tokiyori took deep refuge in Rankei and advanced the conception of building a full-fledged Zen temple in Kamakura.

Kenchō-ji is a design that strictly followed the ideal Zen Buddhist garan layout, forming a 'seven-hall garan' with the sanmon gate, the Buddha hall, the Dharma hall, and the abbot's quarters aligned in a straight line.

A new style of Japanese temple architecture, it became the model for later Zen temples.

Tokiyori was personally involved in leading the construction, and bore the shogunate's financial support and the securing of the site.

It is rare for a shikken at the peak of a warrior government to be so deeply involved in the founding of a religious institution.

There were multiple reasons for Tokiyori's protection of Zen. First, the practicality and simplicity of Zen matched the spirituality of the warrior class.

Second, Zen monks functioned as a window for cultural contact with Song. Third, the need for a sect independent of the political influence of existing exoteric-esoteric Buddhism (Tendai, Shingon).

From Tokiyori onward, the union of the Kamakura shogunate and Zen deepened, and would develop into the later Kamakura Five Mountains system (Kenchō-ji, Engaku-ji, Jufuku-ji, Jōchi-ji, Jōmyō-ji).

The union of warrior and Zen became one of the spiritual foundations of the warrior culture that followed.