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The Truth About the Kyōto Myōan Temple:
Origin, Founder, Lineage, Transmission?
京都 虚霊山/虛靈山 明暗寺)
Kyōto Myōan Temple website top banner photo collage
Updated on April 11, 2025.
On The European Shakuhachi Society's homepage, on the "Glossary" web page,
it reads as follows:
"Myōanji (
明暗寺) – Myōan temple, established within the compound of the Tōfukuji temple in Kyoto.
Myōanji was founded by Kyochiku Zenji and was throughout the Edo period a prominent
and influential centre of shakuhachi musicianship especially in the Kansai region.
Myōanji remained the centre for the Fuke style shakuhachi playing in which spirituality
continued to have great importance in shakuhachi playing."
Link: https://shakuhachisociety.eu/shakuhachi/glossary/
NECESSARY CORRECTIONS, T.O., January, 2025:
1: The present Myōanji was first established as an important ascetic 'shakuhachi' center for the 'Taizan-ha' tradition in 1950,
at the location of a small temple that was formerly named
'Zen-e'in',
善慧院,
a subtemple of the Tōfuku Temple in SE Kyoto.
The original Myōanji was first mentioned by an external source as late as about 1680 and then described as being located further to the north,
namely in the neighbourhood of the Sanjūsangen-dō, Higashiyama, Eastern Kyoto.
2: No, 'Kyochiku Zenji' is indeed not a historical person. He never lived, period!
Kyochiku Zenji was invented, fabricated, out of whole cloth!
The earliest known mention of that name is to be seen in a unique Myōanji document dated 1735.
Still, do note that Kyochiku Zenji does not appear in the Kyotaku denki, published in 1795!
Much more likely is it, to state the fact, that a person named Engetsu Ryōgen Zagen,
淵月了源座元, founded the "temple"
at sometime during the later part of the 17th century.
Acc. to Myōanji's official, traditional ancestor/transmitter list, Engetsu died in 1695 -
the precise date of his death is even stated by the Myō:an-ji,
which is the case with all the Myōan Temple's alleged forefathers listed - strange, pretty suspicious, indeed.
Importantly, too: All Kyōto Myōan-ji patriarchs previous to Engetsu listed officially and online
by the institution itself were deceitfully invented for political reasons, from scrach,
sometime maybe as late as during the middle decades of the 1800s.
An exhaustive investigation and clarification is on its way.
Link: Myōan Temple Genealogy
3: The 'shakuhachi' practice of the Myōanji should definitely not be described as "spiritual",
which is a Western Christian religious expression that does certainly not belong in a Japanese cultural context, at all!
It was at Myōanji, in 1950, that the term 'Suizen' first ever made its appearance,
presented by the temple's first ever genuinely ordained Zen Buddhist chief monk, Yasuda Tenzan.
Read more here:
1950s ... : The Origin of 'Suizen' at Kyōto Myōan-ji:
Kobayashi Shizan, Tomimori Kyozan,
Tanikita Muchiku, Yasuda Tenzan,
Hirazumi Taizan, Koizumi Ryōan,
Fukumoto Kyoan, Yoshimura Sōshin a.o.
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