Shinshoji Zen Temple

Shinshoji is a Rinzai Zen temple, its grounds are laid out as a museum of Zen and gardens, where old temple buildings, tea houses, modern architecture and a collection of Zen painting stand among linked gardens.

The temple was founded in 1965 and belongs to the Kenninji branch of the Rinzai school. Its founder invited the Zen master Ekishu Soshin, then head of that branch, to be its first abbot, and named the temple after his own father. The image in the main hall is of Miroku, a Buddha who is believed to appear in the world far in the future.

The buildings have been gathered here from several places. Ganku-in was moved from Eigenji in Shiga Prefecture, where it was first built in the fourteenth century and rebuilt in 1647; it now serves tea. The zazen hall came from Kenchoji in Kamakura and is about 250 years old. The main gate was brought from a former imperial residence in Kyoto.

Two tea houses have been reconstructed from old drawings, one of them the small room Sen no Rikyu is said to have built in his last years. The reception hall, Shodo, is modern, the work of the architect Fujimori Terunobu, with a roof of hand-bent copper planted with a pine.

Visitors can sit zazen or copy sutras, and udon is served in the refectory in the manner of a training hall, from bowls of the kind monks use.

The temple holds about 200 paintings and pieces of calligraphy by Hakuin, one of the largest such collections in the country, shown in turn through the year in the hall called Shogondo.

Standing apart from them is Kohtei, a pavilion by the sculptor Nawa Kohei and his studio Sandwich. It is shaped like a boat and clad entirely in timber, and inside it is an installation of light moving on water.