Ink Drawing of Three Laughing Masters (a Buddhist Monk, a Poet, and a Taoist) at Kokei

Sengai Gibon (1750-1837) was a Zen monk of the Rinzai school in the late Edo period. He was also known as Entsū, Tenmin, Hyakudō, Kohaku, and others. In Kansei 1 (1789), he became the resident priest of Fukuoka Shōfukuji Temple and devoted himself to its restoration. Shōfukuji Temple was founded in Kenkyū 6 (1195) by Eisai, the founder of the temple, and Minamoto no Yoritomo, its patron of a temple in its founding. On the Sanmon (Main Gate), there is a plaque with the Retired Emperor Gotoba’s imperial inscription: ‘Fusō saisho zenkutsu (the first Zen temple in Japan).’

In Bunka 8 (1811), he retired to Kohakuin inside Shōfukuji Temple. He devoted himself to zazen meditation, and in the meantime, he excelled at calligraphy and painting. His caricatural style of painting and witty and unexpected content made him a popular lecturer on the essentials of Zen. Along with Hakuin Ekaku, he is a representative of early modern Zen painting of the Rinzai sect. Three Laughing Masters at Kokei is based on an anecdote from the Eastern Jin dynasty of China. The monk Huiyuan (334-416) built Donglin Temple in Lushan (Jiangxi Province) and formed the White Lotus Society to deepen his Pure Land philosophy, in which he prayed for rebirth in the Amitabha Pure Land through Nembutsu. For more than 30 years, he never left the mountain, using Kokei as a place to send guests. One day, Tao Yuanming (poet, 365-427) and Lu Xiujing (Taoist, ?-477) visited Huiyuan. When Huiyuan sent them off, getting carried away by a conversation about Qingtan, Huiyuan crossed a stone bridge over the Kokei without realizing. When the three realized what had happened, they had a good laugh. The three were active in different periods, making this is a later legend. However, it later became the subject of a lecture on the unity of the three religions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and was often depicted in Japanese ink paintings as Zen paintings. The works of Sesshū Tōyō, Kaihō Yūshō, Ikeno Taiga, among others, are well-known depictions of this theme.

In Sengai’s unique style, you can feel the three of them laughing more joyfully than in any other “Ink Drawing of Three Laughing Masters at Kokei.”