Gangoku Gankei

Gangoku Gankei (1683–1767) was a mid-Edo Sōtō master who received transmission from Mokushi Soen and transmitted to Kokoku Soryu and Gento Sokuchu, active during the generation following the *shūtō fukko* reforms of Gesshū Sōko and Manzan Dōhaku. His career thus unfolded in the period when those reforms — which restored face-to-face Dharma transmission and revived study of Dōgen's *Shōbōgenzō* — were being consolidated and disseminated through the Sōtō institution^[1].

The reform movement launched by Gesshū and Manzan had, by Gangoku's generation, achieved sufficient institutional authority that the *garanbō* (hereditary transmission) system it had attacked was significantly curtailed. Gangoku's position in the lineage, transmitting to Gento Sokuchu who would continue the reformed line, places him in the generation responsible for normalising and extending the restored practice standards across the Sōtō provincial temple network. Dumoulin's account of the Edo Sōtō revival describes this post-reform generation as consolidating what the reformers had achieved^[1].