Oka Sōtan

Oka Sōtan (丘宗潭, 1860–1921) was a late-Meiji / Taishō Sōtō master, the founding (first) abbot of Antai-ji in northern Kyoto when it was constituted in 1921 as a *Shōbōgenzō*-study monastery, abbot of Daiji-ji, and president of the Sōtōshū / Komazawa University in 1918. He received Dharma transmission from Tōken Mitetsu, while undertaking *Shōbōgenzō* study under the great Meiji-era scholastic Nishiari Bokusan — Nishiari being a senior teacher and scholarly mentor rather than his shihō master, despite frequent loose conflation of the two roles in secondary sources^[1][2].

Although only the year of Antai-ji's founding remained for his abbacy before his death, Oka's influence on the twentieth-century Sōtō scholastic tradition is enormous: among the senior monks who passed through Daiji-ji and Antai-ji under his guidance were Sawaki Kōdō (whose own shihō came from Zenkō Sawada in 1906 — Oka was his principal training mentor, not his transmission teacher), Hashimoto Ekō, and Daiun Sogaku Harada. The institutional culture of Antai-ji as a Shōbōgenzō-research community was established under his initiative^[2].