Shaku Sokatsu

Tetsuō Sōkatsu (釈宗活, 1870–1954) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen rōshi and dharma heir of Shaku Sōen, ordained at Engaku-ji and confirmed as Sōen's successor at the close of the nineteenth century^[1]. From his master he received responsibility for **Ryōmōkai** (Ryōmō-an), the lay-focused Tokyo hermitage through which Sōen had opened formal Zen training to non-monastics — a deliberate experiment in carrying the koan curriculum beyond the ordained sangha^[2].

In 1906, with a small party of disciples including Gotō Zuigan and Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki, Sōkatsu travelled to California in an early attempt to plant Rinzai practice on the Pacific coast, returning to Japan in 1910^[1]. Ryōmōkai continued in Tokyo until it was dissolved at the end of the Second World War, but the lineage Sōkatsu carried out of Engaku-ji passed onward through his two principal heirs: **Gotō Zuigan**, who became one of the most institutionally prominent Rinzai abbots of mid-twentieth-century Japan, and **Sokei-an Sasaki**, who founded the First Zen Institute of America in New York^[2].