Sodō Yokoyama

Sodō Yokoyama (横山祖道, 1907–1980), widely remembered as the *Kusabue Zenji* (草笛禅師, "Grass-Flute Zen Master"), was a Dharma heir of Kōdō Sawaki and one of the most idiosyncratic figures in the modern Sōtō tradition^[1]. He resided at Antai-ji from approximately 1949 to 1958, as the senior monk under Sawaki alongside Kōshō Uchiyama, and received Dharma transmission from Sawaki in 1958 — Sōtō Zen Buddhist Community Spain's biography calls him Sawaki's "third successor in Dharma"^[1][2].

After Antai-ji, Yokoyama renounced temple residence entirely and settled at Kaikō-en Park in Komoro, Nagano, where for some twenty-two years until his death he taught daily by sitting on a bench beside a stream and playing a leaf or blade of grass between his lips as a flute. He had no actual temple — the "Taiyō-zan Seikū-ji" name attached to him in some sources is an imaginary heart-temple. His sole confirmed disciple was Jōkō Shibata; Arthur Braverman's 2017 *Grass-Flute Zen Master: Sodō Yokoyama* is the principal English-language biography^[2].