Yamada Ryōun

Masamichi "Ryōun-ken" Yamada (山田 凌雲軒, b. 1940) is the fourth patriarch of Sanbō Zen and the current abbot of the San-un Zendō in Kamakura — the only patriarch in the lineage who is also a blood descendant of its founder generation, as the son of Yamada Kōun and Dr Kazue Yamada^[1]. Born in Manchuria during his father's posting with the Manchurian Mining Company, he began sitting zazen under Yasutani Hakuun at sixteen and continued under his father, completing the Sanbō Kyōdan kōan curriculum in 1978 and receiving formal *shihō* from Yamada Kōun in 1985^[1][2].

Like his father he ran a parallel business career — first at Mitsubishi Bank, later as head of the Tokyo office-furniture firm Itoki Corporation — until his accession to the patriarchate on Kubota Ji'un's retirement in 2004^[1]. As fourth patriarch he has substantially expanded the lineage's teaching faculty: between 2009 and 2020 he conferred *shōshike* (full Zen Master) rank on five new teachers, including Migaku Sato in Japan and Henry Shukman in the United States, the latter the first North American shōshike in the Sanbō Zen line^[1][2]. In 2018 he renamed the organisation from its founding title Sanbō Kyōdan to the simpler "Sanbo Zen International," reflecting the network's evolution from a Japanese religious corporation to a globally distributed teaching school^[2].

He continues to teach from San-un Zendō, the family compound rebuilt by his parents in 1970, whose name 三雲禅堂 ("Practice Hall of the Three Clouds") refers to the three dharma-names of its successive patriarchs: Yasutani Hakuun ("white cloud"), Yamada Kōun ("cultivating cloud"), and Yamada Ryōun ("cloud dragon")^[2].