Kenchō Temple

Kencho-ji in Kamakura is Japan's first purely Zen temple and the head temple of the Rinzai school. It was founded in 1253 by regent Hojo Tokiyori under the Chinese Chan master Lanxi Daolong (Rankei Doryu in Japanese), who imported strict Song-dynasty Zen structures directly from China to Kamakura. The complex thus became the cradle of organized Rinzai Zen in Japan and holds rank one in the Gozan order of Kamakura's five great Zen temples. The long site lines up the Sanmon gate of 1775, the Buddha hall with its Jizo Bosatsu statue, and the Hatto lecture hall with a dragon ceiling from 2003. Behind the main court opens the Hojo garden, one of the few surviving Kamakura-period Zen gardens - with a pond said to have been the meditation focus of founder Rankei Doryu.