Exhibition ‘OBAKU’ Opened

On March 15, the exhibition titled ‘OBAKU: Kyoto Uji Manpukuji no meihō to zen no shinpū’ opened at the Kyushu National Museum to commemorate the 350^th anniversary of the founding of Manpukuji temple, the head temple of the Ōbaku school of Zen Buddhism, established by Ingen Zenji who came from Ming China (until May 22). The exhibition featured 142 artefacts and materials preserved in Ōbaku temples, which brought the traditional Chinese Rinzai Zen teachings, Buddhist rituals, and life and culture in Ming China directly to seventeenth-century Japan. It consisted of five chapters: Chapter 1 ‘Hajimete no ōbakushū – mijikana ōbaku bunka (The First Encounter with Ōbaku – Ōbaku Culture Close at Hand)’; Chapter 2 ‘Tōjin tachi no Nagasaki (The Chinese in Nagasaki)’; Chapter 3 ‘Ingen tōrai (The Arrival of Ingen)’; Chapter 4 ‘Manpukuji no kaiso to kōryū (The Founding and Prosperity of Manpukuji Temple)’; and Chapter 5 ‘Ōbaku bunka (Ōbaku Cultural Renaissance)’. (Japanese)