Zenshō-an Temple

Overview

Zenshō-an (全生庵) is a Buddhist temple of the Rinzai school of Zen, standing in the Yanaka district of Taitō ward in eastern Tokyo. It was founded in 1883, the sixteenth year of the Meiji era (明治, meiji, the reign name used from 1868 to 1912). The temple is best known for a collection of Japanese ghost paintings — images of yūrei (幽霊, yūrei, the restless spirits of the dead) — that are normally put on public display in August, the month traditionally associated with the return of the dead. It has also drawn a long line of prominent visitors and supporters from Japanese public life, including the prime ministers Nakasone Yasuhiro and Shinzō Abe.

History

Zenshō-an was established in 1883, during the Meiji period (1868–1912), a time when Tokyo was being rebuilt as the capital of a rapidly modernising state and many older religious institutions were being reorganised or relocated. The temple belongs to the Rinzai tradition, one of the major schools of Japanese Zen, which traces its practice to meditation under a teacher and to the study of kōan (公案, kōan, paradoxical riddles used as objects of meditation).

Over the following decades the temple accumulated its distinctive collection of yūrei paintings. These works are thought to have been kept in family possession during the Edo period (1603–1868), the long span of Tokugawa rule that preceded the Meiji era, in part as a means of warding off evil. The paintings thus passed from private households into the temple's care, where they became the core of its identity.

The temple's association with national political figures is a later development. Nakasone Yasuhiro, who served as prime minister in the 1980s, and Shinzō Abe, who held the office in the 2000s and 2010s, are both counted among the influential Japanese figures who have been closely connected with Zenshō-an. In the summer of 2015 the temple mounted a large exhibition of its holdings in cooperation with the Tokyo University of the Arts.

What Stands There Today

The temple occupies a site in Yanaka, a neighbourhood in Taitō ward that survived the twentieth-century destruction that reshaped much of central Tokyo, and which is known today for its older streetscape and its concentration of temples. Zenshō-an's principal draw is its collection of yūrei paintings, which are customarily exhibited in August. The timing follows the traditional Japanese understanding of the eighth month as the season of spirits and ghosts, when the dead are believed to return.

The 2015 exhibition, organised jointly with the Tokyo University of the Arts, was a large-scale presentation of the collection and brought the temple's ghost paintings to a wider public. The temple continues to function as an active Rinzai Zen foundation rather than as a museum, so access to the paintings is tied to the exhibition calendar rather than to a permanent display.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 全生庵. It is read in kana as ぜんしょうあん, and in romaji as Zenshō-an. The long ō in the second syllable reflects the combination of a kanji read shō with the following character. The name breaks down into three kanji.

全 — read here as zen. The character means "all", "whole", or "complete". It is the same character used in words like 全部 (zenbu, "everything") and 全国 (zenkoku, "the whole country"). In this name it carries the sense of entirety or completeness.

生 — read here as shō. This is one of the most productive characters in Japanese, and its meaning shifts with its reading. As shō it means "life", "birth", or "living"; the same character read as i appears in 生きる (ikiru, "to live"), and read as sei in 学生 (gakusei, "student"). In the temple's name it contributes the idea of life or of being alive.

庵 — read here as an. The character means "hermitage", "thatched hut", or "small retreat". It is the standard element in the names of small Buddhist hermitages and retreats, and it signals that the place is a modest dwelling rather than a great monastic complex. The same character appears in the names of tea houses and of the thatched huts used in the tea ceremony.

Taken together, the three characters give a name that can be rendered as "Hermitage of Complete Life" or "Hermitage of All Living Things" — a name that sits oddly beside the temple's reputation for ghost paintings, and which points instead to a Zen foundation concerned with life and its full span.

Visiting and Context

Zenshō-an sits in Yanaka, within easy reach of the Yanaka Cemetery and the surrounding temple district of Taitō ward. The neighbourhood is one of the few parts of Tokyo where the pre-war street pattern and a dense cluster of Buddhist temples remain intact, and it is commonly visited on foot as a single route.

The decisive fact for anyone planning a visit is the exhibition calendar: the yūrei paintings are normally shown in August, the traditional month of spirits and ghosts, and are not on permanent view at other times of year. The temple's long connection with figures such as Nakasone Yasuhiro and Shinzō Abe places it within the network of Tokyo temples that have served as spiritual anchors for prominent public figures, while its 2015 collaboration with the Tokyo University of the Arts links it to the city's contemporary art institutions as well as to its religious history.