Kangan GiinKangan Giin (寒巌義尹, 1217–1300) was a disciple of Dōgen and the founder of the Higo school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism. It has been claimed that his father was Emperor Go-Toba or Emperor Juntoku. He did much evangelization work in Kyūshū, where he founded Daiji-ji (大慈寺) in Kumamoto. Before practicing with Dōgen, Giin started his Buddhist path as a Tendai monk. He later abandoned that school and became a member of Daruma School under Kakuzen Ekan.
Nōnin(fl. 1190s) was a Japanese Buddhist monk who started the first Zen school in Japan. While a monk with the Tendai school, he came across texts about Zen which had been brought from China. In 1189, he dispatched two of his disciples to China to meet with Zhuóān Déguāng (拙庵德光, 1121–1203), himself a student of the Rinzai master Dahui Zonggao. The disciples presented a letter Nonin had written describing his realization from practicing Zen on his own. Deguang apparently approved and sent a letter certifying Nonin’s enlightenment.
Kennin-jiis a historic Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, and head temple of its associated branch of Rinzai Buddhism. It is considered to be one of the so-called Kyoto Gozan or "five most important Zen temples of Kyoto". Kennin-ji was founded in 1202 CE and claims to be the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto. The monk Eisai, credited with introducing Zen to Japan, served as Kennin-ji's founding abbot and is buried on the temple grounds. For its first years the temple combined Zen, Tendai, and Shingon practices, but it became a purely Zen institution under the eleventh abbot, Lanxi Daolong (1213–1278).
