Kennin-ji

is 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). The Zen master Dōgen, later founder of the Japanese Sōtō sect, trained at Kennin-ji. It is one of the Rinzai sect's headquarter temples. Kennin-ji is the main temple of the Kennin-ji branch, one of the 14 divisions of the Rinzai sect. The branch is regarded to have 72 temples throughout Japan, and approximately 25,000 adherents. When first built, the temple contained seven principal buildings. After suffering from fires through the centuries, it was rebuilt in the mid-thirteenth century by Zen master Enni. In the 13th century, it was damaged by fighting during the Onin War as well as several unrelated fire incidents, precipitating its reconstruction during the 16th century with donations of buildings from nearby temples Ankoku-ji and Tōfuku-ji. Due to further damage and destruction in the succeeding centuries (including the Haibutsu kishaku movement during the Meiji era), many of its structures were also rebuilt during the Edo period and the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras, such as the Kuri (rebuilt in 1814), the Reito-in (rebuilt in 1853) and the Kaisan-dō (rebuilt in 1884). Today Kennin-ji's buildings include the Abbot's Quarters (Hōjō), given by Ankoku-ji in 1599; the Dharma Hall (Hatto), built in 1765; a tea house built in 1587 to designs by tea master Sen no Rikyū for Toyotomi Hideyoshi; and the Imperial Messenger Gate (Chokushimon), said to date from the Kamakura period, and still showing marks from arrows.