Zenkan
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- Japanese: 禅鑑 (Zenkan)
Zenkan was a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Kamakura period, who is believed to have been the first to introduce Buddhism into the Ryûkyû Islands.
He became castaway or shipwrecked in Ryûkyû at some point in the 1250s or 1260s. There, he managed to convince the Okinawan king Eiso to convert to Buddhism, and in 1265 Zenkan established the temple of Gokuraku-ji in the Okinawan capital of Urasoe.
References
- "Zenkan," Nihon jinmei daijiten, Kodansha, 2015.
