Editor’s Note
This essay is reprinted with permission from Su Xiaohua, a cross-cultural researcher, scholar, and collector of classical art.
Trained in oil painting restoration in Rome, Su has participated in the restoration of works attributed to Giotto and his circle. Su`s research spans Renaissance painting and print culture, East Asian Zen thought, and the material transmission of images, texts, and spiritual ideas across civilizations. Through this materially grounded practice, his work consistently bridges European humanist traditions with East Asian intellectual and religious history.dedicated to voices that approach culture as a living discipline,
The friendship between Su and the founder of Concinnitas began through a shared interest in the collection and study of Albrecht Dürer’s prints. Su holds a significant collection in this field, including notable impressions related to Melencolia I, and has organized scholarly discussion forums in which he has shared his research and insights with fellow scholars.
Through the intertwined figures of Ryōkan and Yanagida Seizan, this essay reflects on the deep spiritual resonance between Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions, not as abstract doctrine, but as lived experience shaped by poetry, calligraphy, objects, and historical circumstance.
At Concinnitas, we present this text as part of our Perspective series, which is dedicated to voices that approach culture as a living discipline, one grounded in material knowledge, historical depth, and reflective practice.
— Concinnitas Journal
If Ryōkan Were Me — Then Who Is This “I”?
This was a question repeatedly posed in his later years by Yanagida Seizan, one of the most eminent Japanese scholars of Zen Buddhism.
Having devoted his entire life to the historical study of Zen and having achieved extraordinary scholarly distinction, Yanagida had, by that time, become something of a living encyclopedia of Zen. Yet as time passed and his body aged, a quiet unease began to surface within him.
Yanagida gradually realized that as his research penetrated ever deeper into the textual history of Zen, another world — a profound and submerged spiritual dimension lying beyond words — was beginning to reveal itself, like the tip of an iceberg.
The “experiential Zen” that Yanagida had once relentlessly criticized now returned to summon him, urging him toward action.
Although Yanagida knew the life of Linji (Rinzai) inside and out, revisiting the Way of Linji at this stage felt like confronting a towering mountain — magnificent, yet impossible to approach.
Among those who most vividly embodied the spirit of Linji in Yanagida’s writings was Ikkyū. Yet Ikkyū’s wild temperament, unruly brilliance, and fierce vitality made him equally impossible to emulate.
“Ikkyū overwhelms us without explanation — an imagination that cannot be put to rest. Ryōkan, dwelling in his thatched hut, by contrast, is filled with love: a deep and steady passion. Living in a land of bitter cold, surrounded by poverty, Ryōkan never blamed heaven or others… Such a character never fails to bring tears to my eyes.”
Thus Ryōkan of the snowbound province of Echigo became the inner measure of Yanagida’s later life.
“I must rediscover Ryōkan anew… I avoided discussing him in earlier lectures because a ‘Ryōkan boom’ was already in full swing, and I saw no reason to follow fashion.”
So Yanagida once remarked.
Living in austere poverty, carrying only a single bowl and ladle as he wandered the land, Ryōkan embodied the archetype of the itinerant monk. For nearly half a century after his death, he was largely forgotten.
In the 1980s, as Japan’s economy surged and the anxieties of modernization spread, intellectuals and cultural figures began to reflect deeply on the nation’s spiritual condition. A call arose to “counter anxiety and fear through the serenity of religion.”
Ryōkan re-emerged as a spiritual remedy. His refined calligraphy and detached way of life came to represent an alternative mode of living, inspiring artists to return to the aesthetic spirit of East Asian Zen.
Suddenly, Ryōkan’s hometown, his hermitages, even his dilapidated grass huts became popular pilgrimage sites.
Yanagida regarded this trend as shallow and opportunistic:
“Unskilled at mingling with the dusty world,
Alone and free — that surpasses me.
This is Ryōkan’s Way.”
This verse was written by Ryōkan in the third year of Kansei (1791). At thirty-four, having settled the funeral affairs of his teacher, Dainin Kokusen, Ryōkan embarked upon a solitary pilgrimage — marking the birth of “Great Fool Ryōkan.”
Unlike many admirers, Yanagida never traveled to Echigo as a pilgrim. He believed that he understood Ryōkan more deeply than anyone else — at times even feeling that their minds resonated without obstruction.
Though formally of the Sōtō Zen lineage, Ryōkan spent the latter half of his life far from temples, wandering as an itinerant monk. What binds his life together are the Chinese poems he composed — works that continue to be widely cherished.
The guiding principle of Ryōkan’s lifelong practice derived from the teachings of ancient Chinese Zen. In this, he resembled many eminent monks in Japanese history: they carried wisdom transmitted from distant lands, enduring hardship to uphold the patriarchal Way.
Their use of classical Chinese was itself a form of “looking back” — a heartfelt return to Sinological roots. Through language, through creation, through groping in obscurity, they traced a path back to China, ultimately achieving silent communion with the ancient patriarchs.
Thus Yanagida sought to return to the spiritual origin of Ryōkan — the origin of Zen itself: China.
“If Ryōkan were me — then who is this ‘I’?”
His aged body once again heard the mysterious call. A long-dormant fighting spirit ignited within.
He resolved to witness, with his own eyes, the ancient and enduring bond between China and Japan.
“I must carry it back to Mount Emei!”
This occurred in the early winter of Bunsei 8 (1825), along the Miyagawa River in Niigata. At the age of sixty-seven, the elderly Ryōkan insisted on carrying a wooden pillar across the sea.
Carved upon a blackened beam, eight shaku seven sun long and two shaku wide, were the characters:
“Bridge Beneath Mount Emei.”
It was said that the beam had once been a bridge pillar at the foot of Mount Emei in Tang China, snapped by mountain floods and carried across the seas by drifting currents.
In the isolationist Edo period, such an event stirred great wonder. Poets gathered along the desolate shore, composing verses in response.
The Bunsei era had witnessed earthquakes, tsunamis, famine, and peasant uprisings. Artists bore the deep scars of their time, overwhelmed by unprecedented despair. The sudden appearance of this piece of driftwood ignited their imagination.
A century after the Ōbaku monk Yinyuan, the land once again heard the resonant tones of Tang China.
Ryōkan, en route to recuperate at the Kimura household, passed by and recorded the event:
Unknown when it was first erected,
Its calligraphy firm and fresh.
Clearly the Bridge beneath Mount Emei,
Drifted here to Miyagawa’s shore.
While others praised the beam with ornate prose or sought to enshrine it, Ryōkan resolved to act — to carry it back to Mount Emei himself.
To onlookers, he appeared a mad monk. Only the nun Teishin believed in him completely.
To her, all of Ryōkan’s words and actions were sacred revelations. Though she could not yet comprehend them, she trusted the depth of his realization and chose to listen and feel rather than question.
Fearing for his frail body, she sought help to transport the beam to Nagasaki for passage across the sea. Wherever Ryōkan went, she vowed to follow.
Snowstorms grew fiercer. Understanding between people proved fragile. Passion went unheard.
“Never mind,” Ryōkan whispered. “People are forgetful.”
The beam was laid down. Supporting each other, they disappeared into the snow.
Yanagida regarded this as a work of “illumination,” where object and self dissolve — recalling Li Bai’s Song of the Moon over Mount Emei. He believed he himself had responded to that resonance.
In August 1990, Yanagida, committed to Sino-Japanese friendship, erected Ryōkan’s poem stele at Qingyin Pavilion on Mount Emei. It later became known as the “Sino-Japanese Stele Pavilion.”
On the reverse, Zhao Puchu inscribed:
The Zen master’s verse bears witness to the drifting bridge,
Flowing to Miyagawa’s ancient crossing.
Today it flows back as a single stone,
Its clear resonance shared with the autumn moon.
After Ryōkan’s death, Teishin wandered alone through the mountains, comforting the poor and conducting rites for the dead. She suffered deception, humiliation, and theft.
Returning to Miyagawa, she found the beam enshrined but forgotten.
“Why remind and help people who are so forgetful?”
On a winter night, she sat in meditation, embracing fear and solitude.
Recalling days at Enkō-ji, I sighed at the loneliness of our Way…
And thus her journey ended — in silence.