Transcription of a Letter from Zekkai Chūshin to Shippei Shikai

This transcription records the contents of a letter composed by the Zen monk Zekkai Chūshin (1336–1405) and addressed to his colleague Shippei Shikai (died 1381), congratulating him on his appointment as abbot of the prestigious Tenryūji Monastery. Written after Zekkai’s decade of study in China, when he was serving as shuso, or chief monk, at Tenryūji, the letter demonstrates his mastery of administrative matters, diplomatic finesse, and literary refinement.

Compared with Zekkai’s surviving writings, including known examples of his correspondence, the brushwork here is sharper and thinner: strokes often begin with a diagonal, pointed tip, while horizontal strokes frequently end in triangular terminals. These features are generally absent from Zekkai’s more restrained hand, whose strokes show greater variation in thickness and less exposed brush tips. Through tight, meticulous characters for expressions of humility, quickly brushed running script for hopes that Shippei would save Zen Buddhism from moral degeneracy, and formal characters for the courteous closing, the transcription can be considered a skillful bokuseki in its own right.

Zekkai Chūshin, one of the most highly esteemed scholar-poet monks in the history of Zen Buddhism in Japan, was a direct disciple of Musō Soseki (1275–1351), with whom he is believed to have begun his Zen apprenticeship as a youth in 1349. Still using his youthful name Yōkan, he traveled to China from 1368 to 1376. In 1372 Yōkan received the name Zekkai from a prominent Chinese Zen monk, and in 1376 he was granted an audience with the Ming emperor. Upon his return home, Zekkai held numerous important posts, a temple that was the top administrative and scholarly post at Shōkokuji in Kyoto, which was under the direct patronage of the ruling shogun.