Denkyo Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, Roshi

Japan

Joshu Roshi was born into a farming family near Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, April 1907. At the age of 14 he traveled five hundred miles to Sapporo in Hokkaido, northern Japan, to become a Zen student under Joten Soko Miura Roshi at Zuiryo-ji. Joten Miura would later become head of Myoshin-ji, one of the preeminent Rinzai temple complexes in Japan and bring his students with him. Joten Soko Roshi was instrumental in Sasaki Roshi's coming to America.

Joshu Sasaki was ordained an Osho (priest) at the age of twenty-one, receiving the name Kyozan. Between the ages of 21 and 40, Joshu Roshi lived as a priest at Myoshin-ji in Kyoto. In 1947 at the age of forty, he received his authority as a Roshi and became abbot of his own monastery.

In 1953, Roshi was assigned to become the abbot of Shoju-an in Iiyama, Nagano Prefecture. Shoju-an was an abandoned temple founded by Hakuin's master Dokyo Etan. The temple was in disrepair, and Roshi set about restoring it. Roshi taught at Shoju-an until he was sent to the United States in 1962.