Tesshū Tokusai 鐵舟德濟 (d. 1366) — Nanbokuchō Japanese Rinzai-Zen master, painter, and Gozan literature poet. Sobriquet Tesshū 鐵舟 (“Iron Skiff”); posthumous title Entsū Daishi 圓通大師 (“Universal-Penetration Great Master”). Lineage: Línjì-school / Yángqípài.
Studied first in Japan under 祖元 Wúxué Zǔyuán’s line, then travelled to Yuán-dynasty China in the 1340s; received transmission from one of the Línjì-school masters of the Yángqípài lineage. Returned to Japan. Active at Tenryū-ji 天龍寺 and other Kyoto Gozan temples.
Tesshū is celebrated above all as a Zen-painter — one of the major early Japanese bokuga 墨畫 (ink-painting) masters and a foundational figure in the development of the Japanese-style Zen suiboku (water-and-ink) tradition. His best-known surviving paintings are of orchids (蘭) and bamboo. He died in 1366.
His Enbu-shū 閻浮集 (KR6t0263, T80n2557) — one fascicle — is the principal extant Tesshū literary collection. The title Enbu (S. Jambu, the southern continent of Buddhist cosmography) is here used as the standard Buddhist designation for “the human world.” Listed in Nihon Bukkyō zensho 日佛 vols. 103 (p. 20) and 108 (p. 323).
Source: standard Japanese Rinzai-Zen and Gozan-literature biographical sources; Nihon Bukkyō zensho vols. 103 and 108.