Dokuan Genkō 獨菴玄光 (Kan’ei 7 → 1630; Genroku 11 / 1698), Edo-period Japanese Sōtō-Zen master and one of the most idiosyncratic and individual figures of the late-17th-century Sōtō scene. Style-name (字) Dokuan 獨菴 (“Solitary Hermitage”); dharma-name Genkō 玄光; later sobriquet Dasui-an-shu 打睡菴主 (“Master of Sleep-Hitting Hermitage”). Native of Kyushu (probably Higo / Hizen).
Trained widely in Sōtō and Rinzai both; finally settled as an independent hermit-Sōtō master without major temple affiliations, refusing institutional advancement throughout his career. The Dokuan dokugo 獨菴獨語 (“Solitary-Hermit’s Solitary-Speech”, the present text KR6t0303) — composed at his hermitage in Tenna 3 / 6 / 15 (1683-08-07 NS) — is his principal work and one of the most acerbically critical Edo-Sōtō treatises. The text was carried by trade-ship to Fujian and read by the great Chinese Caodong-school monk Dàopèi 道霈 of Gushan 鼓山 in Fuzhou (1615–1702), who composed a long preface for it identifying Dokuan as the true heir of Shōfū (新豐 — Dōgen’s lineage) and lamenting that “the lineage-school of Zhīnà (China) is swept from the ground; we did not expect to see it manifest from the Reverend Genkō of the Sun Country”.
Dao-pei’s preface positions Dokuan and his dokugo in a tradition of jōkusō no dan 落草之談 (“grass-falling speech” — homiletic critique of monastic decline) extending from Hui-hong’s Linjian-lu 林間録 (1107) and Da-hui Zonggao’s Zōngmén wǔkù 宗門武庫 through Mid-Phoenix Mingben’s Tōngo seiwa 東語西話 and Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s Zhúchuāng suíbǐ 竹窓隨筆 to Yongjue Yuanxian’s Mèngyán 𭔜言 — placing Dokuan as the Japanese contemporary parallel to Yongjue Yuanxian’s late-Ming Caodong-school critique of monastic decline.
Dokuan’s idiosyncratic style and refusal of institutional advancement makes him an outlier in the late-17th-century Sōtō fukko movement: where Manzan Dōhaku, Geppa Dōin, and Tenkei Denson worked from within the institutional framework, Dokuan worked from outside. His lasting reputation rests on the Dokuan dokugo and a handful of poetic works.