Yǐnyuán Lóngqí 隱元隆琦 (Wànlì 20.11.4 = 7 December 1592 – Japanese Kan-bun 癸丑 4.3 = Kāngxī 12.4.4 = 19 May 1673), zì Yǐnyuán 隱元, self-styled Shānyě 山野, lay surname Lín 林, lay name Lín Zǐfáng 林子房 / Lín Zēngbǐng 林曾昺. The founder of the Japanese Ōbaku 黃檗 school (the third of the three major Zen sects of early-modern Japan, alongside Rinzai and Sōtō), the last major émigré Chán patriarch to Japan, and posthumously the recipient of three imperial Japanese honorific titles: 大光普照國師, 覺性圓明國師, and (on the 350th anniversary of his death, conferred by the Reiwa emperor in 2022 as the first “plural-state-teacher” designation in modern imperial history) 嚴統大師.
Native of Fúqīng 福清 (Fújiàn), Lóngqí was the principal dharma-heir of Fèiyǐn Tōngróng 通容 費隱通容 (1593–1661), through whom he received the LínjìYángqí line of Mìyún Yuánwù 圓悟 密雲圓悟 (1566/7–1642). Tonsured under Jiànyuán (Jiànyuán gōng 鑑源公) at a local Huáng-bò-area monastery; first travelled to Jīnsù 金粟 to see Mìyún, then settled at Huángbò Wànfúchánsì 黃檗山萬福禪寺 under Fèiyǐn, who transmitted the dharma to him in Chóngzhēn dīngchǒu (1637) winter and handed over the Huángbò abbacy. Lóngqí next held Chóngdé Fúyán 崇德福嚴 and Chánglè Lóngquán 長樂龍泉 before the invitation from the Japanese Kōfuku-ji 興福寺 community of Nagasaki reached him in Shùnzhì 11 jiǎwǔ (1654) autumn — whereupon he and a group of Chinese disciples crossed to Nagasaki, then to Fumon-ji 普門寺 near Osaka, and finally in Kan-bun 1 (1661) founded a new Huángbòshān Wànfúsì 黃檗山萬福寺 at Uji 宇治 south of Kyōto — the Japanese mother-temple of the Ōbaku school — on land granted by the shōgun Tokugawa Ietsuna after imperial-court backing from Emperor Go-Sai. He died in residence there 19 May 1673, aged 81 sùi.
Important works: a multi-juan 《隱元禪師語錄》 (partly in Kanripo as sub-items of the Ōbaku corpus), a 《弘戒法儀》 Hóngjiè fǎyí regulating Japanese Ōbaku ordinations in the Chinese Línjì pattern, a 《普照國師年譜》 compiled by his heirs, and numerous poem-collections. Key surviving dharma-heirs listed in DILA: Huìmén Pèi 慧門沛 (Huángbò in China), Xūbái Yuàn 虗白願 (Huángbò), Wúdé Níng 無得寧 (Níngdé Yùxiàng Lónghuá), Liángyě Lè 良冶樂 (Chāoshān in Mǐnnán), and Zhōngzhù Dǐ 中柱砥 (Shèngquán in Fúzhōu) — to which must be added the Japanese-side heirs, especially Mùān Xìngtāo 木庵性瑫 (Mokuan Shōtō, 1611–1684) who succeeded him as second Japanese Manpuku-ji abbot and continued the Chinese-language transmission line.
Notable Kanripo work for which Lóngqí is the nominal editor: KR6q0403 《費隱禪師語錄》 14 juan (J26 B178) — the posthumous Jiāxīng recension of his master’s sayings, in which his “děngbiān 等編” credit at the top of juan 1 is a transmission-marker rather than a post-1661 editorial hand (Lóngqí was by then resident in Japan and could not have supervised the Jiāxīng cutting directly). The text is a primary documentary object for the Fèiyǐn → Lóngqí → Ōbaku dharma-link and for the pre-1654 Chinese phase of Ōbaku’s emergence.
Principal secondary literature: Baroni, Helen J., Obaku Zen: The Emergence of the Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000); Jiang Wu, Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2015) — the definitive English-language monograph specifically on Yǐnyuán; Rǎo Zōngyí 饒宗頤 (ed.), 《隱元全集》 20 vols (Kyōto: Manpuku-ji, 1979); and Chén Zhìpíng 陳智平, 《隱元隆琦禪學思想研究》 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà chūbǎnshè, 2018).