Sokei-an

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Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki (1882 - 1945) was a Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest who was the first Zen Master to take residence on United States soil.

Sokei-An went to college and graduated from the Imperial Academy of Art in Tokyo, Japan. He did mandatory military service in the Japanese Imperial Army starting in 1905 where he was sent to Manchuria. Upon release from military service in 1906, Sokei-An left for Hayward, CA along with his Zen teacher Sokatsu Shaku with the mission of building America's first Zen center. This initial endeavor ultimately failed, and Shaku (along with a few students) moved back to Japan in 1910. But Sokei-An stayed on, working various jobs acrossed the United States. He even temporarily worked with Maxwell Bodenheim translating poems from Japanese to English.

In 1922 Sokei-An returned to Japan to perform a sesshin with his teacher Sokatsu Shaku, where he received Dharma transmission from him and thus became a Zen master. Upon returning to the USA he set off for New York City, NY and began doing informal talks on Buddhism at a bookstore. In 1930, Sokei-An founded the Buddhist Society of America (now the First Zen Institute of America) in New York and offered traditional Zen training to those who attended.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the organization quickly moved into the home of Ruth Fuller (a practitioner and mother in law of Alan Watts). Fuller later in life married Sokei-An and became the first female Zen priest in Japan at Daitoku temple in Kyoto. That same year, Sokei-An was imprisoned at Ellis Island in an Japanese American Internment camp, and was later sent to a camp in Fort Meade, MD. He was released in 1943 and resumed teaching Zen. He died in 1945.