Ōbaku Zen arose as a distinct current within Japanese Buddhism when the Chinese monk Yinyuan Longqi (Japanese: Ingen Ryūki, 1592–1673) came from China to Japan in the mid‑seventeenth century. Trained in the Linji (Rinzai) Chan tradition at Wanfu Temple on Mount Huangbo (Japanese: Ōbaku) in Fujian, he carried with him a form of Chinese Zen already shaped by the syncretic religious climate of the late Ming period. That Chinese context had woven together seated meditation, kōan practice, sutra chanting, and Pure Land devotion, especially the recitation of Amitābha Buddha’s name. When Yinyuan responded to invitations from Japanese circles and arrived in Nagasaki, he brought not only a lineage of Dharma transmission but also a living embodiment of contemporary Chinese monastic culture.

With the support of influential patrons, Yinyuan established Manpuku‑ji in Uji, near Kyoto, in 1661 as the head temple of the new school. The name Ōbaku was chosen to echo Mount Huangbo in China, signaling a conscious continuity with the Chinese source and honoring the earlier Chan heritage associated with that mountain. Early Ōbaku monasteries preserved a strongly Chinese character in liturgy, language, architecture, and even vegetarian cuisine (fucha ryōri), so that the school initially appeared in Japan as something of a foreign transplant. Succession in the early generations remained largely within Chinese lineages before Japanese monks gradually entered the leadership, and a network of temples grew up under Manpuku‑ji’s authority.

What gave Ōbaku its distinctive spiritual flavor was the deliberate integration of Zen and Pure Land elements within a single disciplined framework. Alongside rigorous zazen and kōan training in the Linji/Rinzai style, Ōbaku communities cultivated nembutsu recitation and the chanting of Mahāyāna and Pure Land scriptures as central components of daily practice. This was not a casual mixture but a reflection of the late‑Ming understanding that meditative insight and devotional calling of Amitābha could mutually reinforce one another on the path. In Japan, where Zen and Pure Land had often developed as more clearly separated traditions, this synthesis stood out as a fresh expression of the Dharma.

Over time, Ōbaku contributed to the renewal of Japanese Zen more broadly, influencing Rinzai institutions in areas such as monastic discipline, chanting styles, and ritual forms, while also transmitting late‑Ming Chinese aesthetics, calligraphy, and other cultural practices. Even as the school gradually adapted to Japanese religious life and lost some of its overtly Chinese appearance, it retained a more ritual‑centric and devotional orientation than other Zen lineages. Today it remains smaller than the major Rinzai and Sōtō schools, yet continues to preserve a distinctive Sino‑Japanese heritage in which seated meditation, kōan inquiry, and Amitābha devotion are held together as complementary dimensions of a single path.