BENCHŌ (1162–1238), also known as Shōkōbō; posthumous name, Benʾa; founder of the Chinzei branch of the Japanese Jōdo (Pure Land) sect, the dominant branch of this sect. He is presently counted the second patriarch of the Jōdoshū.

Born in the province of Chikuzen in northern Kyushu, Benchō became a novice monk at the age of seven. At the age of twenty-two he left Kyushu and entered the head Tendai monastery of Enryakuji on the northeastern outskirts of Kyoto, then the capital of Japan. After six years of study there under the erudite scholar-monk Hōchibō Shōshin he returned to Chikuzen. Three years later, deeply shocked by the death of his stepbrother, he underwent a religious crisis in which he came to feel keenly the impermanence of things. On a trip to Kyoto in order to obtain a statue for...