High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki,1882-May 17, 1945), born Yeita Sasaki, was a Japanese Rinzai roshi who founded the Buddhist Society of America in New York City in 1930. Influential in the growth of Zen Buddhism in the United States, Sokei-an was one of the first Japanese masters to live and teach in America. One of his better known students was Alan Watts, who studied under him briefly in the late 1930s. In June 1942 Sokei-an was arrested by the FBI, labeled an "enemy alien" and detained at an internment camp in Fort Meade, Maryland.
