The Japanese monk Sōshun Hōtan(僧濬鳳潭) of the Edo Period wrote a large number of Buddhist works covering Kegon, Tendai, Shingon, Zen etc. He was renowned at the time. However, regarding his year of birth and birthplace there are three kinds of records respectively. The paper attempts to clarify Hōtan’s year of birth and the birthplace through analyzing the five oldest historical records concerning his biography, of which the three are newly found by the author. It is revealed that the records of Hōtan’s year of birth and the birthplace in Dai Nihon Kegon Shunjyū 大日本華厳春秋written by his disciple Kakushū(覚洲), is one of the most trustworthy sources after a reliability consideration on it. That is to say, Hōtan was born in 1659 at a village named Naniwa(難波).
