Musō Soseki (died 1351), Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and teacher, and a calligraphist, poet and garden designer
Ikkyū 休宗純, Ikkyū Sōjun 1394–1481), eccentric, iconic, Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest, poet and sometime mendicant flute player who influenced Japanese art and literature with an infusion of Zen attitudes and ideals; one of the creators of the formal Japanese tea ceremony; well-known to Japanese children through various stories and the subject of a popular Japanese children's television program; made a character in anime fiction
Egely Monastery - Taikyo-ji is a Buddhist monastery, formerly in the Rinzai Zen tradition, founded by Denko John Mortensen on the Danish island of Bornholm in 2007.
Nyogen Senzaki (1876–1958), a Rinzai Zen monk who was one of the 20th century's leading proponents of Zen Buddhism in the United States.
In Rinzai Zen, the stick is requested in the same manner, but may also be used at the discretion of the Ino, the one in charge of the meditation hall.
Kyudo Nakagawa (中川 球童, February 12, 1927—December 29, 2007), or Nakagawa Kyūdō, was a Japanese-born Rinzai rōshi who for many years led Soho Zen Buddhist Society, Inc. in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
It is more likely that the ideological roots of the sect derived from the Rinzai poet and iconoclast Ikkyū and the monk Shinchi Kakushin (心地覺心) who traveled to and from China and Japan in the 13th century.
In 1926 he collaborated with Nyogen Senzaki, a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk, in opening the first official Zen meditation hall (zendo) in San Francisco.