Tosui Unkei, the beloved and eccentric 17th-century Zen master, was, like Ikkyu Sojin 200 years before him, a decided maverick. He rejected the monastic world for a life among the common folk, and had no respect for the Buddhist church as it then was. Turning his back on abbothood, he hired himself out as a servant, worked as both a palanquin carrier and a pack-horse driver, and later became a beggar, giving the day's proceeds to those even poorer than himself.
This has led later commentators to compare Tosui to Saint Francis, who also turned a resolute back on the official church, and even to find him "the first hippie." Such generalizations were perhaps thought necessary because very little is actually known about the maverick master. Unlike Ikkyu or Ryokan, with whom he is also sometimes compared, he left behind few poems. Indeed, what little is known about this likable but mysterious figure is due to this biography, written some 50 years after his death.
The "Tosui Osho Densan" (A Tribute to the Life of Master Tosui) was composed by the Zen scholar Menzan Zuiho in 1749 and published in a woodblock edition in 1768. It consisted of the main text, 20 narrative illustrations (retained in this translated edition), each of which was paired with a short poem that Menzan composed in praise of Tosui, an introduction and an account of how the biography happened to have been written.