, also pronounced "tō-in", are

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

readings imported from China by

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

monks and merchants during and after the

Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...

. This period roughly corresponds with the mid- Heian to

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

s of Japan. During the

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

, they were referred to as . Together, they are collectively known as . Scholars divide tō-on into two groups: those that are based on Zen of the Middle Ages, and those based on the

Ōbaku The is one of several schools of Zen in Japanese Buddhism, in addition to Sōtō and Rinzai. History Often termed the third sect of Zen Buddhism in Japan, Ōbaku-shū was established in 1661 by a small faction of masters from China and their ...

school of Buddhism of the Middle Ages. The latter are the readings sometimes referred to as "sō-on". Tō-on readings are not systematic, as they were introduced piecemeal from China, often along with very specialized terminology. Examples of words and characters using tō-on readings include: , , , and . The

Zen school of Buddhism uses Tō-on exclusively for liturgy.

See also