KUMAKURA Isao

Japanese

Te a
CultureThe Heart and Form of Chanoyu

T r a n s l a t e d b y M a r t h a J. M c C l i n t o c kPortrait of Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591) by Hasegawa
Tōhaku (1539–1610), commissioned by Tanaka Sōkei(b. 1536) after Rikyū’s death and inscribed by the Zenmonk Shun’oku Sōen (1529–1611). The image is said todepict Rikyū’s serene appearance late in his life.

Taian is the tea room which Rikyū is said to have built in the Yamazaki
district of Kyoto in 1582. This photo shows the view through the open
crawl-through entrance (nijiriguchi), with the display alcove (tokonoma)
visible at the back. Above the crawl-through entrance is a window fittedwith vertical bamboo laths and sliding paper paneling (shōji). Typically, thepaper paneling would not be open during a tea gathering. (Courtesy of
Benrido, Inc.)

The Taian interior is a two-mat space (1.8 meters square), with the sunken
hearth (ro) cut into one corner. The walls are of rough-finish clay plastering(arakabe), characterized by the visibility of the straw fibers mixed into the clay forreinforcement. The three sides and ceiling of the display alcove—even the cornerpillars and ceiling framework—are similarly coated, giving the impression of theinside of an earthen cavern. The ceiling of the seating space is divided into two
sections. Above the tea preparation area occupied by the host is a board-andbatten ceiling. Above the area for guests, part of the ceiling is left with the pitch
and underside of the roof intentionally exposed to view. Each element of theroom reveals Rikyū’s innovative design; one might say it is an expression of thewabi concept in an architectural space. (Courtesy of Benrido, Inc.)

The crawl-through entrance and garden approach(roji) of the Fushin’an tea room in the Omotesenke
estate. The koshikake bench (not pictured) where
guests rest during the intermission in a tea
gathering is positioned slightly before this sectionof the garden approach. Each stepping stone iscarefully selected and positioned to create a paththat leads naturally to the crawl-through entrance.

A stone water basin (chōzubachi) is positioned in the garden approach forpurification of both mind and body before a tea gathering. It is intentionally
set low to the ground; guests must crouch down (tsukubau in Japanese) to
use it. Therefore, this type of stone water basin is referred to as a tsukubai.

There are two types of tea room: koma,
literally a “small room” of four and a halfmats or less, and hiroma, or a “spaciousroom” larger than four and a half mats.
The koma developed notably from Rikyū’s
period onward. In contrast with thisconfined room, where there is a feeling of
seclusion for the few people within, thehiroma is an expansive room where one
can relax. The Zangetsutei tea room (left)
in the Omotesenke estate, Kyoto, is said tobe a replica of Rikyū’s hiroma. This room isfitted with a raised two-mat space to serveas the seat for a high-ranking person,
such as the powerful military leader
Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598). Indeed,according to legend, Hideyoshi once
leaned against the corner pillar of theroom to gaze at the lingering moon atdawn, hence the name Zangetsutei(“lingering moon pavilion”). This large
room has a total of twelve mats, consistingof two tatami of normal height placed in
front of the raised two-mat space,together with an eight-mat area where thetea-preparation stand (daisu) andequipment are placed.

In chanoyu, water for tea is heated using either a sunken hearth (ro), as in the
picture above, or a brazier (furo). The sunken hearth is used from
November through April, and the brazier used between May and October.

Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for CulturePublisher’s Note

This book follows the Hepburn system of romanization, with long vowels
indicated by macrons. The tradition of placing the family name first has
been followed for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean names. Historical dates
have been converted from the Japanese calendar to the reformed Gregoriancalendar using the online software HuTime © 2012–2023 Sekino Tatsuki.
This English-language edition has been supplemented with a new preface,conclusion, appendixes (historical sources and glossary), and references.
Footnotes for quoted material credit the translation used in this English
edition and do not necessarily indicate the original material referenced by
the author.
Unless otherwise indicated, all images are courtesy of Omotesenke Fushin’an
Foundation.
Japanese Tea Culture: The Heart and Form of Chanoyu
Kumakura Isao.
Translated by Martha J. McClintock.
Published by
Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture (JPIC)
2-2-30 Kanda-Jinbocho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0051, JapanFirst English edition: March 2023
© 2021 Kumakura Isao
English translation © 2023 Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture
This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence (CC BY-NC-ND
4.0), which permits copying and redistribution in the original format for
non-commercial purposes, provided the original work is properly cited.
For details, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
This book is a translation of Chanoyu: Wabi-cha no kokoro to katachi(Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2021). First published in 1977 by Kyōikusha.
English publishing rights arranged with the author.
Book design: alema Co., Ltd.
Printed in Japan
hardcover ISBN 978-4-86658-246-7
ebook (PDF) ISBN 978-4-86658-111-8
https://www.jpicinternational.com/

Contents

Translator’s Note ...... 9
Preface to the English Edition ...... 11
Chapter 1 The Creation of Wabi-cha

15

Idiosyncratic Culture ...... 16
Solitary Chanoyu 16
The Singularity of Japanese Culture 17
Japan and Korea 18
The Place of Sen no Rikyū 22
Nijiriguchi and Mawashinomi:
The Crawl-through Entrance and Passing the Bowl ...... 25
The Birth of the Crawl-through Entrance 25
Passing the Bowl 34
Chapter 2 Breaking Away from the Medieval
The Structure of a Tea Gathering (Chakai) ...... 42
Letters on Drinking Tea: Kissa ōrai 42
The Discarded After-Gathering Stage 49
The Tea-Room Space ...... 54
A Mountain Sanctuary in the City 54
Garden Approach (Roji) Practices 59
Seclusion 62
Why Is Tea Preparation Called Temae? ...... 65
Temae: “Before the Point” or “In Front of You”? 65
Host (Teishu) and Guest Spaces 67
From Tea Preparer to Host 71

41

Chapter 3 Tea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

79

From Sitting Cross-Legged to Sitting Formally ...... 80
Crowded Tea Gatherings 80
Tatehiza and Kashikomaru:
Raised-Knee Sitting and Formal Sitting 86
The Origins of Tea’s Walking Style ...... 91
The Culture of Walking 91
Gliding Walk (Neri-aruku) 94
Feet on the Ground 98
Chajin: Tea Devotees and Their Appearance ...... 101
Outfitting the Guest 101“New Is Good” 105
Tea Names and Jittoku Jackets ...... 109
Assumed Names 109
What Is a Jittoku? 111
Chapter 4 Tea-Gathering Style
The Genius of Style (Shukō) ...... 118
Happenings 118
Summer Bath Tea (Rinkan Chanoyu) 120
The Question of the Sairei zōshi (Festival Picture Scroll) 123
After-Bath Facilities 128
Furyū, Yatsushi, Mitate:
Elegance, “Humble Guise,” and Refashioning ...... 132
Elegance (Furyū) 132
The Yatsushi Aesthetic 134
Rikyū’s Style 137
Tsukeai and Mitate: Linking and Refashioning 140
The Advent of Seasonal Sentiment ...... 146
Seasonal Greetings 146
The Seasons in Tea Gatherings 148“I offer thin tea to Bashō’s spirit on
his memorial day, thinking, ‘How cold it is!’” 153

117

Chapter 5 Wabi-cha Environs

159

The History of the Tea Whisk (Chasen) ...... 160
Tea-Whisk Development 160
Ōbuku chasen yuraiki (Account of the Originof Ōbuku Tea Whisks) 163
The Folk Nature of Tea Whisks 168
The History of the Tea Shop (Chaya) ...... 173
Purveyors of Herbal Extracts (Senjimono-uri) 173
The Higaki Tea Shop 178
Rikyū’s Departed Soul 183
Conclusion ...... 189
Appendix 1: Historical Sources ...... 193
1. Kokoro no fumi: “Letter of the Heart” 193
2. Buddhist verse (gatha) by Dairin Sōtō
on a portrait of Takeno Jōō 196
3. Matsuya kaiki: Record of a tea gathering
hosted by Sen no Rikyū 198
4. Kōshin gegaki: On Rikyū’s design of the Amidadō kettle 199
5. Yamanoue Sōji ki: Yamanoue Sōji’s noteson Rikyū’s wabi-cha (1) 201
6. Yamanoue Sōji ki: Yamanoue Sōji’s noteson Rikyū’s wabi-cha (2) 203
7. Nanpōroku: On the substance of wabi-cha (1) 204
8. Nanpōroku: On the substance of wabi-cha (2) 206
9. Nanpōroku: On the substance of wabi-cha (3) 208
10. Matsui-ke monjo: A letter in Rikyū’s hand 211
11. Rikyū’s last words 213
Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms ...... 215
References & Further Reading ...... 227
About the Author and the Translator ...... 239

9Translator’s Note

In 1977, the year the first Japanese edition of this book was published, I began a year of study at Urasenke Konnichian in Kyoto as
a first-year student in the Midorikai, the foreign-student branch of
Urasenke’s teacher-training program. Blessed with supremely talented
and kind teachers and senpai, I experienced an intense immersion in
everything chanoyu. In retrospect, it has remained one of the mostdecisive years of my life.
I agreed to translate this book because since that time I havestrongly believed that Kumakura Isao is the best tea historian of ourgeneration. While in the intervening decades my own studies havefar diverged from the tea path, I hope that through this translation
I can help bring his thoughts and approach to a non-Japanese reading audience.
As I read and translated this book, not only was I reimmersedin those long-ago all-day and all-night discussions about the wabicha way of being, I reconfirmed the importance of Kumakura’s approach to thinking about tea.
This book, which I have translated from the 2021 Japanese edition and which has been edited and adapted by a supervisory teamwith the in-depth involvement of Kumakura himself, is best seen, tomy mind, as two things. One, it is a historical document which records
Kumakura’s understanding and iconoclastic approach at a critical,
nascent period of his tea scholarship. Two, it is a call to all those who
are fascinated by tea, wabi culture, and Japanese ways of being
to consider stepping back from the rigid, centuries-old tea-school
approach to chanoyu that dominates the study and practice of tea
today, and gain insight into the formative years of wabi culture development and all of its interrelated contexts. It is an invitation to sit
back with your beverage of choice and engage with Kumakura through10

Translator’s Notethe printed word in a discussion of the wabi-cha way of being. May
your discussions through these pages be as enlightening and lifeenhancing as mine were all those decades ago with my beloved latesenpai Len Nuvoloni in his tea house in Ginkakujimae-chō, Kyoto. I
dedicate my translation to Len Nuvoloni, who lives on in my heartand mind every day.
Martha J. McClintock

11

Preface to the English Edition

The history of tea in Japan began in the ninth century. Enthralledby Chinese Tang-dynasty (618–907) tea culture, Japanese aristocrats imported tea and fostered its cultivation in Japan. However,as their interest in China waned, the custom of drinking tea alsoessentially disappeared. At the end of the twelfth century, the Zenmonk Yōsai (1141–1215) brought tea production and drinking
methods back to Japan from China, this time newly developed
Song-dynasty (960–1279) techniques. This is the origin of thepowdered steamed green tea (matcha) now produced only in Japan.
In his book explaining tea-drinking methods and effects, Kissa
yōjōki (Drinking Tea to Nourish Life), Yōsai also heralded tea asan effective medicine, a panacea, for all illnesses. As a result,tea-drinking culture took root and flourished in Japan.
Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, land set
aside for tea cultivation expanded in Japan, and tea-tasting competitions in which participants attempted to distinguish between
various kinds of regional teas became hugely popular. Tea wasmore than a medicine; it found favor as the drink of choiceamong aristocrats and powerful military men. They in turn became
interested in the utensils used for tea drinking, such as tea bowls
and powdered-tea containers. As they refined methods for making
delicious tea, a new lifestyle culture was born: chanoyu (literally“hot water for tea”), the art of preparing tea.
Yet, whereas the chanoyu of the upper classes was a luxurious affair, another style of chanoyu was also emerging, one thatsought spirituality in the preparation and drinking of tea and held

12

Preface to the English Edition

that true sufficiency was to be found in insufficiency. The Buddhist
monk Jukō (1422–1502) expressed these new ideas in his Kokoro
no fumi (Letter of the Heart; see appendix 1). This was wabi-cha,or wabi tea, which drew on the aesthetic concept of wabi to elaborate a sparse, spiritual approach to tea.
Takeno Jōō (1502–1555) of the next generation deepened thelink between Zen Buddhism and wabi-cha. From his position as amerchant and master of linked verse (renga) in the town of Sakai,Jōō brought the then-popular aesthetic of linked verse—that is,an aesthetic of elegant simplicity—into chanoyu.
In turn, Jōō greatly influenced Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591), whois credited with the full formulation of what we know today as wabicha. Rikyū’s accomplishments were numerous: first, the elaboration of the tea room and the architectural structure for wabi-cha;second, the creation of original utensils for use in wabi-cha; third,
the formalization of tea-preparation procedures (temae) in a tea
gathering; fourth, the refinement of the format and content of the
tea-gathering meal, known as kaiseki; and fifth, the conception ofa wabi-cha philosophy. Indeed, Rikyū’s tea was so innovative thatit provoked the anger of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), thepreeminent military ruler of the time. Hideyoshi feared Rikyū asa political threat, and ordered him to commit ritual suicide.
The development of wabi-cha over the course of the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries—and the distinctive culture which emerged
from it, accommodating everything from food and clothing todwellings—made for a new Japanese lifestyle culture, but it also
drew on the worldview and folk customs of Japanese antiquity.
The history of wabi-cha spans only a little more than six hundredyears, but it is in fact linked to far older periods of Japan’s history. This could well be one reason why chanoyu continues to havesuch a significant influence in Japan today. This book aims toPreface to the English Edition

13

analyze the origins and purpose of wabi-cha from its emergencein the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the vantage point ofJapanese lifestyle and culture.
The Japanese version of this book presents a chronology ofhistorical materials related to the history of tea. For this English
edition, I have prepared a new appendix of historical sources
comprising summaries of a selection of texts that will hopefully
aid the reader’s understanding of the book’s contents.
The first Japanese edition of this book was published in
1977. I was then thirty-four years old; it was a time when few
scholars studied chanoyu, and almost no research on tea was being conducted outside of Japan. Great advances in scholarship havebeen made since, including the 1989 publication of Tea in Japan:
Essays on the History of Chanoyu (University of Hawai’i Press),coedited by Paul Varley and myself, and that of the eleven-volume
Chadōgaku taikei (Compendium of Tea Studies; Tankōsha, 1999–
2001), a project overseen by Sen Sōshitsu, fifteenth head of the
Urasenke tea lineage. Notable, too, was the founding of the JapaneseSociety for the Studies of Chanoyu in 1993. An increasing number of fine works on chanoyu have also appeared overseas. I hope
you will have a chance to encounter them.
I would like to hereby express my thanks to Martha J.
McClintock for her translation of this volume, to Tashiro Mari,John Breen, and Gretchen Mittwer for seeing it through the checking and editorial process, and to Tanimura Reiko for her invaluable
help with the reference materials. Finally, my deepest gratitude goesto Kondō Seiichi, who not only recommended this book for translation and publication but also supervised the entire undertaking.
Kumakura Isao
October 2022

Chapter 1

THE CREATION OF
WABI-CHA

16

Chapter 1

Idiosyncratic Culture
Solitary Chanoyu
The chajin, or tea devotee, is a solitary figure.
Of course, tea gatherings (chakai) are always a great success,and if a special event is held by a particular tea organization or lineage then attendance can rival that at gatherings held by new
religious sects. And yet, in the end, the chajin, one versed in theart of chanoyu and a true follower of the way of tea, is solitary.
Chanoyu itself occupies a solitary place within Japanese culture.
What I mean by “solitary” relates first to the question of how
many people actually talk about chanoyu. For example, it is unlikely that it would feature in a discussion among businessmen
about shared pastimes. So is it perhaps a topic discussed by young
female office workers? Again, this is unlikely to be the case. Even
if there are many people who have taken tea-ceremony lessons or
attended a tea gathering once or twice, there are really only few
who would claim chanoyu as a pastime of theirs.
Let me make a brief comment about pastimes here. Somemay frown on pastimes as being play without purpose. However,this is absolutely not the case. I hardly need to cite Homo Ludens(The Person Who Plays), that 1938 book about the importance ofplay in culture by the famous European historian Johan Huizinga(1872–1945), to make the case that a culture that loses the elementof play is a culture that is spent. People play. And indeed, the spiritof play is at the basis of all that enriches human culture. Pastimes
are, in a sense, the straightest expression of that spirit of play.
Pastimes transcend questions of personal advantage; they make life

The Creation of Wabi-cha

17worth living. Therefore, a person whose pastime is chanoyu issomeone who finds chanoyu to be a reason for living. But there
are probably fewer people than we might imagine who truly spend
their days with chanoyu as their raison d’être.
Those for whom chanoyu is a reason for living will find truecompanions among others who similarly live in chanoyu. It may
well be that the act of exchanging conversation about the joy andwonder of chanoyu can only occur between those who are trying
to live in the spirit of chanoyu. Such people are a minority withinsociety as a whole. The pursuit of tea is a solitary endeavor.

The Singularity of Japanese Culture
The culture of Japan itself is solitary. When we think about Japan,
we see the mixing of the culture of the broadleaf evergreen forest
region and the maritime cultures of the Pacific Rim, with a later
layering from China, Korea, and Europe and America, all contributing to what we now call Japanese culture. Few cultures are madefrom such a complex admixture of so many diverse sources. While
one might suppose that this would result in something with a
global or universal quality, that is not necessarily the case. Rather,
it resulted in an extremely singular culture. There exists some sortof Japan-style mold, and no matter what type of culture flows infrom other countries, it is pressed into the mold and emerges assomething very compatible with the existing culture. I have a sensethat such a mechanism exists within the structure of Japaneseculture, allowing it to voraciously consume all kinds of other cultures; once absorbed, they become intensely Japanized and practically impossible to export elsewhere. Historically speaking, noother country has assimilated imported cultures as effectively asJapan. At the same time, very little culture is exported from Japanto other countries in pure form. Even though other countries value

18

Chapter 1

Japanese culture, they find it hard to engage in dialogue. In thatsense, too, it is solitary.
Of course, I am fully aware that there is, counter to this theory of the singularity of Japanese culture, the idea that it has auniversal quality. Anime and sushi, for example, have certainly
taken the world by storm. And yet this is surely the result of globalization’s rapid advance, and so there is at work here somethingother than a true understanding of Japanese culture.
Basically, a culture with a universal character acceptable anywhere in the world enters Japan and undergoes an extremely singular refining process, only to become something hard for the restof the world to accept. Tea is a typical example of this.

Japan and Korea
The drinking of tea is entirely commonplace. Undoubtedly, in anage when tea was yet unknown, water, flavored hot water, or alcohol were about all there was to drink. Even today, there are any
number of cultures unfamiliar with tea. Nonetheless, the fact isthat the culture of a very confined geographical region spanningsouthern China to Southeast Asia, where a beverage was made byprocessing the leaves of an indigenous tree, has today spread
across the globe. Throughout the world, tea is referred to by aword derived from either chá or té, both words of Chinese origin;
they are essentially global words. Despite the universal adoptionof this beverage, it is curious that only Japan has created a distinctive culture like chanoyu.
I visited Korea for the first time in 1977. There I traveledaround to investigate its tea culture, and what I had in mind as I
walked from place to place was the singularity of Japan’s chanoyu.
Korea in July was horrendously hot. I walked along treeless roads,
searching for shade, and I dwelt on the similarities between Japan

The Creation of Wabi-cha

19

and Korea. The Korean farm villages were beautiful. Rice paddies
stretched out as far as the eye could see, like the wide blue ocean.
There were none of the gaudy, dirty billboards or rest stops that
spoil Japanese farm villages. There were only diligently working
farmers here and there among the rice fields. Perhaps this was rural
scenery of the sort that I saw on returning to my family’s ancestralvillage as a primary-school student after World War II. It felt as
though the rural landscape of old Japan had been moved to thisspot. Maybe it was because the flora looked so similar to Japan’sthat I thought Korean farm villages were beautiful; and maybethat explains why I searched for something Japanese within them.
In Korea, particularly the south of the country, the flora areessentially the same as those in Japan. From the wildflowers andweeds along the roadside to the trees lining the streets, and beyond to the shape and taste of the vegetables that appear on dinner tables, all are the same as in Japan. Naturally, I thought there
would be tea plants, as well as a tea-drinking custom, but I waswrong. There is no general tea-drinking custom in Korea today, andwith rare exception, there are no tea plantations.
If we look back through history, we see that Korea is rich in tea
history, but then at a certain juncture tea rapidly disappeared. That
process began in the Yi dynasty (1392–1910). So when did tea first
appear on the Korean Peninsula? Historical chronicles such as the
Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms; 1145) and Samguk
yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms; 1281) reproduce thetraditional explanation that tea was brought from China in theearly seventh century. Essentially reliable records, however, indicatethat Korean envoys dispatched to China brought back tea seeds
on their return to the Kingdom of Silla in 828, and planted them on
Jirisan Mountain in the south. This seems close to historical fact.
If this is the case, then it would appear that Japan and Korea

20

Chapter 1

followed a very similar trajectory in terms of the period and environment in which tea seeds were imported. In brief, the influenceexerted by the Tang, a particularly powerful Chinese dynasty, onsurrounding smaller states was immense. Outstanding cultural
products flowed out from the Tang dynasty to surrounding countries. Tea was one such product. Around the time that envoys
from Silla were heading to the Tang court, Japan, too, was assembling a fleet of ships to carry envoys to the Tang. Japanese monks
enamored of Tang Buddhism took passage on those ships. The
earliest record of tea in Japan appears in an entry in the Nihon
kōki (Later Chronicle of Japan) for 815, just thirteen years before
the record for Silla. When Emperor Saga (r. 809–823) and his entourage embarked on a progress to Karasaki in modern-day Shiga
Prefecture, the most senior monk at Sūfukuji Temple, Eichū (743–816), made tea for the emperor. Eichū had traveled to China aspart of an official mission, and had spent some thirty years in theTang capital of Chang’an. He brought the Chinese custom ofdrinking tea with him back to Japan.
It is unclear how tea developed in Korea after the Goryeo
dynasty (918–1392) unified the Korean Peninsula, but the tea
brought to Japan gradually disappeared from society, barely surviving in the limited context of court ritual. However, as thedynastic rulers of China shifted from Tang to Song, the quality of
the culture also changed. A new type of tea appeared. It is generally believed that it was the Zen monk Yōsai who was responsible
for the introduction of a new form of tea to Japan. Some seventy
years before Yōsai brought tea to Japan in 1191, the Song-dynasty
style of tea had already spread to the Goryeo kingdom. After Song
envoys visited the Goryeo court in 1123, they left a record of theirtravels in a book titled Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing (Illustrated
Account of the Embassy to Goryeo in the Xuanhe Era; 1124).

The Creation of Wabi-cha

21

The book mentions the envoys’ experience of tea rituals at the
Goryeo court:
The tea prepared in Goryeo was bitter and disgusting, but everyone was thrilled to drink the Chinese brick tea (tuánchá; Jp. dancha). During the ceremony they used a tenmoku-style tea bowl
and a celadon water pitcher, and the silver brazier and kettle
used to boil the water were all in the Chinese style.

During the twelfth century—which corresponds in Japan tothe late Heian period (794–1185) when retired emperors exercisedpolitical power—Song Chinese tea was enjoyed by Koreans principally in the Goryeo court. Koreans and Japanese accepted tea inan extremely similar fashion.
Tea drinking gradually spread in Japan, and just as it was becoming a pleasant pastime, a massive change happened in Korea.
In 1392, the Goryeo dynasty gave way to the Yi dynasty (1392–1910).
The Yi dynasty took a strict Confucian ideology for its governing
principle. This rigid Confucianism chose corrupt Buddhist temples as its first targets. Temples were subsequently destroyed, andmany monks were branded as pernicious and sent into exile. The
aftershocks of the persecution struck tea practices. Tea was not
simply a beverage in Buddhist temples; rather tea-drinking situations amounted to banquets where alcohol and food were served.
This is precisely why tea was condemned by rigid Confucian ideologues. And yet it would take another several centuries before tea
was effectively eliminated from everyday life in Korea, and people
lost interest in it.
Here I must note that steeped or infused tea (sencha) was
the only form of tea that barely survived in Korea. In China, tea
preparations changed from the Song-dynasty use of powdered and22

Chapter 1

whisked green tea leaves (matcha in Japanese) to the Ming-dynasty(1368–1644) practice of steeping tea. Chinese-style steeped tea differs from the present-day Japanese variant in that it is primarily
pan-roasted green tea mixed with semi-oxidized oolong-style tea;a vestige of this Chinese style of steeped tea survived in Yi-dynasty
Korea. While Song-style powdered whisked tea grew ever more
popular in Japan, tea culture faded and declined on the Korean
Peninsula. Up until then, tea had followed a very similar historical trajectory in Japan and Korea. But, from around the fifteenth
century, these two peoples headed off in separate directions, as issymbolized in their tea culture. Japan now began to embark uponits own distinctive path.

The Place of Sen no Rikyū
Was it not the appearance in Japan of wabi-cha that led Japanese
tea to set off on its own unique, and hence solitary, path? Up until
this point, tea played a part in the special occasions in people’s
lives, nothing more. There were no specialist makers of tea, nor
facilities for tea-making. People enjoyed their own personal styles oftea, and enjoyed drinking tea in banquet settings or during festivities. But then, in the Muromachi period (1336–1573), tea appeared
as a new performing art. Tea changed the various formats of thebanquet themselves, and eventually accommodated them within
the art of tea. This led to the creation of the tea gathering (chakai).
Tea gatherings inspired new forms of the meals served atbanquets. The “formal meals” (honzen ryōri) served on official occasions throughout the Muromachi period also gradually began tochange under the influence of chanoyu. As Portuguese missionary
and sailor João Rodrigues Tçuzu (1561–1633) wrote in his unfinished
Historia da Igreja do Japão (History of the Japanese Church; 1627),
a new chanoyu style influenced banquets, replacing the previous

The Creation of Wabi-cha

23

seven- or five-course meals. This was in the Azuchi-Momoyama
period (1568–1600), the age of Rikyū. In the established formal
seven-, five-, or three-tray meal format, meals comprised cold,
hard-to-eat foods, in quantities greater than anyone could possibly manage. Conversely, in the new chanoyu meal style, which was
known as kaiseki, guests were served with ready-to-eat warm foodprepared in an edible quality and quantity. Chanoyu now transcended the simple drinking of tea, as it incorporated a meal andalcohol, demanding beauty of the utensils and adding to the mix
the beauty of etiquette. It involved the presentation of all theseelements in a single, complexly structured manner. This novel,
stylized way of consuming tea, drawing on the refined simplicityof the wabi concept, is what is known as wabi-cha.
You can remove one component of wabi-cha and that component will certainly not lack meaning on its own, but wabi-cha
is complete in its totality. Architecture, gardens, utensils, cuisine,
tea-making procedures (temae), and style (shukō): it was Sen no
Rikyū who in a single masterstroke perfected and gave striking newemphasis to all these elements. Rikyū heralded the arrival of a new
culture. The creation of wabi-cha reached its fulfillment in Rikyū.
And yet, precisely because the structure of Rikyū’s wabi-cha
was so sound, it could not tolerate the accommodation of any
other tea style. This is what I meant when I referred at the outset tothe solitary nature of chanoyu. Rikyū’s tea was not comprehensible to all. Or, rather, it was a tea that was possible to understandbut not always possible to perform. Was Rikyū himself aware of
that? The Nanpōroku (Southern Record; 1690), an authoritative
seven-volume source on Sen no Rikyū’s way of tea, states:
There is no question but that, within ten years, the fundamental
way of tea will die out. When it dies out, people in society will

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Chapter 1

believe, on the contrary, that it is flourishing. The miserable end—when tea becomes completely a matter of worldly amusement—is visible now.*

I do not know if these are actually Rikyū’s words. But at least
the person who created the Nanpōroku a century after Rikyū’s
death knew in his heart that Rikyū’s chanoyu (wabi-cha) was not
something that could be understood by the many; it would go outof style and survive in solitude. The people who did carry it forward were “outsiders,” so to speak.
Today tea is striving once again to walk the main road ofJapanese culture. Or I should say, rather, that it seems to be trying
to find its way as a universal culture for the world, not just forJapan. What possibilities are there for chanoyu to shatter its
solitary shell and walk the cultural mainstream? One belief has itthat the more singular it is, the more universal its appeal will be.
Indeed, the question of whether chanoyu can find a universal pathis one that remains to be answered.
In this book, I am in fact setting out in pursuit of the before
and after of the creation of wabi-cha. To investigate the styles andforms that wabi-cha gave rise to, and the traditions it was rooted
in, is to be struck yet again by the enormity of Sen no Rikyū theperson. What Rikyū created—or, conversely, what Rikyū excluded—is truly immense. Rikyū invented a new paradigm with his establishment of wabi-cha. He drew on elements of ancient Japanesebelief systems and folk culture and gave them a new life in the tea
room (chashitsu), in the tea-making procedures, and in the utensils.
In so doing, he invented a new cultural common sense for Japan.
* Nishibe, “Zen Monks and the Formation of the Way of Tea,” trans.
Hirota Kimiko, 46.

The Creation of Wabi-cha

25

Nijiriguchi and Mawashinomi:
The Crawl-through Entrance and Passing the Bowl
The Birth of the Crawl-through Entrance
I am sure I am not the only person to hit my head or knock myback as I entered the tea room in my early days of studying tea.
The crawl-through entrance, or nijiriguchi, * is extremely small
at only around 2 shaku 3 sun tall in Japanese traditional measurements; that is, about 69 centimeters tall. In width it is just 2 shaku
1 sun, about 63 centimeters. How odd to have to enter and exit
via such a narrow entrance! This is just one awkward thing people
encounter when starting tea. Indeed, since the Edo period (1603–
1867), some people have ridiculed the need to crawl in and out ofa tea room. Tamiya Kitsuan (d. 1815) wrote in his Guzasso (ACollection of Foolish Thoughts) of 1833 that “snatching up one’s
straw sandals and squeezing inside is as becoming as climbing
into the sack with a streetwalker [yabochi].”† (The Japanese term
yabochi refers to a streetwalker who, with no fixed place of abode,sells sex to clients outside on a straw mat.) Undoubtedly, Tamiya
made his comment in a spirit of malevolent ridicule. And yet somehow it conveys the strangeness felt by anyone unfamiliar with tea
on first seeing a crawl-through entrance.

* The nijiri of nijiriguchi derives from the verb nijiru, meaning to shuffle
forward or backward in the formal seiza posture. The -guchi (kuchi) heremeans “entrance.” To enter through the nijiriguchi, one must kneel
down on the threshold and bend forward and, with the help of arms
extended in front, crawl forward into the room.
† Kumakura, “Rikyu and the Birth of the Nijiriguchi,” trans. Alfred
Birnbaum, 41.

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Chapter 1

So who invented this extraordinary entrance that seems toforbid entry, and why?
It was Sen no Rikyū who invented the crawl-through entrance.
Incidentally, the Japanese word used during Rikyū’s time was typically kuguri (stoop-through), not nijiriguchi. In any case, the boats
floating by the river’s edge in the Hirakata district of Osaka arethought to have been the prompt for Rikyū’s invention.
The entrances to the cabins of the Hirakata riverboats were
small, and [Rikyū] thought there was an interesting wabi quality
to how people had to bend down to enter them, so he adaptedthat form of entrance for the small tea room.*

Riverboat cabins have low ceilings. Samurai and commoners
alike had to bow their heads and crouch down to enter. This posture was wabi in feel, and for that reason interesting. There is aninventiveness in Rikyū’s idea here that suggests the insight of areal master.
Inspiration from the riverboat cabin entrance led to yet
more new imaginings. Cultural historian Hayashiya Tatsusaburō(1914–1998) proposed that in a riverboat, people have a shareddestiny. With the riverbed just a single plank of wood away, itamounts to a case of “bitter enemies in the same boat.” People
who emerge from the tight entrance into the cabin come to constitute a new group with a shared fate. Indeed, this is one possible
interpretation.
Architect Horiguchi Sutemi (1895–1984) researched Rikyū’s* Matsuya, Rikyū-den [Transmissions Pertaining to Rikyū]. The originaltext of the Chadō shiso densho dates to the first half of the seventeenth
century, and was compiled by Nara tea master Matsuya Hisashige(1567–1652).

The Creation of Wabi-cha

27

tea rooms and recorded his impressions of the Myōkian tea room
as follows:
If I were to use a more familiar expression to convey my feelingson entering the Myōkian tea room via the crawl-through entrance,
I would say I felt a shiver run down my spine. I was thrilled, andI completely forgot myself. Surely this is what it means to say
you are mesmerized.*

This was indeed the formative experience that led Horiguchi
to study tea rooms. When he declared himself mesmerized, he was
speaking not only of the crawl-through entrance, but it clearlyplayed a major role in shaping his experience. We, too, can often
get a cool, refreshing impression on our first sight of the tea roomfrom the crawl-through entrance. Surely, though, we experiencesome doubts when we try to explain that the invention of thisextraordinary entrance was inspired by nothing more than thatof a riverboat cabin. After all, the crawl-through entrance marked
a 180-degree reversal from the usual Japanese entrance into a roomfrom a hallway via a sliding door panel.
When the renowned figure Rikyū invented his crawl-throughentrance, which seems to refuse access, did those around him
meekly accept the idea? Historical documents indicate that critiques of the entrance, like Tamiya Kitsuan’s, appeared in the midEdo period, but during Rikyū’s own day, the crawl-through entrance encountered no criticism. Rather, people promptly took toit, and it proliferated. If that was indeed the case, then was there
perhaps some preexisting knowledge that made it easier for people to accept the concept? For example, was there something in* Horiguchi, Rikyū no chashitsu [Rikyū’s Tea Rooms].

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Chapter 1

Crawl-through entrance (nijiriguchi)that era which people thought resembled the crawl-through entrance, an entrance through which people could only pass by
crouching and folding their legs beneath them?
A search for something similar in that period suggests theso-called “mouse gates” (nezumi kido or nezumi do), the entrances
to the box seating for audiences at noh and kabuki theaters. In
the theater pictured on page 30, there is an entrance beneath thesurrounding curtain. In the kabuki theater of the early Edo period,
the announcer would read the titles of the plays by the entrance,

The Creation of Wabi-cha

29

and those who had paid an admission fee would crouch down andenter the theater via a narrow entrance next to a guard. The
entrances got the name “mouse gates” from the fact that they wereso narrow that only a mouse could get through them.
Mouse gates have a surprisingly long history. The author of
the Kiyū shōran (Survey of Interesting and Entertaining Facts;1830), Edo-period scholar Kitamura Intei (1783–1856), references
a “fox gate” (kitsune do) mentioned in the early thirteenth-century Kokon chomonjū (Notable Tales Old and New), explainingthat it meant the door was as small as a foxhole. He went on
to say, “There is a still smaller one called a mouse gate. It serves
as the entrance to theaters that stage sarugaku [the performancearts of noh and kyōgen].” And yet the example quoted in the
Kokon chomonjū was like a simple wooden back door. We canfind countless examples of visual evidence for mouse gates inearly genre paintings. Because the majority of those pictures postdate Rikyū’s death, they are inconclusive as evidence. However,let us take one example—namely, the Rakuchū rakugai zu (Scenes
in and around the Capital) screens. These screens, said to havebeen painted approximately a quarter-century after Rikyū’s death,show a narrow hole-like entrance at the front of a theater in the
Shijō-kawara district of Kyoto.
The term “mouse gate” or nezumi do dates back even earlier.
It actually appears in a document from the fourteenth century
period of the northern and southern courts. The entry for May 13,
1339, in the records of Zenrinji Temple in Wakayama Prefecturerefers to a fundraising performance of sarugaku performance art.
The term “mouse gate” appears there. This means that in Rikyū’sday, and, indeed, long before, a mouse gate served to separate thespace of the performing arts from the everyday world.
The inner spaces marked off by the mouse gate were those of

30

Chapter 1“Mouse gate” (nezumi do) in front of the Edo-period Nakamuraza
kabuki theater—detail from the Edo fūzoku zukan (Edo Seasonal
Genre Scenes). Reproduced by permission from Suwa Haruo, Kabuki
kaika (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1970).

sarugaku performance art and of kabuki drama. This was a realm
apart, ruled by a space and time distinct from that of the quotidian world. Any who entered that world were drawn headfirst intoa dramatic space. Can the same not be said of the crawl-throughentrance in chanoyu? A tea-room interior is a realm apart fromthe everyday world. What might occur between host and guests
once they enter the tea-room? The sense of anticipation reaches
a peak as one stoops though the crawl-through entrance. This isan entrance that turns back the unregulated flow of the everyday
world. The entrance has an almost religious quality, in the sensethat the world into which the guest has struggled to gain accessis completely transformed. Is this not the essence of the crawlthrough entrance?
There is perhaps something strained about the argument that

The Creation of Wabi-cha

31

links the crawl-through entrance to the folk practice known as tainai
kugiri (“passing through the birth canal”), where one ritually
passes through a tunnel or ring to symbolize rebirth. And yet surely
there were similarities apparent to the workings of the medieval
mind. There was the belief that one could be “born anew” andreceive a new life force by crawling through a narrow hole, as
noted by Hayakawa Kōtarō (1889–1956) in his book Hanamatsuri(Flower Festival; 1930).
This led to a theory that the crawl-through entrance wasassociated with the birth canal, through which a child departs themother’s womb.* The tea room is here likened to the mother’swomb, and the comforts experienced there constitute a form ofwomb memory. I am not certain that this view is correct, but folk
customs reveal many examples of a narrow passageway, like that of
the birth canal, serving as an entrance to a transformative experience. For example, a ring of plaited miscanthus called a chinowa
is set up for the summer purification ceremony held at Shinto
shrines. One passes through the miscanthus ring to purify heartand body and pray for protection from calamity. In some regionsof Japan, there is a folk practice of pregnant women crawling
through a small torii gate to pray for a safe birth. In all these cases,
the mother’s birth canal image is somewhere in the background.
Such metaphors exist not only in Japan. For example, in China
there is the world of Peach Blossom Spring, and there is Alice inWonderland in Europe. Both feature a narrow tunnel as the entrance to rebirth or to another realm. In essence, distinctive narrow
entrances have existed across all times and places, and no doubt
they inspired Rikyū in the creating of his tea-room entrance.
So can we say that the crawl-through entrance was Rikyū’s* Anzai, Chadō no shinrigaku [The Psychology of Tea].

32

Chapter 1

own creation? Not necessarily. In fact, prior to Rikyū there wereentrances to the tea space through a narrow gate. The following
description is found in the entry for April 20, 1462, in the Hekizan
nichiroku, a diary written by medieval Zen monk Unsen Taikyoku(b. 1421). When Unsen Taikyoku visited the home of a person
named Eian, he encountered a gate located some way from thehouse. The gate was narrow, but by twisting his body he was able
to enter. Beyond the gate, there was a small structure made ofgood lumber. The interior of the structure was decorated with
Chinese artworks (karamono) such as a Muxi painting of a flockof birds, and there he drank tea from the south of Uji, Kyoto. We
can see that the special narrow gate separated the outside worldfrom the building where Taikyoku drank tea. In today’s terms,
this was like passing through the rojiguchi, or the gate to the tearoom garden.
The Rakuchū rakugai zu (next page) carries a depiction ofsuch a rojiguchi opening directly onto the road outside. It is justabout the size of a crawl-through entrance, and the host appearson the inside, while guests are giving way to each other on theoutside. In the past, this type of small gate functioned as a street
entrance. Was it not Rikyū who transferred the idea to the tea
room? There are no records of a crawl-through entrance prior to
the Taian two-mat tea room that Rikyū is said to have built at
Yamazaki in 1582. In other words, similar entrances existed infolk customs and in medieval records, but it was Rikyū’s creativity, we might say, that applied the principle to the tea room.
The implication for chanoyu of rebirth, of purification bypassing through a crawl-through entrance, was a disengagementfrom the everyday world. The tea room is the place for dislocation from the quotidian; it is a realm that transcends the everyday.
That is why samurai took off their swords, which were symbols of

The Creation of Wabi-cha

33

Rojiguchi gate opening onto a street—detail from the Rakuchū
rakugai zu, left screen. Private collection.

social rank, and left them on the sword rack outside before passing through the crawl-through entrance.
There is no historical evidence that Rikyū conceived of thecrawl-through entrance on seeing a mouse gate. And yet we canimagine that when Rikyū invented it and revealed it to people,
they were undeterred precisely because they had previous experiences of similar structures.
The attribution of almost all chanoyu-related inventions to
Rikyū was a convenient device for later generations to talk of his
greatness. Nevertheless, the fact is that Rikyū did create the mostimportant forms of the tea aesthetic. I have already mentioned
the crawl-through entrance. But this was by no means conceived
in isolation. The crawl-through entrance naturally determined
the size of the tea room, and the size of the tea room determined
how tea was prepared and, in turn, the etiquette of the guests. So,
what aspects of tea preparation (temae) and what dimensions ofguests’ etiquette did Rikyū invent? Let us now turn our attention
to these questions.

34

Chapter 1

Passing the Bowl
First, let us consider the practice known as “passing the bowl” ormawashinomi.
There are two methods of tea preparation in chanoyu: thicktea (koicha), and thin tea (usucha). Thin tea, with its frothy top,
is the tea most commonly drunk at gatherings today. Thick tea issmooth and dense, made by rhythmically blending powdered tea
leaves and hot water together with the whisk. Several servings ofthick tea are prepared in a single bowl, and the bowl is then passed
around, with each guest sipping in turn. It is a somewhat unusual
practice that takes some getting used to.
The practice of passing the bowl was for a long time known
as “tea sipping” (suicha). It seems that tea sipping was yet another of Rikyū’s inventions. According to the eighteenth-century
Chanoyu kojidan (Old Chanoyu Tales), compiled by the samurai
and tea enthusiast Chikamatsu Shigenori (1697–1778), “in the past,
one bowl of thick tea was made for each person, but the host andguests found it tedious since it took so much time, and that is why
Rikyū devised the ‘tea-sipping’ method.”
Before Rikyū’s time, then, thick tea was made in individual
servings, a method known as kakufukudate. And on occasion,it seems, Rikyū himself made single portions of thick tea. On
October 23, 1588, Rikyū hosted a tea gathering at Jurakudai, thepalatial Kyoto residence of the overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, asa farewell for the revered monk Kokei Sōchin (1532–1597). Rikyū
made a bowl of tea for guest Shun’oku Sōen with three scoops of tea,
and another bowl with five scoops for guest Gyokuho Jōsō. Rikyū
thus prepared tea of varying thicknesses to suit guests’ individual
taste. It is clear from this that he did not prepare the tea for shared“tea sipping,” but prepared an individual bowl for each guest.

The Creation of Wabi-cha

35

And yet Rikyū himself wrote of the “tea-sipping” method forguests. There is a need to interrogate its reliability, but the historical source Ishin-kō yori Rikyū no o-tazune no jōsho no utsushi(Transcription of the Inventory of Lord Ishin’s Questions to Rikyū)
is a compilation of questions posed to Rikyū by Lord Shimazu
Yoshihiro (1535–1619) of the Satsuma domain in south Kyushu.
One question he posed concerned the kind of tea to be made when
five or six guests have gathered. In response, Rikyū said, “It is goodfor the host to make two bowls of tea, and three guests share abowl in kabuki-cha fashion.” Basically, he advised preparing two
bowls of tea, and getting three guests to drink one after the otherfrom a single bowl of tea. Although Rikyū here used the term
kabuki-cha for this sharing style, this source indicates that the practice of sharing tea from the same bowl was used in Rikyū’s time.
So the question then is whether “tea sipping” existed before
Rikyū’s time. Unfortunately, no reliable pre-Rikyū sources exist,
and so one cannot know for sure, but to the best of my knowledge,
records of “tea sipping” only date back as far as 1586, five years
before Rikyū’s death.
The Matsuya kaiki (Matsuya Family Records of Tea Gatherings) entry for November 9, 1586, states that when Yamanoue
Sōji (1544–1590), one of Rikyū’s leading disciples, made tea for
Toyotomi Hidenaga (1540–1591), “the tea was of the gokumu
variety, one of quality unsurpassed; four or five scoops of tea
and one ladle cup of hot water; served in ‘tea-sipping’ fashion.
Hisamasa was the first to drink, followed by others.”
Thus, Sōji used a tea of unsurpassed quality in abundant
quantity, and had his guests drink it in the shared “tea-sipping”
manner. Matsuya Hisamasa (1521–1598) was the first to drink
from the bowl. References to “tea sipping,” which had never before appeared, featured frequently from around 1586 to 1587. An

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Chapter 1

Passing the bowl (mawashinomi) of thick tea (koicha)

entry in the Sōtan nikki (Diary of Sōtan) for January/February
1587 says: “Thick tea. One bowl for three people in ‘tea-sipping’fashion. The host took up the whisk again, and drank.”
This seems to indicate that after three people had drunk in“tea-sipping” style, the host poured hot water onto whatever tea
remained in the bowl, whisked the mixture, and drank it.
If we accept that Rikyū started the practice of passing thebowl, then how did he come up with this new method of drinking
for guests?
The practice of passing the bowl coincided with the medieval
custom of communal drinking and eating, which aimed at harmonizing guests’ experience of an event. In Japanese the phrase
is ichiza konryū, or “establishing a seated-as-one experience.”
Another related key term, “one taste, same heart” (ichimi dōshin)suggests that passing the bowl was about generating a sense ofoneness by having all guests sip the same tea from the same vessel.
Such practices were not limited to the medieval period or to
Japan; indeed, they are universal to humankind. It goes without
saying that circulating a wine cup was the typical form of thiscustom. The poet Doi Bansui (1871–1952) began his verse “Kōjōno tsuki” (Moon over the Ruined Castle) with the following line:

The Creation of Wabi-cha

37“At a cherry-blossom banquet at the splendid castle in spring, themoonlight casts a shadow on the sake cup being circulated.” Thisis an image of a samurai banquet, where the cup, circulated between the lord and his vassals, solidified the vertical relationshipof lord and vassal. Circulating a single vessel of rice wine was aritual affirmation of shared bonds. Passing the bowl of thick tea
mirrored this ritual, and it saw host and guests, confined to asmall tea room, affirming the bonds between them.
And yet, as already noted, it is not possible to confirm theexistence of the practice of passing the bowl before Rikyū’s time.
The first mention of “tea sipping” appears in 1586. That being
the case, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that the passing of thetea bowl began within the tradition of circulating the wine cup,and that Rikyū then took this, establishing it as a practice withinchanoyu.
What gave rise to this tea-drinking method? The theory in
the aforementioned Chanoyu kojidan is that the practice started
because of the time it took to make individual bowls of tea.
Indeed, if the host used a different bowl to make thick tea for eachof four or five guests, it would take an extremely long time, atleast if contemporary methods were used. If we look at pre-Rikyū
sources, we find the practice of the host placing several tea bowls
on top of a portable stand (daisu) from the start, and making tea
in them one after the other. Even so, the new style of passing thebowl cannot simply be explained as a time-saver.
If this new “tea sipping” was indeed invented by Rikyū, thenwe probably should keep within our purview its historical background; namely, the Azuchi-Momoyama period, which saw an end
to centuries of social convulsion.
That Sen no Rikyū, a single member of the Sakai merchantclass, became tea master to the ruler of the realm, and that he

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Chapter 1

acquired a status under the Toyotomi regime that gave him politicalpower comparable to that of Hideyoshi’s half-brother Hidenaga,
constitutes evidence of the workings of social convulsion. Indeed,Rikyū and his culturally creative activities appeared as rays of light
precisely because of the dynamic flow of that age of turbulence.
However, as soon as Hideyoshi had completed his unification of
the realm, he implemented policies to freeze vertical movement.
He had weapons confiscated and land surveyed. He was able tosmother the energies of the lower classes who had overthrown theirsocial superiors, but it proved impossible to contain the upheaval
in the entertainment world overnight. People whose dream of removing their social superiors had been destroyed now created theirown strange customs that involved turning their backs on theworld. Such people were known as kabukimono, “outlandish
fellows.” Rikyū was himself a precursor, but the real age of outlandish fellows did not occur until some ten years after his death.
There was an incident in which the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–
1867) took action against this brotherhood. These men had taken
to calling themselves the “band of thorns” (ibaragumi) because
their thorny behavior alienated people. It is noteworthy that theKeichō kenmonroku anshi (Observations on the Keichō Era; 1601–
1611) characterized them as follows in an entry of June 1609:“Those hooligans hang long tobacco pipes (kiseru) from theirbelts as though they were swords; they cavort with the lowlifes
and pass around their pipes, sharing a smoke.”
These outlandish fellows—outlaws, effectively—used large
pipes to share a smoke of tobacco, which was a recent import toJapan introduced by merchants from Europe; in this way, theypledged oaths of brotherhood. The passing around of the tobacco
pipe was simply another manifestation of the circulation of thewine cup or tea bowl.

The Creation of Wabi-cha

39

The practice is now in decline, but I still remember clearly
that when the hippie subculture first appeared in the 1960s, hippies would circulate a marijuana joint to show their allegiance toone another. For the outlandish fellows of the Keichō era (1596–
1615), tobacco was a drug not unlike what marijuana was forhippies. Their behavior led to the outlawing of tobacco smoking,and, precisely because it was outlawed, the circulating of thetobacco pipe no doubt strengthened its meaning among them as aritual to affirm brotherhood. Today, there is an annual “naked”
festival (hadaka matsuri) held on January 8 at Yakushidō Temple
in Ichinobe-chō, Ōmi-Yōkaichi. It begins with young men gathering at the temple for the rite of wakashū initiation. A tobacco tray
is taken out and passed around, starting from the senior members,
and everyone in turn takes a puff from the pipe. This ritual is acontemporary example of the practice of circulating a pipe as amethod of pledging group allegiance among young men.
The spiritual origins of circulating a pipe were probably located very close to those of Rikyū’s “tea sipping” or passing thebowl. Tea has stimulant properties that are not inferior to thoseof tobacco. The strange ritual of sharing sips of tea from a bowl
in the chamber-like tea room was perhaps well suited to this ageof social upheaval. I have unthinkingly drifted away from my mainargument with this discussion, but here let me say that it was
Rikyū who established the practice of passing the bowl in chanoyu,
a style of tea which imposes on participants a fearsome psychological tension. The passing of the tea bowl, modeled on the folk
custom of bond-pledging rituals, added a clandestine hue to tea
that was entirely fitting for that period of social upheaval.

Chapter 2

BREAKING AWAY FROM
THE MEDIEVAL

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Chapter 2

The Structure of a Tea Gathering (Chakai)
Letters on Drinking Tea: Kissa ōraiThe formal tea function (chaji) is popular amongst those who
study tea today.
The modern form of chanoyu developed alongside largescale tea gatherings (ōyose chakai). As a result, the term for tea
gathering, chakai, suggests the presence of many people all pushing and shoving. More and more people were growing tired ofsuch conditions, and this is probably one reason for the popularity of formal tea functions, which are held with a small numberof participants, the ideal number being four or five.
So what is a formal tea function? Let me note its features
briefly. I will take as my example the standard midday version held
during the sunken-hearth (ro) season, which runs from November
through April. The host sends a letter to the guests. He or she
checks the RSVPs and starts preparations, but here let us skip overthose preparations and proceed directly to the order of events on
the day itself. At the appointed time, the gathered guests pass into
the antechamber (yoritsuki), which serves as a waiting room. Here,they drink a light aromatic infusion as they wait for everyone toassemble. They confirm among themselves who will take the rolesof main guest (shōkyaku) and last guest (makkyaku), and thenmake their way to the waiting bench (koshikake) along the garden
approach (roji) to the tea room. In due time, the host comes out
from the tea room area carrying a pail, uses it to refresh the waterin the basin for hand and mouth rinsing (chōzubachi) in the garden, and then opens the gate (sarudo) that separates the inner andBreaking Away from the Medieval

43

outer garden approach and greets the guests. The guests watch thehost return to the tea room and then follow, rinsing hands andmouths at the basin before opening the crawl-through entrance(nijiriguchi) and entering the tea room.
After the host and main guest exchange greetings there, thehost begins the charcoal-laying procedure or sumidemae. The
host performs this first laying of charcoal (shozumi) for the guests
to see, and lights incense before serving the kaiseki meal. This begins with the host carrying in a meal tray for each guest, on which
there is a dish called a mukōzuke (literally “far-side placing”). It
often features sashimi or vinegared fish. Arranged in front on the
tray is a bowl containing rice and another containing soup. Next
to be brought in are the sake pourer and sake cups. The guests
all drink a single round of sake poured by the host, and then asuccession of dishes are brought in: boiled delicacies (nimono),
grilled foods (yakimono), and tidbits called shiizakana. All thewhile, more rounds of sake are offered. The host then serves pickled vegetables (kō no mono), bringing the kaiseki meal to a close.
Finally, the host serves dainties, concluding what is known as the
shoza, or first seating.
The guests leave the room temporarily, returning to the benchin the garden for an intermission (nakadachi). In the meantime, thehost removes the hanging scroll from the tea room’s display alcove(tokonoma), arranges flowers in its stead, and prepares the tea
utensils. The host then strikes a gong, known as the dora, to invite
the guests to return to the tea room. The guests rinse hands andmouths once again and file into the tea room, where the host prepares thick tea (koicha) for them. This thick-tea preparation marks
the end of some tea gatherings, but in many instances the host replenishes the charcoal (a process called gozumi or “latter charcoal”),
brings in dainties, changes utensils, and serves thin tea (usucha).

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Chapter 2

2

1

4
3

5

6
10

8

9

7

Plan of a tea room (chashitsu) and tea garden. Reproduced bypermission from page 42 of the original Japanese edition.
1 Antechamber (yoritsuki)
Outer-garden:
2 Garden entrance (rojiguchi)
3 Outer-garden waiting bench (soto koshikake)4 Toilet in outer garden (shimohara setchin)
5 Gate between inner garden and outer garden (sarudo)
Inner-garden:
6 Inner-garden waiting bench (uchi koshikake)7 Toilet in inner garden (suna setchin)
8 Hand- and mouth-rinsing basin (chōzubachi)
9 Tea room (chashitsu)
10 Preparation room (mizuya)Breaking Away from the Medieval

45

The entire program to this point would typically have been
carried out in a tea room no larger than four and a half tatami
mats in size (koma). However, today it often happens that after
thick tea has been served, the host has the guests move to a larger
room (hiroma), where the mood changes and the host serves dainties and prepares thin tea. After drinking the thin tea, the guests
go out into the garden, which has been purified with a sprinklingof water, and say their farewells. So concludes the goza, or latterseating. This is essentially the order of events in a formal tea function, as it has been since Rikyū’s time. On average, it takes aboutfour hours. So, we might ask, what form did a tea gathering
assume before Rikyū?
The Kissa ōrai (Letters on Drinking Tea), which was completed in the early fifteenth century, is the oldest historical document describing how tea gatherings were conducted. The Japaneseterm for tea gathering, chakai, first appears in this source. The
Kissa ōrai is a type of textbook that explains chanoyu in the formof an exchange of letters between two correspondents. It is thus a
fictional depiction of an ideal tea gathering of the sort that took
place well over six hundred years ago in the early Muromachi period (1336–1573). Here I have extracted just the order of events thatshaped the tea gathering; for details, readers should consult theoriginal book. According to the Kissa ōrai, this is what happens.
As a visual image, I would like you to call to mind the Golden
Pavilion (Kinkaku) at Rokuonji Temple in Kyoto. With the Golden
Pavilion as the guest reception area, tea begins. First the reception
space is adorned and people assemble. The tea gathering starts
with a dish of kuzukiri, or kudzu-starch noodles, known also as
suisen, and three servings of sake. Then sōmen, or thin wheat
noodles, and tea are served as a second stage. The original Kissa
ōrai text mentions a “thereafter” (shikaru nochi). I take it to mean

46

Chapter 2that the sōmen and tea mark the conclusion of one stage, and“thereafter” the tea gathering moves to its next stage. The tablebelow sets out tea-gathering proceedings; the suggestion is thatthe three servings of sake (sake sankon) in the first stage are a legacy of ceremonial sake drinking known as shiki sankon, which
defined the warrior banquet.
The Kissa ōrai text continues with a reference to a banquet
where delicacies from the mountains and the sea are served as riceaccompaniments. The meal is without doubt sumptuous, unlike
the kaiseki meal typical of Rikyū’s wabi-cha. Guests eat fruit after
Tea Gathering Proceedings
According to Kissa ōraiBefore the Tea
Gathering(1) Exchange of letters(2) Tea enthusiasts finally arriveFirst Stage(3) Suisen (kuzukiri) served with three rounds of sake, sōmen
served with single exchange of tea

Second Stage(4) Delicacies from the sea and the mountains served with rice(5) Finest orchard fruits provide sweet taste

Third Stage(6) Guests leave seats to enjoy refreshing garden coolness

Fourth Stage(7) Enter tea drinking pavilion on second floor(8) Tea and dainties presented(9) Tea presented; tea-tasting games played, such as shishu
jippuku (“four types, ten sips”).

Fifth Stage(10) Tea utensils put away(11) Delicacies served, sake served, and numerous rounds
drunk(12) Singing, dancing, koto and flute music heighten gaiety

Breaking Away from the Medieval

47

the meal and then leave their seats. This concludes the second
stage. The guests now either enjoy the cool breeze in the shade oftrees or take in the scenic garden. (This fictional gathering takes
place in the summer season; the weather is quite hot.) We can assume this third stage corresponds to the intermission of a modern
formal tea function.
Imagine the fourth stage as taking place on the second floorof the Golden Pavilion. The second-floor windows are open; theroom is decorated with both rare utensils and imported hanging
scroll paintings. In this setting, the tea serving begins. The actual

Rikyū-era proceedings
Before the Tea
Gathering(1) Preliminary greeting(2) Guests gather in antechamber(3) Guests enter garden approach, wait at bench(4) Host goes to welcome them(5) Guests use water basin to cleanse hands and mouthFirst Seating(shoza)(6) Guests enter tea room via crawl-through entrance(7) Host conducts charcoal laying (shozumi)(8) Kaiseki meal, ichijū sansai (“one soup, three dishes”)(9) Dainties

Intermission(nakadachi)(10) Guests go out into garden, wait at bench

Latter Seating(goza)(11) Guests return to places in tea room(12) Thick tea is made(13) Host conducts charcoal replenishment (gozumi)(14) Dainties and thin tea served

After-Tea
Gathering(Rikyū rejects After-Tea Gathering)(15) Move to separate room(16) Sake and delicacies brought in(17) Singing and linked-verse recitation performed

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form of tea served and its preparation differ completely from today’s tea. Today, tea is made in tea bowls, and those bowls are
passed to the guests. In the Kissa ōrai period, tea bowls containing dry powdered tea were distributed to the guests; a person carrying hot water and a tea whisk then came around to each guest,
poured hot water into the tea bowl held by the guest, and, wielding the whisk, made the tea. Remnants of this can be seen today
in the annual Yotsugashira tea event held at Kenninji Temple in
Kyoto on April 20, the anniversary of the birth of Zen monk
Yōsai. It helps us to imagine how a young servant would have madetea in bowls held by the guests, before the start of tea-tasting games
where participants had to identify teas grown in different districts.
This is essentially the latter seating of a present-day formal tea
function. Preparations are made and guests take thick tea. These
procedures constitute stage four.
At this point the Kissa ōrai states that once the sun is setting
and the tea ceremony is coming to an end, the tea utensils arecleared away. Now begins stage five, which is essentially a sakeparty. It becomes an informal gathering where various appetizing
delicacies are arranged before guests, who exchange cups of ricewine. Heavy drinkers laugh at the non-drinkers, who in turnmake sarcastic remarks about the heavy drinkers. The guests turnbright red as they get drunk, looking like red autumn leaves ina frost. They sing, they dance, the music rings out, and eventually
it is nightfall. The reader might wonder when in the world thesebanquets end. The Kissa ōrai does not describe their ending, so
guests probably keep on drinking through the night. This is perhaps like the “after-parties” familiar today.
Such was the earliest format of the tea gathering (chakai).
And it feels very different from today’s formal tea function or chaji.
So what is the same, what is different? First, the differences.

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49

The overall five-part structure is different. The tea-gatheringformat perfected by Rikyū consists of three parts: the first seating(first stage) focuses on the charcoal-laying procedure and the
kaiseki meal; there is an intermission, the second stage; the latterseating, which constitutes the third stage, is focused on tea preparation. The Kissa ōrai tea gathering has two extra stages, thethree servings of sake (sake sankon) and single serving of tea atthe beginning, and the sake party at the end. Here we will focus
only on the format of the tea gathering, and ignore the atmosphere and the method of tea preparation.
What, then, is the common element? It consists in the aforementioned fact that the basic Rikyū-era tea-gathering format was
already in place; that is, the first seating with a meal, an intermission, and the latter seating with its preparation of tea. We can offer two interpretations of this. First, the format of the formal tea
function (chaji) greatly changed around Rikyū’s time with the perfection of wabi-cha. Second, the formal tea function’s basic format
nonetheless was the successor of the earliest type of tea gathering; namely, Japanese banquet traditions. So why did the five-stage
format change to a three-stage format? And why did this threestage format finally solidify into the formal tea function?

The Discarded After-Gathering StageMy hope is to discover a historical document that could shedlight on the process by which the tea-gathering format describedin the Kissa ōrai changed to that of tea gatherings held in Rikyū’stime. Unfortunately, no such convenient document survives. Thereis, however, the Chōka chanoyu monogatari (Epic Poem of theTale of Tea), attributed to artist and linked-verse poet Sōami (d.
1525). It tells us not about the orderly wabi-cha advocated by
Rikyū, but about a disorderly, more playful form of tea gathering

50

Chapter 2much closer to that of the Kissa ōrai realm. The research of tea
scholar Tsutsui Hiroichi (b. 1940) provides detailed information
regarding the Chōka chanoyu monogatari, and I draw here on therelevant sections of his work.
Here the overall tea-gathering format is essentially that of thepresent-day formal tea function: entering the garden approach, firstseating, intermission, latter seating, departure. However, the addition of an after-gathering stage, and the overall content, differed
greatly. First, the guests’ initial entrance into the tea room was not
via a crawl-through entrance, which is fundamental to a contemporary tea room, but rather via a covered corridor running along its
perimeter, as in the old style. I shall not discuss here the charcoallaying procedures, but note that the youthful guests who appear in
the Chōka tale were extremely ill-mannered. While the standard
procedure had the guests enter the room and then admire the display in the tokonoma alcove and the sunken hearth before taking
their seats, the protagonist of the Chōka tale simply “sat right inthe middle of the small space, cross-legged, and gave a big yawn.”
This raises the major question of when guests stopped sitting crosslegged in tea rooms. I will discuss this in more detail in chapter 3,
but here all we need note is that sitting “cross-legged” was a signof poor manners.
A meal then followed. The guests ate with chopsticks anddirectly with their hands. They spoke of this and that, and chattered while humming tunes. The sake served during the meal was
drunk from large cups, so much so they all became drunk. The
Chōka was originally meant as a didactic tale about the boorish
nature of the guests, and the depiction here is unsparing. Afterthe meal ended, the guests went into the garden for the intermission, and washed hands and mouths at the basin there before
returning to their seats. This was the second entrance. As wasBreaking Away from the Medieval

51

standard practice, they then drank tea before making their exit.
The format described in the Chōka chanoyu monogatari is
generally the same as that practiced today, except in the finer
details. In other words, the mood was like that portrayed in the
Kissa ōrai, but the format represented that of the wabi-cha tea
gatherings from around Rikyū’s time. What occurred, however,
was a truly dreadful banquet akin to a drunken spree. So long as
tea gatherings were ostentatious banquets, they always had thepotential to slip into informality. We saw this in the fifth stage
described in the Kissa ōrai. The wabi-cha style of tea gathering
was born from a rejection of the raucous playfulness found in thetea gatherings that preceded it.
Let us take another look at the Kissa ōrai. What were thediscarded first and fifth stages? If we were to identify a vestige ofthat first stage in present-day formal tea functions (chaji), it would
be the exchange of sake cups during the mukōzuke course. As will
be discussed later, this has been incorporated into the first seatingof the present-day tea gathering.
Rikyū completely rejected the fifth stage, the “after-tea gathering.” This is when, after a tea gathering officially ends, delicacies
are served once again, more sake is drunk, and the atmosphere assumes a playful character. Early modern historical sources indicatethat after the tea gathering, the guests moved to a larger reception
room (hiroma), or a room called the kusari no ma (literally, “chainroom”), where a kettle was suspended by a chain over a sunken
hearth. There, games such as yōkyū (miniature archery), singing,or linked-verse composition were played. Rikyū, however, rejected
this after-stage. His concern was to limit the time. A tea gathering
should not last longer than four hours. Naturally, four hours was
not enough time to include an after-stage. Even today, however,there are formal tea functions that include an after-stage. At one

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such event which I attended, the guests assembled at eleven in themorning, and the event ended at seven in the evening. Rikyū questioned what more could be desired after serving a kaiseki meal,
making thick tea with a focused heart, and replenishing the charcoal and preparing thin tea. He believed the after-stage completely
negated the sincere presentation of tea. The Hiraki no ma no ben(Comment on the Tea-Gathering After-Stage) document of daimyo
Ii Naosuke (1815–1860), who continued Rikyū’s wabi-cha tradition
and infused it with a modern spirit, inherited and echoed Rikyū’s rejection of the after-stage, which Naosuke referred to as hiraki no ma.
In fact, a considerable number of tea gatherings hosted byothers during Rikyū’s time included an after-stage. But so far as
we can judge from our most reliable historical sources, Rikyū
himself did not hold any such tea events. In this manner, he drewa line between his own practices and the trends of the day. He not
only rejected the after-stage drinking party, but also excised allsuch party-like elements from tea. His purpose was to inject intochanoyu a new spirituality that drew on the influence of Zen. Why,then, did Rikyū in the end construct the three-stage tea gatheringof first seating, intermission, and second seating? Is there not somedeeper meaning to what we take as completely normal; namely,
the eating of the kaiseki meal after the first entrance to the tea
room, and the drinking of tea after the second entrance?
The tea gathering was from the outset one variant of thebanquet. Just as the banquet was the standard form of a public
ceremony, so the tea gathering too had a ritual character. During
the age of the military unifiers of Japan—that is, from the endof the sixteenth to the start of the seventeenth century—chanoyu
took the form of an official ritual. One such example was the imperial palace tea gathering where Toyotomi Hideyoshi presented
tea to Emperor Ōgimachi (r. 1557–1586). In the Edo period (1603–

Breaking Away from the Medieval

531867), a little after Rikyū’s time, the second Tokugawa shogun
Hidetada (1579–1632) made formal visits referred to as sukiya
o-nari, or “official tea-house visits,” to his close retainers’ residences, when the standard formal etiquette of the military class tillthis time had demanded that an official visit of a shogun was tostart with the ceremonial drinking of sake (shiki sankon). Hidetada,
however, would enter the tea room and have a ritual banquet, andthen change the venue to the reception room for the drinking party
that constituted the after-stage. Compared to a conventional formal
visit, the mood was much simpler and less tense. To approach thisfrom the opposite angle, we might assume that the ritual engagement of host and guest that characterized the custom of passing of
the sake cup at the start of a military banquet was incorporated
into the character of the tea gathering, particularly its first seating.
Returning once more to the Kissa ōrai, we might recall thatthe first stage included the consumption of kudzu-starch noodles(suisen or kuzukiri) and the exchange of three cups of sake (sakesankon). This corresponds to the shiki sankon in a banquet. The
Kissa ōrai’s second stage—in other words, a meal featuring delicacies from the mountains and the sea, with fruit served as “dainties”—was added to create the first seating of a tea gathering.
According to present-day kaiseki rules, first a meal tray (oshiki) is
placed before each guest, then the host brings lacquered sakecups and a sake pourer and pours for each of the guests in turn.
This is a remnant of the “suisen, sake sankon” (kudzu-starch noodles and three rounds of sake) found in the Kissa ōrai. This was
precisely the way in which tea gatherings maintained their ritualquality. And this is what made official shogunal tea house visits inthe past, and tea gatherings today, into special occasions.
Rikyū infused his tea gatherings with a completely new
spirit by excluding the drinking-party elements and excising the

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sumptuous banquet. It was not necessarily Rikyū who incorporated the sake exchange and drinking banquet into the kaiseki
meal, but he was responsible for introducing the practice of passing the bowl, which transformed the tea gathering into a ritualpledge suited to the age of warring states.

The Tea-Room Space
A Mountain Sanctuary in the City
The term “mountain sanctuary in the city,” which Rodrigues introduced in his seventeenth-century work Historia da Igreja doJapão (History of the Church in Japan), succinctly conveys themountain image of the chanoyu environment. Language explaining the atmosphere of the garden approach and tea room in termsof a mountain sanctuary or residence shows what people of thattime expected from them.
The garden approach or roji (which means, literally, “dewyground”) is the mountain. When asked about the atmosphere of
the roji, Rikyū quoted this poem by the monk Jien (1155–1225):
Fallen oak tree leaves
are not as crimson maples,
In thick heaps they lie,
the loneliness of a path
to a temple deep in the mountains.** Kuitert, Themes, Scenes, and Taste in the History of Japanese GardenArt, 240.

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Rikyū explained that the atmosphere of a narrow path leading
to a temple in the mountains was suited for the tea-room garden
approach. This explanation can be found in the Sawa shigetsu shū(Collected Tea Stories Pointing to the Moon), a collection of
anecdotes on tea by Fujimura Yōken (1613–1699) compiled andedited in 1701 by his adopted son-in-law, Kusumi Soan (1636–1728). The original Jien poem ends, “the road is lonely” (michi zo
kanashiki). In other words, the garden envisioned by Rikyū had a
deep-in-the-mountains feel that encompassed his desire to createa realm apart within the city. It may be that Rikyū’s roji had amuch more overgrown quality than is usual for modern-day garden approaches to the tea room.
Belief in a “realm apart” within mountainous terrain evokes
the idea of another world existing in the mountains. Anotherworld originally designated life after death, but over time it cameto be understood as a space removed from the everyday, yet realizable in this world. The idea that a sacred realm unfolds in themountains is also to be found in mountain-worship sects andelsewhere in East Asian religious thought. Buddhism has its sacred Mount Potalaka (Jp. Futarasan). There are many instancesof artists re-creating the settings of Kannon’s Pure Land Mount
Potalaka in the mountains, creating a landscape with ocean in theforeground and a unique mountain rising on the far shore, thereby
conjuring a utopian realm that transcends the ordinary world.
Though unrelated to chanoyu, a typical example of the re-creationof the Mount Potalaka Pure Land can be seen in the worship ofthe landscape around Lake Chūzenji and Mount Nantai in Nikkō,
Tochigi Prefecture, at Futarasan Shrine. Note that the “futara” inthe shrine name uses characters that can also be read as nikkō,
literally “sun-light.”
Belief in mountain utopias is found throughout human history,

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The garden approach (roji) and middle gate (chūmon) of theKonnichian tea room. Photograph courtesy of Takemae Akira.

and can hardly be considered something unique to East Asia. As
the German poet Carl Hermann Busse (1872–1918) wrote, “Overthe mountains, far far away, there, people say, happiness dwells.”
There is a widespread belief that happiness exists beyond themountains. The understanding that mountainous realms are somehow apart existed in Europe, too; the concept is universal.
Buddhist temples were built deep in the mountains, as in theBreaking Away from the Medieval

57

case of Mount Kōya and Mount Hiei; the recluse Kamo no Chōmei(1155–1216) built his ten-foot-square hut on Mount Hino as aretreat from secular society. Normally, one would have to go into
the mountains to enter an otherworldly realm. However, chanoyu
reversed this notion, and gave rise to the concept of creating themountainous realm or sanctuary within a city dwelling, summoning it into one’s own living space. The idea that another realm lies
within the mountains was the premise for realizing the “mountainsanctuary in the city” within a residence; namely, the garden approach and the tea room to which it led.
Let me mention here the related concept of the realm apartthat lies beyond the seas. Just as people envisioned utopia existingin the mountains, so they have always imagined a utopia acrossthe oceans. In Japan, a utopian concept can be seen in the
Ryūkyūan belief in Nirai-kanai—a mythical realm where thedeities dwell and from where they influence the human world—which lives on in various local customs in coastal communities in
the Ryūkyū Islands. In Buddhism, we can also discern maritime
utopian concepts in the depictions of Mount Sumeru above thewaves, and the understanding of the aforementioned Mount
Potalaka as being above the sea.
Fudarakusanji Temple was built in the present-day Kumano
region of Japan, and there is a well-known tale of the head priestof that temple being placed on a ship and pushed out to cross thesea to Fudaraku. In the early modern era—that is, from the
Azuchi-Momoyama period through the Edo period—the idea ofa maritime utopia was brought close to home through the mechanism of the garden approach. This style of garden can often be
seen, for example, in the chanoyu created for the imperial court
and nobility. Gardens that conjure up an image not of mountains
but of the sea, gardens that feature a boat and a pond—these

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existed in early modern imperial court culture. When Emperor
Go-Mizunoo (r. 1611–1629) abdicated and assumed the title of“retired emperor,” he had a large pond built on the grounds of his
palace residence. He would take a boat to the opposite shore,
where there was a tea room. This was a form of “tea entertainment,” with members of the court nobility assembling in the tea
room, where they would enjoy an evening of chanoyu, and thenreturn to his residence by boat.
An ocean-like pond, a boat, a structure on the opposite shore
suggestive of a utopia, where various forms of pleasure aresought: all this calls to mind the boating scenes typical of earlymodern-era pleasure pursuits, as depicted, for example, on the
Sōōji Temple folding screens (Tokugawa Reimeikai Collection).
Such imagery exists not only in paintings. Hiunkaku Pavilion at
Nishi-Honganji Temple in Kyoto is one example of an extant
structure. It is reached by boat across a pond, and from the landing dock built beneath the reception room, guests directly enter
the pavilion, which contains gathering rooms and a place forbathing. With its observation deck, the Hiunkaku is precisely theform of pavilion seen in early modern “pleasure paintings.” People
could well have enjoyed chanoyu here.
The crossing of an ocean or a river is also linked to transcending the border separating this world and the other world. In
folk customs, bridges everywhere perform a similar function. In
Edo, there is the unusual Ryōgoku (“two provinces”) Bridge,
which links two different provinces. Pilgrims performed ablutionsin the Sumida River that ran beneath the bridge before setting off
to Mount Ōyama. Bridges were places where members of arhat
fraternities held rituals to welcome and pay their respects toarhats, enlightened ones who have reached nirvana, in the otherworld. Again, considering the noh play Shakkyō, literally “stone

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bridge,” and various similar performance arts in which a bridge isthe stage, it is easy to assume that bridges functioned as a boundary linking this world to the realm beyond.
The garden approach to the Kankyūan tea room of theMushakōjisenke estate in Kyoto features a dry moat crossed bya stone bridge. The bridge takes the role of the middle gate(chūmon) in the garden; it is where the host meets the guests andwhere they exchange greetings. That is to say, the river and bridge
bring to the garden a sense of the border between realms. They
function as a dividing line between this realm and the other.
This aspect of the garden approach shows that chanoyu is
not an activity of this realm; it strives rather to be an act that resides within the sacred, other realm.

Garden Approach (Roji) Practices
Gods are spiritual beings, and the garden approach is a place where
people and gods come together to purify and be purified. In thegarden, there are thus certain practices to be observed.
The most important garden practice involves the cleansing ofhands and mouth. The Nanpōroku states, “The hand-rinsing basin
is where people who visit the garden, and those who receive them
there, mutually cleanse themselves of the dust of the world.”
Thus, the heart of wabi-cha is found in the treatment of thewater in the basin. Indeed, the cleansing of hands and mouth ismore than a question of hygiene. Since antiquity, there have been
rituals for purifying (kessai) the body in Japan. This is no different
from the practice of rinsing hands and mouth before praying at a
Shinto shrine. The purification is meant to prevent the impure
from entering a sacred space.
The term shiba chōzu (“brushwood cleansing of hands”) is
also found in the Nanpōroku. The explanation offered there is that

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Shugendō mountain ascetics, finding themselves in the mountains
without water for purification, broke off some tree leaves (shiba)
and used them to rub their hands clean. The term shiba chōzu is
not used in modern-day Shugendō, but traces of the practice remain in chanoyu. There is the requisite rubbing of hands together
before picking up a Chinese (karamono) tea container. This action
is intended to ensure the hands are prepared and nimble, so as to
avoid mishandling the precious tea container or staining it withthe oil from one’s hands. In fact, however, the principle is just thesame as “brushwood cleansing of hands”; that is, a way to purify
the hands without using water. Another term for it is kara chōzu,
where kara means “empty” and chōzu “hand rinsing.”
In folk customs, too, there is the water-free hand-purifying
method; there it is known as chiri chōzu, where chiri means “dust.”
The same term is applied to a move in traditional performing
arts. For example, a dancer crumples a piece of paper between
her hands, then tears it into pieces and throws it behind her back.
This is said to be the gesture of a young woman making a wish andhoping for its fulfillment. A similar action can be seen when sumo
wrestlers enter the ring. They squat at one of the cardinal pointsof the sumo ring, bring their hands together in front of them, andclap; they then spread their hands to either side with the palms
facing up and turn their palms down. When they bring their hands
together in that first action, they rub their palms together to remove any dust, which they then fling away by turning their palms
downward. This, then, too, is a water-free act of purification.
Guests cleanse their hands and mouths to prepare for entering the tea room’s sacred space, but tea gatherings have not beencharacterized consistently by such logic. There are many examplesof tea gatherings held in Rikyū’s day where guests did not rinse
their hands and mouth before entering the tea room for the firstBreaking Away from the Medieval

61

Rinsing of hands and mouth (chōzu)seating. It seems, though, that they always rinsed them before thelatter seating, in which there was the tea drinking. From the host’s
perspective, the guest is akin to a god, a rare and exalted visitor.
That is why the host welcomes them to a place that is purified.
This explains the practice of sprinkling water (uchimizu). Water
is sprinkled over the garden three times in the course of a tea gathering, with the first sprinkling occurring before the guests’ arrival.
Before the intermission, when guests go out into the garden, thespace is purified again. And there is a final sprinkling, called tachimizu, where tachi means “departure.” The host sprinkles water
for a third time before the guests get up to leave. The garden isthus repeatedly purified. Further, as will be discussed below, in teapreparation methods of old, the host also rinsed his hands andmouth before starting to prepare tea. The host purified himself
before the guests to show that he welcomed them as sacred beings.

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The garden’s serene, mountain-like quality evokes the animistic world. At just the time Rikyū was active, the Satsuma-domain
samurai Uwai Kakuken (1545–1589) wrote in his diary, Uwai
Kakuken nikki, about the intermission, recording that “thereafter
all guests left the tea room, saying they would spend a while gazing into the distance.” Some people clearly spoke, then, of being
in the garden to “gaze into the distance.” It would be rash to link
this distant gazing to the practice of ancient emperors surveying
their realm, but some folk rituals still tell of a person who stands
at the front of a procession and looks out far into the distance;
this practice continues today. In brief, the garden is a separate,
special realm that demands actions of a ritual sort that are removed from everyday life.
The starting point for Rikyū’s creation of the early modern
way of tea (chadō or sadō) thus embraced various aspects of the
deep culture of the Japanese people. These aspects were then readback into the wabi-cha system, their essence wrapped, as it were,
within a new structure, where they constituted an etiquette thathas sustained the formal tea function till this day.

Seclusion
The special nature of a tea room lies in its being a secluded, hermetic space. While Japanese homes are open spaces “created withsummer in mind,” the tea room is quite different. The tea room ischaracterized by the fact that it is structured as a sealed space, enclosed on four sides by walls, with only a small entrance and small
window connecting it to the outside world. And not only is thetea room physically sealed; when it is in use for a tea gathering,
the protocol for the guests further underscores that it is a psychologically sealed space, too.
After receiving the host’s welcome, the guests advance throughBreaking Away from the Medieval

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the garden approach and pass through the middle gate, which thefinal guest closes. Then, when they have entered the tea room, thelast guest closes the crawl-through entrance, shutting the smalllatch attached to it. Thus, twice, three times over, the tea room isshut off from the outside world. The guests sit for several hours
inside this space secluded from the outside world, and it is very
similar to the act of seclusion associated with different religious
ceremonies.
Since antiquity, the Japanese have consistently withdrawn inside shrines and temples, shutting themselves off. This cloistering(sanrō) is an act of purification, as people seclude themselves inside a temple or shrine for a set period, cutting off communications with the outside world. One well-known example of this is
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, where legend has it that withdrawing
there for prayer can help with the conception of a child. And various regions of Japan have igomori or “seclusion” festivals, in which
seclusion takes center stage.
For example, there is such a festival held at Wakiidenomiya
Shrine in south Yamashiro, Kyoto. Its centerpiece is seclusion
overnight in the shrine building. Those inside cook rice, whichis then offered at set places in the village. If the rice, which isarranged on camellia leaves, has disappeared by dawn, it means
the gods have accepted it. These seclusion festivals involve only alimited number of people entering the shrine building and participating in the food preparation. The lights are all extinguished,including those in the shrine offices; sounds and light from outside
are excluded. Indeed, it is this act of seclusion in a sealed spacethat guarantees the protection of the gods.
A more open form of this festival can be seen in the kamakura snow domes built in the city of Yokote, Akita Prefecture, in
northeast Japan. The kamakura—the term is a local variation of

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Chapter 2

kamikura, or “god seat”—involves making a snow dome as aplace in which the gods can reside; it is designated as the seat for
the god of water. People seclude themselves inside the hollowedout snow dome, where they share food and drink in the presenceof the water god in the belief that this will protect them from
disease and calamity. Why do we not think of the tea gathering
as sharing something in common with the phenomenon of the
seclusion festival? For here, too, guests withdraw inside the sealed
space of a tea room for several hours, severing all contact withthe outside world and sharing food and drink with others.
The anthropologist Namihira Emiko (b. 1942) hypothesizes
that the word kegare, meaning “impurity,” derives from the phrase
ke ga kareru, meaning “the spirit withers.” We live our lives in astate of extreme wariness lest our spirit leaves us. We fear the
deflating or withering of our spirit, and we pray that our bodies
might be animated, filled with spirit. Indeed, we experiment withseclusion as a way of reviving our spirits during the change ofseasons and at turning points in the annual cycle when it is easy
for our spirit to be lost.
Is not the point of a tea gathering, when host and guests
withdraw to a tea room for four hours, to replenish the spirit?
What makes this possible is the creation of the small tea room with
its crawl-through entrance. Undoubtedly there flows subconsciously
through Rikyū’s tea something in common with the aforementioned practice of seclusion that endures in folk customs.

Breaking Away from the Medieval

65

Why Is Tea Preparation Called Temae?
Temae: “Before the Point” or “In Front of You”?
The first thing that troubles the novice tea practitioner is the orderof the different stages in tea preparation, or temae, as it is calledin Japanese. Take the following situation: You remember that once
you have put the tea in the tea bowl, the next step is to open thelid of the water vessel (mizusashi)—but, in your haste, you mistakenly ladle up the hot water instead. Quite a few people makesuch mistakes when they start to learn tea. The more complicatedthe procedure, the more confusing it becomes: How best to fold
the fukusa silk cloth neatly? How to prevent the chakin linen wiping cloth from losing its shape?
But when, we might ask, did tea preparation become so complicated? First of all, what does the Japanese word for tea preparation, temae, actually mean? I was taught that temae is the mostlogical, economical sequence of actions needed to make delicious
tea. But is there really a direct connection between the various specific ways of handling the ladle (hishaku), for example, and making delicious tea? I fail to see a direct link. In that case, there must
be some other reason for the birth of this complicated procedure.
We must think carefully about this process of temae, which is at
the heart of tea practice.
The word temae is confusing in Japanese since the te can be
written with either the character for “point,” or the character for“hand.” It seems clear that the “point” character is a later alternative used principally for its sound value. Does that mean, then,

66

Chapter 2that the “hand” character is correct? This, too, is doubtful. Today
most Japanese write temae using the “point” character, and thisis the convention I adhered to in the original Japanese version ofthis book.
The Japanese phrase cha o tateru, “to whip up tea,” is old.
The verb tateru means “to invigorate” or “to make abundant.”
The noun date—written with different characters—refers toan aesthetic of dandyism that derives from the verb tateru. The
Japanese phrase “to whip up tea” does not mean just whipping
the tea to a foam in a literal sense, then. Rather, it implies a stirring up of the spirit of the tea. In pre-Rikyū tea texts, temae wasoften substituted by the phrase cha no tateyō, “the manner of invigorating the tea.” The tate character here, literally “to stand[something] up,” is a homonym for the tate character that means“to construct.” As a result, sometimes this “construct” character
was used in place of the “stand up” character in the word temae.
And yet in the past it often happened that temae was written
using the “hand” character, as in the Yamanoue Sōji ki, a 1588
record composed toward the end of Rikyū’s life by his disciple
Yamanoue Sōji. This is a reliable historical source, and we can assume that this is the first appearance of the “hand” character inthe word temae.
I think there is a special significance to the choice of thischaracter. It is precisely because “hand” is used for te that themae character—meaning “before” or “in front of”—comes tolife. Temae thus comes to mean “before, or in front of, the body”;
it signifies the self. In making tea, one is working in the placemost proximate to the self, using one’s own hands. The job ofmaking the tea, whisking the tea, is thus literally temae. This is afairly straightforward interpretation of what temae means. Temae
may have had a humbling resonance, and perhaps this is why theBreaking Away from the Medieval

67“point” character was later substituted for it; it gave to the word a
Sinitic authority. The character for “point”—read as te or ten—
was presumably adopted from the Chinese-sounding compoundtencha, used to mean the act of whipping up powdered tea with
hot water. This is mere conjecture on my part, however.

Host (Teishu) and Guest Spaces
I previously wrote that Rikyū created the crawl-through entrance.
When I did so, my presumption was always that it determined theform of the tea room, and that it further shaped the practiceof temae tea preparation. Indeed, these three—the entrance, tearoom, and tea preparation—are all closely connected.
Before the crawl-through entrance was created, one entered atea room via a normal shōji or paper-paneled sliding partition accessed from an adjoining veranda. In other words, the room was
not specially designed as a tea room. One entered the room as one
entered any normal reception room. At the risk of exaggeration, it
was with the creation of the crawl-through entrance that a tea room
could become a special kind of space. To understand what madethat space special, we must first think back on Japanese architectural traditions. Pillars are the basic support system in Japanesearchitecture. In many instances, easy-to-remove wall partitions or
panels known as fusuma or shōji are inserted between these pillars. Japanese interiors are partitioned only by fluid fittings ofthis sort. Remove the fusuma, and you get an interior that extends
out to the adjoining garden. This explains the expression “garden
and room are one.” In essence, Japanese rooms are open, the antithesis of confined spaces. This is quite different from Europeanand American architectural traditions with their basic structures
built around thick walls.
But tea-room architecture alone defies Japanese tradition.

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Chapter 2

What impression do people get on visiting Rikyū’s tea room
Taian (see frontispiece) at Myōkian Temple in Kyoto? I urge you
to go and visit Myōkian if you have not yet done so. The tea room
there fully deserves its designation as a national treasure. Whenyou pass through that crawl-through entrance and are inside, it is
as if you have entered a cellar-like space, which, indeed, has the airof a secret, closed room. (Note that today, for reasons of preservation, entry into the room is not permitted.) This is not the kindof ambiguous space that allows easy communication with theoutside world; it is an independent space clearly partitioned offfrom the outside by rough clay walls. It is a constricted space. Its
designation as a national treasure might suggest a representative
Japanese structure, but in fact its space rebels against Japanesetradition. And what explains it is the crawl-through entrance.
If, on the other side of the crawl-through entrance, there werea spacious room, then there would be no strange sensation of thesort one gets at Myōkian. The Myōkian tea room is an extremely
small space, barely two tatami mats in size, which makes it all themore moving. In brief, the creation of the crawl-through entrance
demanded a tea room that was four and a half mats at most, andif possible, smaller than that. Rooms of that size are called “smallrooms” (koma), as opposed to the so-called “spacious rooms”(hiroma). The tea-room space was shrunk from four and a halfmats to two mats, then further to one and three-quarter mats.
This meant at the same time a decisive shrinking of the distance
between the host making the tea and the guests. The guests canclosely observe the movements of the host’s hands and feet rightbefore their eyes. The host is watched; the host’s awareness of
having his actions observed leads to the formation of still more
beautiful postures, still more refined actions. This was undoubtedly
the motive force that created today’s complex, but elegant, temae

Breaking Away from the Medieval

69

procedure. Let us reflect on this point from a historical perspective.
On October 30, 1975, an interesting experiment took place inthe Kō no ma, the main reception hall designated an important
cultural property at Nishi-Honganji Temple in Kyoto. The experiment was an attempt to revive the performing arts of the AzuchiMomoyama period some four centuries ago. The Kō no ma is avast room with an elevated section and an adjoining lowerlevel 162-mat space, set against an alcove known as an oshiita, anearlier form of today’s tokonoma display alcove. When eighteenof the tatami mats are removed from the central section of themain room, a noh stage is revealed. Top-quality boards, like thoseused for theater stages, comprise the flooring underneath thetatami mats, and the stage itself has acoustic effects and otherfunctions built into it. This 1975 experiment deployed the stage
for a combination of noh, flower arranging, and tea ceremony.
Between the two noh plays, tea master Yabunouchi Jōchi (1936–2018) performed a tea ceremony in the Momoyama manner, whichmakes use of a daisu, the classical form of utensil stand. A noh
theater stage normally has a large painting of a pine tree as its
backdrop. In this instance, a sizable gold-leafed folding screen
provided the backdrop, with a formal ikebana arrangement in the
rikka (literally, “standing flowers”) style featuring a pine bough
placed in front of the screen. All this took place during the day,but the room interior was darkened, the dark relieved only by
flickering candlelight. I thought about this as I watched. I was
positioned by the elevated section of the room, near the corner ofthe stage. I was directly opposite, diagonally the furthest removed,from the spot where the master was making the tea. I could honestly see almost nothing of the details of his tea preparation.
I could only identify his larger movements, his pouring of hot
water, his wielding of the tea whisk. This made me wonder whether

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Chapter 2

Tea preparation—detail from Chōbazu byōbu (Folding Screen
Depicting Horse Training), c. 1600, six-panel folding screen,
154 cm × 355 cm panels, Taga Taisha Shrine Collection,
Shiga Prefecture.

guests seated far away in the elevated section of a spacious drawing
room or reception room were ever able to see the tea-making.
As the historian Murai Yasuhiko (b. 1930) has discussed in
the 1971 book Sen no Rikyū, the space for preparing tea was originally outside the room where the tea gathering was being held.
An example can be found in the Chōbazu byōbu (Folding Screen
Depicting Horse Training), which belongs to Taga Taisha Shrine
and dates from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century. The
painting shows tea being prepared with a daisu utensil stand anda brazier-and-kettle set (furo-gama) arranged in a space separate
from where the military lord watched the horse training. The lord’sbanquet and the tea preparation occupied separate realms. The

Breaking Away from the Medieval

71

tea was merely prepared and then carried to the lord for his enjoyment. In other words, with tea preparation and banquet taking place separately, it was not yet possible for guests to enjoy thebeauty of the tea preparation process.
Later, gradually, the place of tea preparation appeared before
the guests; it moved from a separate space into the tea room. But
originally tea was prepared in an adjoining room known as aganro no ma, after the round hearth (ganro) set in its floor. The
ganro no ma, as a room specially outfitted with a round hearth
for tea-making, was certainly designed for the preparation oftea, but it was not a tea room (chashitsu) per se. The ganro no ma
acted as a place for tea preparation, one joined back-to-back witha tea reception room. This arrangement can be seen at Keikan
Sansō, the villa of Ichijō Kanetō (Akiyoshi; 1605–1672). Originallylocated in the Nishi-gamo district of Kyoto, it was later moved toits current location in Kamakura.

From Tea Preparer to Host
The chanoyu style performed in the late fifteenth-century Higashiyama period is known as shoin daisu tea. Shoin refers to theformal reception room; daisu is the large utensil stand on whichtea-making equipment was arranged. During such events, guests
could see the tea preparer in the distance. What I thought of when
watching the aforementioned Kō no ma tea ceremony was thesketch of the Higashiyama palace’s midaisudokoro, literally “theplace for the imperial utensil stand,” as seen in the Nanpōroku.
The Nanpōroku sketch shows a veranda (engawa) one anda half ken wide by four ken long (approximately 2.73 by 7.27
meters) in one corner of which is the single-mat area for the utensil stand. A six-mat elevated area is adjacent to the other cornerof the veranda. To the side of that elevated area is a canopied dais

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Chapter 2

1

3

5

2

7

8

4

9

10

12
11

15

14

6

13

Breaking Away from the Medieval

Sketch of the location of the imperial utensil stand (midaisudokoro) in the
Higashiyama palace, as seen in the Nanpōroku. Reproduced by permission
from Nanbō Sōkei, Nanpōroku: Ei’inban (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1986).
1 Two-mat display space (oshiita)
2 Vestibule for storing guests’ footwear (mikutsusho)
3 Small room with imported tropical rarewood (karaki) flooring andcheckerboard-pattern latticed ceiling
4 Sliding papered panels (shōji)
5 Six-mat raised room (jōdan-no-ma)
6 Canopied dais (michōdai); purple curtains above the entrance to the
canopied dais, tied with a trefoil (agemaki) knot
7 Smooth edging boards of five sun (about 15.15 centimeters) width
8 Mat for the utensil stand (daisu); six-panel folding screen (byōbu)
covered with gold- and silver-flecked paper stands under windows
facing in two directions; otherwise, two-panel folding screen here
9 Two sliding papered panels of exposed papered lattice, two shaku six
sun eight bu height (approximately 81.21 centimeters); two diamondpatterned windows above utensil stand display mat; twelve matsspread on this veranda, including mat where utensil stand is displayed
10 Two raised mats placed here when utensil stand is used
11 Sliding papered panels (shōji); lower veranda located here
12 All four koshishōji (part-solid [wood], part-papered sliding panels) areremoved when tea utensils are displayed on utensil stand (daisu-kazari)
13 Room three by four mats in size
14 Sliding wooden storm doors, two panels (mobiki no ō-do)
15 Part-solid (wood), part-papered sliding panels (koshishōji), with upper
section of exposed papered lattice (kumi-bone) and lower of paper
flecked with gold or silver

73

74

Chapter 2(michōdai) where the noble guest sits, and there is a two-mat display space (oshiita), which all makes for a grand drawing room.
During tea preparation only, there are two tatami mats placed
one ken (approximately 1.82 meters) away from the area for theutensil stand where the tea is being prepared. This is where
persons of elevated rank took their place to watch the tea preparation. According to the Nanpōroku’s notes for the tea maker,
at the far end of the veranda there is a large entrance (called amobiki no ō-do) through which the tea maker steps onto theveranda, where, outside the door, there await two attendants tasked
with preparing the tea utensils. Then the tea maker—referred tohere as cha sahai no hito, literally “tea management person”—
first rinses his hands and mouth before taking up the tea utensils
and carrying them to the utensil stand. There is a note of warningat this point, explaining that the hand- and mouth-rinsing place
is visible to those occupying the elevated section of the room, andso the tea maker must be careful there, too. Here let me make two
observations. First, the “tea manager” is quite different from thelater tea host; this was a person whose function was simply to makethe tea. This role was probably played by the Ashikaga shoguns’
aesthetic advisors and cultural curators (dōbōshū) who were activein the so-called Higashiyama culture that flourished around thevilla of the eighth Ashikaga shogun located in the eastern hills of
Kyoto. Second, there is an emphasis on the tea-maker rinsing his
hands and mouth.
In the Kissa ōrai, too, the host of the tea gathering and theperson who prepared the tea were two different people. The hostwas on the side of the guests, while a person in his service served
the tea. Let us take a look now at the Kodensho, a sixteenthcentury tea text written about 150 years after the Kissa ōrai. This
is what it says about tea preparation:

Breaking Away from the Medieval

75

The tea preparer always washes his hands and mouth thoroughly,bows politely to the senmoto [host], takes the tray down fromthe tokonoma alcove, and pulls the kakurega [a tripod-shaped
lid rest for a kettle] close by.

First, the tea preparer—the “tea manager” mentioned above—appears. Then he bows once to a figure referred to as the senmoto, who is clearly the host (teishu), not the main guest. Later inthe same book there is a chapter on the way for a senmoto or
host to drink the tea which he has prepared for himself before
he takes care of the tea utensils. The implication is that during
the Higashiyama period, the tea preparer and the host were quite
separate. But only fifty or sixty years later, the Kodensho describes
a scene in which both the host and the person making tea on hisbehalf appear in the preparation of tea. While one should not jump
to conclusions, this seems to indicate a new trend of the hostmerging with the person who does the tea preparation. As the tea
preparer came to assume the status of host, so the etiquettedescribed in both the Nanpōroku and the Kodensho of tea preparer—not guest—rinsing hands and mouth disappeared.
The temae process was established when the tea preparerceased to be a man of lower rank, and the event organizer became
the host. As a result, guests turned their attention to the conducting of the temae. The guests’ seats and the tea preparer’s seatacquired parity; the process by which this occurred can also be
explained in terms of the change in the structure of the tea room.
In the period when the tea preparer was simply a functionary, thespace for tea preparation was set outside the banquet seatingroom. I previously noted that this was a separate tea-preparation
area or a room with a round hearth built into its floor (ganro noma). In the elevated space depicted in the Nanpōroku, the tea was

76

Chapter 2

prepared before the gaze of the high-ranking persons, even though
they were seated some distance away. The tea I watched on thestage of the Kō no ma came across as quite ethereal and archaic.
And yet, in all these cases, the tea was still prepared in a lower
section of the room. Did the creativity of wabi-cha not lie in erasing the elevated space, and so at a stroke closing the distance
between tea preparer and guests? Tea served in a small room,
symbolic of the birth of wabi-cha, shows that host and guests areequal. The sunken hearth first appears before the guest in thesesmall rooms, where it is situated as a so-called “outside hearth”(dero), since it is outside the tatami mat where tea is prepared.
The outside hearth lies between guests and host, who sit facing
each other on either side of it. The host is completely the equal of
the guest, and further, the host now prepares tea before the guests’eyes. Inevitably, the guest is now forced to focus on the host’s teapreparation methods. It was, as I mentioned earlier, the creationof the crawl-through entrance which made this tea form possible.
Of course, the basics of tea preparation were in place before
Rikyū. However, it was only after his time that the finer details
were settled. The tea room contracts, and because the guests’ eyes
can now capture everything, those eyes work hard not to overlook
the subtlest of movements. Diary entries on tea gatherings after
Rikyū’s time suddenly begin to note the finest of details, and this is
proof of the scrutiny of the guests’ eye. One entry in the Matsuya
kaiki tea diary kept by the Matsuya family of lacquer merchants
and tea enthusiasts gives a detailed description of tea as preparedby tea master Kobori Enshū (1579–1647), noting even the handling of the small linen wiping cloth (chakin).
Matsuya Hisashige (1567–1652), who wrote the entry, wasmoved by the beauty of what he saw: the linen cloth arranged in
the tea bowl was taken out, refolded, and then placed on top of theBreaking Away from the Medieval

77

vessel for fresh water (mizusashi). Matsuya wrote of how stylish(date) the form of the linen cloth was after it was twisted intoa ring shape. The proximate distance needed to see the shape ofthe linen cloth, the gaze directed at it, the aesthetic awareness ofthe detail: all these elements were essential for the establishmentof temae tea-making procedures. And as they became established,so they acquired a life of their own, giving rise to all manner ofvariations, ever more complicated, ever more beautiful.

Chapter 3

TEA DEVOTEE (CHAJIN)
PRACTICES

80

Chapter 3

From Sitting Cross-Legged to Sitting Formally
Crowded Tea Gatherings
In The Hidden Dimension (1966), the American anthropologist
Edmund T. Hall (1914–2009) proposed that the Japanese have theirown unique way of handling crowded situations. Among animals,too, there are some species that like crowding and others that donot. For example, when walruses crowd together, they really huddle
in close, jostling together like potatoes in the scrub pot. But whenbirds such as swans or ducks gather, they absolutely avoid stacking
up or rubbing up against each other. I am sure to be reprimanded
for comparing the Japanese to walruses, but people on thosecrammed Japanese rush-hour trains or bodies squished together
at midwinter “naked” festivals (hadaka matsuri) look to me much
like walrus huddles. And yet in their everyday lives, the Japaneseseek to avoid close physical contact; there is none of the physicaltouching seen among European, American, or Arabic peoples.
Here I refer to Hall’s theory because the sensibility regarding
person-to-person distancing that flows through the foundationsof Japanese culture differs from that of Europe and the US. Too
close a proximity prompts disagreeable feelings, and yet a great
distance feels strange too. The desirable distance between people
depends on the individual, but there are differences based on eachethnic culture too. Japanese culture is fundamentally one in whichpeople maintain distance from one another. A single tatami mat
is used as a measurement for such things, with a half mat considered appropriate for sitting, a full mat for sleeping. There is also
the etiquette of placing one’s folded fan on the tatami mat in front

Tea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

81

of oneself when making a formal greeting. These examples point
to the Japanese people’s dislike of physical contact. However, in
special instances—many of these occur on festive occasions—
there is close contact of a sort unimaginable to a European orAmerican, and it serves as a mutual expression of intimacy.
I have chosen to address this topic because I think it is possible that the tea-room interior, from the outset, was a device forgenerating the tension that is unique to crowding. When I earlier
mentioned Myōkian Temple in Kyoto, I noted that the tea-room
interior conveys the sense of a cellar. From its rough plaster walls
reminiscent of a farm shed, its small windows which let in little
light, and its crawl-through entrance, one cannot help but get thesense of a sealed chamber. Inside this chamber, one’s gaze is limitedby the walls, the people, and the tea utensils. Undoubtedly theimpression is of people more proximate than they actually are. The
inside of a tea room is a “crowded space.” Crowding, in and of
itself, creates tension. The tea room engenders tension, and there
is a kind of excitement that accompanies it.
The Matsuya kaiki tea diary kept by three generations of the
Matsuya family covers the years 1533–1650. It gives informationfrom which we can tell how many people gathered in what amountof space. I have organized that information in table 1 (overleaf).
We learn that in the middle decades of the sixteenth century—in other words, before Rikyū led the tea world as tea master tothe military and political rulers of the day—there were typicallyone or two guests in a four-and-a-half-mat room. This gave each
guest about one and three-quarters mats of space; always morethan a single mat. Then, during the period of Rikyū’s greatest activity from the Great Kitano Tea Gathering of 1587 to his death in
1591, there was a sudden contraction and subsequent crowding of
the tea room. Each guest had less than a single tatami mat, and in

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Chapter 3

Date

1559

1563
1565
1568

1584
1585

1586

1587

1588

1589

1589

June 3June 4
June 5June 5June 6
June 6
June 7
June 8February 13
March 11February 10
February 12
February 16
March 23
February 27
January 14
July 17
August 1
February 9
June 7
June 8June 9June 10
June 11
June 12
December 10
March 3September 22
November 26
January 19
February 23
March 1
December 4
December 31
January 18
March 13
November 4
November 10
December 29

Total Guest
Space (tatami)

No. of Guests

Tatami Space
per Guest

3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
3.5
2
1.5
1.5
1.5
2
1.5
3
2
3.5
1.5
2
1.5
1.5
1
1
1
2
1.5
1
1
1
1
1
1

2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
5
4
3
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
3
1
2
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3

1.75
1.75
1.75
1.75
1.75
1.75
1.75
1.75
1
0.87
1.16
3.5
3.5
3.5
1.75
1
0.75
0.75
0.5
2
0.75
3
1
1.75
0.75
1
0.75
0.75
0.5
0.5
0.5
1
0.75
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.33

Tea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

Date

1590

1591
1593
1594

1595
1596
1597
1599
1601
1606

1608

1609
1616
1617
1618
1622
1623

January 24
September 7
December 9
December 12
December 31
December 31
April 8January 27
March 27
October 3
November 23
December 4
December 7
April 5October 21
March 19
December 14
December 15
February 23
April 18
May 20April 10
April 10
May 7
May 8
May 22January 17
July 18
July 6
July 11
March 4
November 30
January 4

Total Guest
Space (tatami)

No. of Guests

Tatami Space
per Guest

1
1
3.5
1
3.5
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
3.5
3
3
3
3
3
2
3
3.5
2
3
2
1
1
3.5
3
2
2
3
3
3

2
2
2
2
3
2
2
2
2
2
4
2
6
2
2
4
3
3
4
2
5
1
1
3
2
3
2
6
2
2
5
2
5

0.5
0.5
1.75
0.5
1.17
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
1
0.5
0.5
0.58
1.5
1.5
0.75
1
1
0.5
1.5
0.7
2
3
0.67
0.5
0.33
1.75
0.5
1
1
0.6
1.5
0.6

83

Note: A single tatami measures 189 by 94.5 centimeters. Total guest space is calculated by subtracting the tatami used by the host from the size of the tea room. Tatami
space per guest is equal to the total guest space divided by the number of guests.

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the vast majority of cases, only half of one. At the tea gathering
held on December 29, 1589, there were three guests in a two-mat
tea room. Since the host needed one mat for tea preparation, thethree guests would have had to sit on a single tatami mat. This
reminds us of Rikyū’s words as recorded in the Kōshin gegaki(Kōshin’s Summer Notes), a book on tea written between 1662 and
1663 by the fourth head of the Omotesenke lineage, Kōshin Sōsa
(1613–1672): “Two guests in a room of four and a half mats, andthree guests in a room of one full-sized mat and one three-quarterlength mat (ichijō daime).” Incidentally, it seems that there were
two distinctive uses of tea rooms from the last years of the sixteenth century through the early years of the seventeenth. One
was for the earlier, more relaxed form of tea, while the other wasfor the Rikyū style of wabi-cha; the two seem to have coexisted.
If, in general, we assume that a guest’s space is half of a Kyotosized tatami mat, and two guests shared a full mat, then they could
sit in a relaxed manner. If there were three people on one tatami
mat only drinking tea, then they would be able to sit, but that isalways assuming that they sit as we do today. The earlier way ofsitting demanded half a tatami mat because people sat cross-legged.
In 1566, two years before the great warlord Oda Nobunaga(1534–1582) entered Kyoto, Rikyū was forty-five years old andin his prime. This was the year when Jitsugyō, head monk of
Kōmyōin at Kōfukuji Temple in Nara, wrote his own reflections
on studying tea. His writing is included in the previously quoted
Kodensho. It includes one passage, briefly discussed in chapter 2,
with the heading “Notes on How the Host Drinks Tea.” This isa record of the host’s actions as he prepares his own bowl of tea.
After he has whisked the tea in the tea bowl, he places it to hisright side before taking up the ladle (hishaku) and putting the lidTea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

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on the kettle. So far so good, but he then writes of “raising a knee
once more” to drink the tea. What could this mean? Further, after
drinking the tea, he sits in the “relaxed sitting style” (anza) as heclears up the utensils. Clearly, the expression “raising a knee”
means that he sits with one knee elevated, a position known as
tatehiza. The “relaxed sitting style” he adopts for clearing up theutensils is close to a cross-legged posture. But what was his position before he raised one knee? Here another term appearing in
the passage is noteworthy: kashikomatte (“respectfully”). Prior toraising his knee, he was in a “respectful” posture; namely, what
we call today seiza, a formal sitting posture where one kneels withthe backside resting on the heels and the insteps flat against thefloor. Thus, in this short passage, there appear all three sitting
styles used in tea: the relaxed sitting style known as anza; thesingle-raised-knee style, or tatehiza; and the formal, respectful sitting style that is referred to as seiza in modern-day Japanese.
The relaxed style is probably the oldest of them all. Sitting
relaxed and sitting cross-legged are different. The Japanese word
for the latter is agura or agumu. But the relaxed style as seen in
portraits of aristocrats involves sitting with the soles of the feetplaced together, or with the ankles crossed in front of the body.
This is also referred to as “musician’s posture” or gakuza, possibly
deriving from how court musicians sat. In fact, we do not knowwhether the “relaxed” sitting mentioned in the Kodensho is crosslegged (agura) or “musician’s posture,” but it is probably the former. It is, in any event, a relaxed posture.
Though of a slightly later era, the late sixteenth- to earlyseventeenth-century diary of Kyoto townsman Hariya Sōshun,
Sōshun-ō chadō kikigaki (What Old Man Sōshun Has Heard
about the Way of Tea), has the following account:

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The guests return to the reception room. After the host has finished laying the charcoal, he opens the sliding door to the preparation room and enters. From the entrance the host and guests
exchange greetings, and the host invites his guests to “sit in arelaxed manner” (roku ni). If it is winter, he suggests his guests
wear head coverings (zukin), since his top priority is ensuring theguests’ comfort and ease. Then, once the kaiseki meal is over, heinvites his guests again to “sit in a relaxed manner.” And after
the intermission, before he takes up the tea utensils during the tea
service, he tells the guests yet again to “sit in a relaxed manner.”Once the guests are comfortable, he begins.

The word roku, scattered throughout this passage, has several meanings, but here it seems to imply “feeling at ease,” or“relaxing.” In other words, Sōshun is time and again urging his
guests to sit comfortably.

Tatehiza and Kashikomaru: Raised-Knee Sitting and Formal Sitting
Sitting with one knee raised was the natural posture during a tea
gathering. There are probably quite a few readers who wonder if
this was actually the case, but it most definitely was. It was themost natural of postures not only in tea, but also throughout East
Asian culture. It seems, though, that at some stage in their history,
the Japanese forgot about the one-knee-raised posture. The nohtheater is the one place where this posture endures. Instructions
in noh to “stay down” mean that actors, whether playing themain parts or auxiliary ones, sit in this knee-raised manner. It is
the most natural way of sitting on a flat surface.
How should we read the Kodensho article mentioned above?
If we read the key term anza to mean the most relaxed postureassumed by the host when tidying away the tea utensils, thenTea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

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Supporting actors in an old-style noh play wait in raised-knee
sitting style (tatehiza). Reproduced by permission from page 87
of the original Japanese edition.

sitting with one knee raised suggests a state of greater tension.
After all, it was at the very least the posture the host assumed when
drinking tea.
The raised knee appears also in the Usoshū, an anonymous
four-volume set of tea books dating from the late Muromachi period and contemporaneous with the Kodensho. The text relates
how the guests sat with raised knee after seeing the host take out
various precious utensils. That is, the understanding was clearly
that when the host had completed that phase, the guests would sit
with one knee raised.
The posture did not disappear in the early modern era. The
Hosokawa chanoyu no sho (Hosokawa’s Book on Chanoyu), a
tea text written by Sen no Rikyū’s beloved disciple Hosokawa
Sansai (1563–1646), also describes sitting with one knee raised. A
copy of this text appeared in 1641, about half a century after
Rikyū’s death. In it there is one passage which I interpret to meanthat when the guests are in a relaxed posture, the host keeps his

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Chapter 3knee raised, and when the guests are in the more tense formal
posture, he retreats a little, sets his left hand down on the mat,and uses his right hand to place the bowl containing the preparedtea in front of them at a spot six sun (approximately 18.18 centimeters) from the frame of the sunken hearth. Let me add herethat my understanding is that if the guests are sitting in the relaxed style, the host sits with one knee raised as he prepares tea.
Then there is the following passage:
From his relaxed position, the host raises his knee, takes up theladle (hishaku), sets it onto the mouth of the water vessel (mizusashi), and leaves it there.

This refers to the host’s actions after preparing tea but priorto scooping water from the water vessel and pouring it into thekettle. Up until this point, the host has been “relaxed,” which probably means he was seated in the relaxed anza manner. It would beinappropriate to remain relaxed at this stage, so he now raises
one knee. In this era too, then, it seems the raised-knee posturedenoted a state of heightened tension.
I cannot easily imagine Sen no Rikyū with one knee raised,or sitting cross-legged as he tidied up the tea utensils. Because wetend to think of sitting in seiza as the tea posture, we imagine
Rikyū seated in this manner. This fixed image of formal sitting
during tea, however, is challenged by much counter-evidence both
before and after Rikyū. The formal seiza sitting style was not as
fixed as we like to think. So then where did it come from?
Let us return to the earlier quotation from the Kodensho, in
which a sitting posture described as kashikomatte, “respectfully,”
was mentioned. The same term is discussed in the Wakun no shiori,a dictionary compiled by the mid-Edo-period linguist Tanigawa

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The seiza or kashikomaru formal sitting posture (left), kamei turtle position (center),and tatehiza knee-raised sitting style (right)—details from Wakabayashi Atsumu,“Kaiga shiryō nado kara mita Nihonjin no ‘seiza’ kihanka e no purosesu” (The
Normativization of Japanese ‘Formal Sitting’ as Seen through Paintings and Other
Materials). Thirty-Sixth Conference of the Japanese Society for History of the
Performing Arts Research, Report Materials, 1999. Courtesy of the JapaneseSociety for History of the Performing Arts Research.

Kotosuga (1709–1776). The dictionary entry gives the verb kashikomaru, or “sit respectfully,” to mean sitting with both knees on
the ground and the buttocks on the feet. It describes what we callseiza today. The use of this verb implies the humble, self-abasing
posture of prostration assumed by lower-ranking persons before
nobility. Further, because one assumes this posture in the presenceof the nobility, it is accompanied by the greatest tension. The
aforementioned Usoshū indicates that, if the guest is a noble orother higher-ranking person, then the host will sit “respectfully”
from start to finish while making tea; that is, he will sit in seiza. If
the host is of a status equal to his guests, then he makes the tea
seated in relaxed fashion, anza. Vassals would assume the formal
sitting position, seiza, in the presence of their lord.
It is a tense posture, and at the same time a ritual posture. It
seems that there were at least two types of respectful sitting. The
term kamei, or “turtle position,” describes a more ceremonialstyle which appears in the twelfth-century Chōshūki (Record of a

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Chapter 3Long Autumn), written by the late Heian-period court noble andpoet Minamoto no Morotoki (1077–1136). It has the following:
After bowing once to the Minister of the Left, he adopted theturtle position (kamei) and remained prostrate.

This turtle position was assimilated into chanoyu along withthe formal, respectful way of kneeling.
The Chawashō, one of the Sen family texts from the latter
half of the early modern era, tells how Bunshuku Sōshu (1658–1708), the fifth-generation head of the Mushakōjisenke tea lineage, prepared tea sitting with his buttocks on the floor and his
feet splayed either side. This was what the nobility referred to as
turtle sitting (kamei), because the position of the feet resembled
that of a turtle’s. Grandmothers used to sit like this, so it was also
called the “granny posture.” But in fact, this was the formal sitting posture assumed by court nobles when they sat for long periods at court. This no doubt helps explain why it was adopted intochanoyu. It was, to be sure, less rigid than the formal sitting styleof today, and when brought together with the reverent kashikomaru formal sitting style there was no place left in chanoyu fora “relaxed” or “knee-raised” posture. And so it was that the sitting style adopted in tea preparation today was arrived at.
This shift in tea manners—from relaxed sitting to knee-raised
sitting to formal kneeling—reflects the changing nature of tea fromamusement to discipline. Sitting cross-legged in the tea room wasforbidden. As we have seen in chapter 2, the Chōka chanoyu
monogatari, thought to have been written at the beginning of theearly modern era, stated that “[The guest] sat right in the middleof the small space, cross-legged, and gave a big yawn.” This was anadmonishment against such poor manners on the part of guests,

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and it indicates that sitting cross-legged in a small tea room was
no longer appropriate. The sixteenth-century Bunrui sōjinboku(Classifications of Tea), an exemplary early text in three volumes,
advises one to “look at whether the reception room is large orsmall, whether the guests are many or few, and then to sit in sucha way that one’s hakama [a traditional Japanese trouser-like garment with wide, loose legs] does not splay out.” Here was an important lesson for the crowded tea room.
In other words, the aspect of amusement in tea was gradually
lost as tea became a place of heightened tension. As it did so, thetea room became ever smaller, the people in it all the closer, which
in turn played its part in heightening the sense of intimacy andthe feeling of tension. There was an accompanying shift away froman easy, relaxed sitting posture to the formal sitting posture, seiza.

The Origins of Tea’s Walking Style
The Culture of Walking
Japanese women, it is said, walked with their feet turned inward;that is, they walked “pigeon-toed.” But was this really the case?
Evidently it was not; indeed, pigeon-toed walking proves tobe a modern phenomenon, a type of discipline enforced on womenover the last 150 years or so. Originally, it was not linked to gender, and indeed there are no images of a pigeon-toed Kannon, theBodhisattva who is thought to typify femininity. Clear depictionsof pigeon-toed women are only to be found in the ukiyo-e, say, ofthe early nineteenth century. It seems that pigeon-toed walking was

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a gendered symbol of women’s “reserved” or “docile” nature,forced upon them in Meiji-era (1868–1912) education. The viewthat women wearing kimono must walk pigeon-toed in order tolook elegant is a groundless stereotype. Indeed, neither in India
nor in any other culture where women wear wrap-around garments have people considered pigeon-toed walking to be beautiful. If this is the case, the Japanese aesthetic that considers it
beautiful must be something old-fashioned, influenced by the old
Chinese aesthetic of binding women’s feet.
Here I do not intend to debate whether pigeon-toed walking
is beautiful or not. But it is surely important to note that, regardless of whether it is historically old or new, pigeon-toed walking
had significance for the Japanese people of the past. Men andwomen walked differently during the Edo period (1603–1867).
As seen in the early eighteenth-century essay collection Mukashimukashi monogatari (Tales of Long Ago), walking styles were already differentiated according to age, profession, and gender fromthe start of the Edo period. A simple glance at a person’s gait
would indicate how old the person was and what kind of work heor she did. This is an extended citation from the above-mentioned
essay collection:
Women’s customs in the past were different from those today. . . .
How they walked on the street depended on their age, as did theobjects they hung from their sashes (obi). If you looked at fivepeople or ten people walking together, you could tell a person’s
age by the designs on their kosode [literally “small-sleeve,” akimono with close-fitting sleeves], and by how they walked on
the streets. You could estimate their age. Even if their faces werecovered, you could judge whether they were young or old by
their manners; you could discern that even from a distance.

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In the past, then, a simple glance at a person’s gait or theircustoms would be sufficient to suggest their age and their standing in society. So what was the situation when this Mukashimukashi monogatari was written in the early eighteenth century?
Another passage says:
Everyone has their sash pulled high up to their chest so that fromthe back, a long section of the kimono appears below it. And
they clump along in an inelegant manner. From a distance you
cannot tell a young man from an old woman.

This sounds just like the lament of someone today.
Setting aside the Edo-period lament, parents until very recently
taught walking to their children as a form of discipline. Parents
would say, “Don’t bustle along when you walk!” or “Stand up
straight while walking!” Some decades ago, the training in how towalk was still more particular. Walking was something children
practiced, and assimilated.
The reason I bring up walking style as a relevant historicalissue is because the importance of walking style is often emphasized in chanoyu, but its origin is never truly considered.
Later generations thought that it was Rikyū who paid close
attention to walking style. Here I note an episode in the Nanpōroku that has Takeno Jōō insisting both guests and host wear geta,a type of elevated wooden clog, in the garden approach. This was
to avoid their feet getting wet when they walked through heavily
dew-covered grasses and plants. The Nanpōroku goes on to saythat the sound of a person’s geta will reveal who is experienced or
inexperienced. The walking style of an experienced person is one
that does not clatter, but rather moves quietly and effortlessly.
It was Jōō, then, who decided that geta were to be worn in

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the garden approach to the tea room. His reference to thick dew
on the grass needs some explanation. If stepping stones had beenarranged in the garden approach as they are today, one would not
wet one’s tabi, those split-toed socks worn with sandals, even if
there was a slight rain. But in Rikyū’s day, some gardens were
simply grass. Rikyū’s tea room in Mozuno in Sakai is said to havebeen of that type. To walk on grass thick with dew, geta are indispensable. This explains Jōō’s concern.
But Rikyū thought otherwise. Walking on stepping stones ingeta naturally creates noise. On hearing the noise, you can distinguish tea experts from the inexperienced. The expert walks
calmly and quietly, unconcerned by unwanted or distracting
thoughts. Indeed, the sound of those who focus on their way ofwalking is in disarray. Dreadful though it may seem, it is true.
This being the case, why not switch to setta, soundless leathersoled sandals? Rikyū’s invention of setta as footwear for the garden
approach was intended to eliminate this needless worry.
The Nanpōroku notes that Rikyū had sandals with leather
soles made to his specifications in Imaichi-chō, Sakai, and usedthem in the garden approach. Rikyū’s view was that, at the time,
fewer than five of the dozens of chajin or tea devotees in Kyoto,
Sakai, and Nara were able to manage walking in geta properly. He
saw no point in forcing people to do something that was beyond
them. As a result of his innovation, less attention was paid to how
people walk in the garden approach.

Gliding Walk (Neri-aruku)
In 1938, the Meiji- and Shōwa-era pioneer of women’s education
Ōe Sumi (1875–1948) published Reigi sahō zenshū (Complete
Etiquette Methods). This book explains how to sit, how to stand,and of course how to walk. It identifies two ways to walk. One isTea Devotee (Chajin) Practices95

the so-called gliding walk. The explanation she offers is as follows:
1) In a standing position, put your hips into position and readyyourself.
2) Fix your gaze on the floor about one and a half tatami mats[approximately 3 meters] in front of you, and step forward withthe foot furthest from the display alcove. Without lifting the soleof the advancing foot from the floor, gradually step forward,and, breathing in deeply, take a full stride. During this process,keep the advancing foot light and have the other foot support the
body weight.

The explanation continues, but it is hard to understand by
written explanation alone. Note, however, that in the gliding
walk, “the sole of the foot is not lifted from the floor.” The explanation confirms this point at the end:
The knack to this walking style is, regardless of whether thefoot is advancing or retreating, never to remove the heel from themat. . . . Pay particular attention to keeping the upper body upright, with the hips pulled back and the knees unbent.*

No matter how many times you read an explanation of anaction, it is impossible to understand until you have seen it inpractice. The essential point of this gliding walking style is anyway to never let the heel leave the ground and to bend the knees
as little as possible.
I am sure some readers have spotted my intention in mentioning the gliding walk. In brief, my interest in tea walking techniques* Adapted from the original by the author.

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Gliding walk (neru). Left to right: Foot further
from the display alcove advances; foot closer tothe display alcove is raised; foot closer to thedisplay alcove advances. Reproduced bypermission from Ōe Sumi, Reigi sahō zenshū(Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1938).

lies in my concern to identify the origins of how one walks in thetea room, rather than in the garden approach. A sliding step or“foot-sliding,” known as suri-ashi in Japanese, is the set way forwalking in a tea room. So where did this sliding step originate? I
think that its origins lie in the gliding walk.
The gliding walk is of great vintage. The verb “to glide” (neru)
appears in Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventh-century Tale of Genji,
indicating that it was fully established in Heian-period imperial
court rituals. This same gliding method then appeared in various
later forms, referred to by an array of terms such as kata-neri,otoshi-neri, hoso-neri, and ara-neri. We must seek the origins of
all these forms in China.
As indicated by the Sinologist Tanaka Kenji (1912–2002), twotypes of walking appear in the Chinese Confucian Book of Rites(Lı̌jì); namely, xuqu (Jp. josū, literally “slow”) and jiqu (Jp. shissū,Tea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

97

literally “fast”). However, this is complicated by a note identifying
three styles: in essence, these are walking, walking fast, and running. Basically, however, there is just slow and fast. These two walking types are not simply a question of speed, but also of style.
In the Kǒng Yı̌ngdá shū, a commentary on the Book of Rites
by Confucian scholar Kǒng Yı̌ngdá (574–648), there is the phrase,“Do not lift the foot, and ensure that the qi flows.” There aremany commentaries on the Book of Rites, some of which say thatthe instruction not to lift the foot pertains to slow walking, andmeans to drag the heel. The phrase in Kǒng Yı̌ngdá’s commentary means that the foot should not leave the ground, and the qi,
which appears to indicate the bottom hem of a skirt-like garment,
should flow along the ground like water. So this walking is effectively sliding along the ground or, as mentioned earlier, “footsliding” (suri-ashi).
The Japanese were influenced by Chinese walking styles.
When Japanese nobility thought of the gliding walk, they referredto this Book of Rites. The Heian-period manuals on court etiquetteeven quoted from the Notes on the Book of Rites (Lı̌jì zhùshū).
When you are about to step out, first lift the tips of the toes andthen draw the foot along, keeping the heel on the ground.

Heian-period manuals for court etiquette tell us that this way
of walking was called ogimushi—literally “inchworm.” As thefoot advances, the toes are lifted and the heel slides along the
ground, in a style of walking that resembles an inchworm; hence
the name. Diaries of Heian nobles indicate that questions ofwhen and where one glide-walks were of great importance incourt rituals. By the Muromachi period (1336–1573), courtiers
seemed no longer to understand the walking methods described

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in these manuals, and some had to be trained by court etiquettespecialists. Sanjō Kintada (1324–1384), whose diary Gogumaiki
covers the years 1361 to 1383 and details information on court ritesof the day, was one such courtier. The advice from the court etiquette specialist of the day, Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388), was toaspire to “a walking style that advances smoothly, as if one foot is
gliding through the air.”
As we can see here, a gliding walk meant sliding the feet along
the ground while raising and lowering the toes. The upper body,in conformity with that walking style, glides in a stable posture.
Even today we have the verb neri-aruki, literally “glide-walk.”
A procession or pageant is called an o-neri to describe how it
glides along. The high-ranking courtesans of Shimabara and otherpleasure quarters walk in a way that traces the Chinese characterfor “eight”; it too is called o-neri or a “glide.” This most ritualistic court style of walking spread to the common people in later
periods, and as a result, the gliding technique was adopted as anostentatious walking style for festive events.

Feet on the GroundThe gliding walk used in court rituals requires a stable upper body,and in this sense it is very close to the sliding-walk method adopted in chanoyu. So, we might ask, did the foot-sliding style usedin the tea room itself derive from the gliding walk?
Unfortunately, there is no available proof of the origins of
tea’s foot-sliding walk. But my hypothesis is that this is indeed
the case. The way actors walk in the noh theater, another performing art, is the closest to that used in tea. There are some who
say that tea walking originated in noh. If we ask, then, where thenoh walking style came from, the probable answer is the glidingwalk style.

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During the time of the great noh playwright Zeami (1363–
1443)—that is, from around the mid-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth
century—there was no foot-sliding walk as there is in noh today.
Noh adopted the style around the beginning of the Edo period.
By this time, noh had become one of the official ceremonial
performances for the shogunate, and to that end it acquired a refined, courtly, and ritual quality. It is said that the Shinto rituals
at Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto exerted a major influence on that ritualization process. The gliding-walk style was the formal way ofwalking in Shinto rituals.
When, though, did the sliding walk enter tea? The issue ofwalking style is something only very recently taken up in tea
books. I have yet to find anything on this subject in old texts. Even
searching through the training manuals that I have on hand, nothing on the subject appears until the early Shōwa era (1926–1989).
In his Chanoyu sahō (Way of Tea Etiquette; 1937), Fukian Kyokutei explains that you should, firstly, walk quietly with an appropriate stride; walking with giant steps, walking fast, or other typesof noisy walking are totally forbidden. You are, he writes in a reference to foot-sliding, to walk as if slightly rubbing the tatami
flooring with your feet.
Again, in Japan’s first radio broadcast on chanoyu—“Chanoyusahō” (Chanoyu Etiquette; 1927–1928), a program presented by
Kameyama Sōgetsu—the term suri-ashi does not come up, but inone episode a walking sound was played over the airwaves to convey the walking tempo. The narrator said,
The late tea master Yūmyōsai Genshitsu, eleventh [sic] generation
head of the Urasenke lineage, was known during his lifetime asa great master of the procedures for tea-making. When Yūmyōsai
was at home with nothing to occupy him, he would walk100

Chapter 3smoothly around his reception room. As he walked around theroom for the second or third time, he would knock his headagainst the pillars. Why did he hit his head? Because the rhythmof his walking style became erratic.

That Yūmyōsai (1852–1917) would “walk smoothly” tells usthat he was practicing his foot-sliding walk. Thus, we can say thattoday’s foot-sliding walk undoubtedly existed in the Meiji era.
However, there is a mid-Edo-period (early to mid-eighteenth
century) tea book called Chafu, a massive, eighteen-volume tea
encyclopedia. In volume twelve, there is an entry headed, “Things
to Keep in Mind during Tea-Making.” It states how it is appropriate for the host, after the guests have entered the room and taken
their seats, to clear his throat audibly as he moves from the adjoining room to the preparation room (mizuya) so that the guests
might hear him coming, and furthermore to walk in such a waythat his foot movements are heard by the guests.
The sound of foot movement is, in other words, the soundof feet sliding along the tatami mat. Is it not safe to assume thattoday’s foot-sliding walk did not exist in tea before the beginningof the Edo period? However, at some point from the mid-Edo
period onwards, the foot-sliding walk became the standard in thetea room. Why?
People often say that one’s feet are on the ground, or not on
the ground, in the sense of being down to earth. To have your feeton the ground means to be calm, realistic, steady. The opposite of
having your feet on the ground is to be in jumping-for-joy mode,
to be in a merry state of unbounded joy. As chanoyu developed
into wabi-cha, it became a place of ascetic practice designed toachieve new spiritual heights; it metamorphosed from the realm of
merrymaking into a solemn tea ritual. At the same time, chanoyu

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adopted a walking style that was not commonplace, but solemn,rather, and still. It remains unclear whether the origins of tea walking are in noh, or whether, as was the case with noh, the style wasadopted directly from the gliding walk characteristic of court ritual.

Chajin: Tea Devotees and Their Appearance
Outfitting the Guest
Takayama Ukon (c. 1552–1615), a daimyo and favorite disciple of
Rikyū’s, could not contain himself when he learned that a tea
gathering was being held at Rikyū’s place. The guests—the warrior
Gamō Ujisato (1556–1595) and another Rikyū disciple, Hosokawa
Sansai—were not unknown to him. He set off for Rikyū’s place,determined to have the tea master admit him to the event.
But Rikyū was upset. When he heard that Ukon was waitingin the entrance, he was displeased with his take-it-for-granted attitude. Rikyū even considered having the door attendant send
Ukon away, beloved disciple though he was. In the end, Rikyū went
to meet him in the entrance, intending to scold him.
There he saw Ukon standing disheartened, dressed in a thick,pale blue-green, lined cotton kimono and rough, patched formal
samurai overgarment (kamishimo). When he saw Ukon’s appearance, Rikyū relented, and made up his mind to admit him as aguest; indeed, his main guest. Ujisato and Sansai had already arrived, and were undoubtedly dressed in proper kosode kimono, or
had on the formal samurai overgarments, splendid but inappropriate for wabi-cha. It was Ukon’s simple cotton overgarment that

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made him eligible for special treatment. Rikyū apologized to theothers, explaining why he now welcomed Ukon as his main guest.
As the scholar Nishibori Ichizō (1903–1970) noted in his Chadōkōgenroku (Records of Sayings on the Way of Tea; 1942), this wasa tea gathering where Ukon’s appearance accorded with the spiritof wabi.
When wabi-cha emerged as a new tea style, it led to a new wayof thinking about a tea devotee’s appearance. As Rikyū wrote in
the manuscript Rikyū kyaku no shidai (Rikyū’s Precepts for Guests),
it was probably Takeno Jōō who first insisted on appearance.
Jōō said that you must wear tabi [split-toed socks] in both winter and summer. But summer heat makes you sweat, and an unexpected tea event means that even if you have on clean newtabi, you should take them off, wash your feet well, and enter thetea room that way.

Today, too, people wear tabi in both summer and winter. But
this way of wearing tabi in summer—taking off even fresh newtabi, washing the feet, and entering the tea room barefooted—
was an Edo-period practice.
If tea were nothing more than a passing pleasure, then there
would be no reason to create rules for attire. Jōō’s insistence on
wabi-cha also meant the beginning of a new emphasis in choicesof attire. He did not insist on new restrictions or taboos; rather,
his aim was to express wabi—that is, an unostentatious aestheticof refined simplicity, in terms of dress. The Takayama Ukon episode related above is one such example.
During Rikyū’s time, the attire worn by tea devotees gradually came to follow one style. The Yamanoue Sōji ki record is revealing here. Yamanoue Sōji advises guests going to a tea event toTea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

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wear a jacket of a high-quality bleached cotton known as sarashi,
lined with finely woven, soft lightweight silk in plain weave. Paper
should be used for the collar and cuffs, so that they could easily
be replaced. However, for events such as the debut appearance ofa precious utensil, or a first visit to that host’s tea house, the guest
should wear a dressy kimono with close-fitting sleeves (kosode)—
preferably new—for his outer layer.
The writer then recommends a kosode of colored cross-weave
silk or Chinese-style silk brocade (karaori) when attending an event
held by a high-ranking person. So a more decorative formal outfit
was acceptable, but only on special occasions. For a tea gathering
held by a wabi chajin or wabi tea devotee—that is, a tea devotee
who is guided by the aesthetic principle of wabi and has cast off
the social and mental fetters of earthly existence—the writer advises that padded (lined) cotton or paper garments waterproofedwith persimmon sap were entirely appropriate. Indeed, it seems thata persimmon-sap-waterproofed garment best pleased one aspiring
to be a wabi tea devotee. But it was important not to overdo it.
Take the example of the Great Kitano Tea Gathering. Rikyū
saw Sansai wearing a garment of paper fabric, and ordered him
to go change his attire. On that grand occasion, no matter how
wabi it might be, a paper garment was deemed unsuitable. At amajor tea gathering, the rules as set out in the Yamanoue Sōji kirecord applied:
When going to a higher-ranking person’s event, one should wear
a jittoku [short, jacket-like outer garment] or kosode, and ineither case, it should be new.

The arrival of wabi-cha meant a new distinction in attire between formal and informal. So what was the appearance of a

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noble or great personage like Toyotomi Hideyoshi at an event likethe Great Kitano Tea Gathering, where Rikyū scolded Sansai forwearing a paper garment?
According to the Sōtan nikki, a grand tea gathering was heldat Osaka Castle on February 10, 1587. The entry relates how
Toyotomi Hideyoshi wore, for his overgarment, a kosode of sumptuous Chinese-style brocade with a five-layered collar. Above it hedraped a short overcoat (dōfuku) of white paper, lined with fine silk.
His sash was red and very long, and tied in such a way that one
end hung down beneath his knees. On his head he wore a yellowgreen (moegi) head covering of silk crepe, under which his hair wasleft loose. His kosode was so long that his feet were not visible.
Unusual in the above account is the mention of Toyotomi
Hideyoshi’s hair being left loose underneath the yellow-green
silk crepe head covering. Loose, untied hair has deep meaning incertain folk customs, but its appearance here could be called“outlandish.” There is also the curious observation of his feetbeing hidden beneath the hem of his garment, as though he werea man of small build. It was gaudy attire, certainly, but this was
how the ruler of the realm appeared at an important tea event.
In the Sōtan nikki, there are four references to Hideyoshi’s
attire, including this one. Two times he is noted as wearing ahakama, the traditional loose trouser-like garment. And at a tea
gathering held the year before his death, he wore—appropriately
enough for a man of advanced years—a persimmon-sap-waterproofed paper kimono and the head covering typical of a wabi
tea devotee. In any event, these entries show that there were no set
rules for the attire to be worn at tea events by high-ranking men
such as Hideyoshi. One gets the sense that participants wore
gaudy attire at festive tea events, while people adopted the attireof a wabi devotee for private tea events.

Tea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

105“New Is Good”
The Yamanoue Sōji ki recommended that both the jittoku, thejacket-like outer garment, and the kosode, the main kimono
garment, be new, which seems somewhat extravagant for a wabi
tea devotee. There were, however, certain items of clothing andpersonal use that even a wabi tea devotee had to have new.
Yamanoue Sōji wrote that for each occasion the following should
be procured new and unused: a sash, a head covering, a set oftissues, a pair of cloths for wiping sweat, a folding fan, and a
sturdy pair of straw sandals. He adds that, on the condition thatguest and host are on close terms, the over-jacket (jittoku) neednot be brand new. But “it is best if the vest (kataginu) and trousers (hakama) are always new.”
Wabi lies in a freshness, an untainted newness. New tissues
and cloths for hand-wiping are to be expected for each event, but
to get a new fan and a new pair of straw sandals each time would
be a considerable expense. This explains why it was permissible
to wear older garments at tea gatherings among those on close
terms. According to the Chōandō ki, the tea-ceremony memoirsof tea master and monk Kubo Toshiyo (1571–1640), Rikyū said
that all that was necessary was gray-colored attire made of inkdyed cotton, but the sash, tabi socks and fan must be new eachtime. This corresponds with the Yamanoue Sōji ki account, although the latter omits reference to the tabi socks. The Chōandō
ki continues, “Thereafter, Rikyū gray (nezumi iro) became all the
fashion.” The tone referred to as “Rikyū gray” created the chanoyu
image; this is a point worth stressing. In another place, Rikyū said
that he disliked indigo-dyed navy blue. In terms of color, too, wabicha began to insist on exclusively gray tones, principally “Rikyū
gray.” The references to tea attire in the Chadenshū (Collection of

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Tea Transmissions) of 1847 make it clear that in the past, no one
wore dark navy blue for tea. This was because the color impeded
the way of tea. Rikyū usually wore black, but he would always
choose a color—not necessarily black—which did not clash withthe mounting of a renowned hanging scroll if one were to be hungin the tea room. This level of severity in matters of color, however, can be considered a relatively late development.
New, unworn tabi were essential, but unlike today’s, which
are typically white, dark-blue tabi were also worn. As noted above,
Takeno Jōō insisted on the wearing of tabi in both summer andwinter. The reason he made this stipulation was because tabi
were originally designed to keep the feet warm in winter, and it
was therefore not normal to wear them in summer. The Fuhaku
hikki, a 1798 book written by tea master Kawakami Fuhaku(1716–1807), mentions that at summer brazier-season (furo) tea
events, tabi were not worn. So, up until the mid-Edo period at thevery least, in the summer people attending tea events went into
the tea room in bare feet.
The normalization of tabi-wearing at tea events raises thequestion of the materials used to make tabi. In the medieval period, tabi were often made of leather, but cotton tabi also appeared
during the period from Jōō to Rikyū. These cotton tabi were worn
for tea, which lead to their nickname sukiya tabi, literally “tabifor the tea room.”
The Edo-period historical study Ryūtei ki by popular novelist
Ryūtei Tanehiko (1783–1842) quotes the following from a 1554
tea text: “Do not wear leather hakama, or leather tabi, and do
not wear one dōfuku overcoat over another.” Thus we know thatleather tabi were worn during the first half of the sixteenth century. We can surmise that there were already cotton tabi by thattime, too, since the author pointedly refers to leather. It is surely

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reasonable to assume this much. As the Azuchi-Momoyama period(1568–1600) progressed, cotton tabi were frequently given as gifts,
which is an indication of the spread of cotton tabi usage. And there
is no need to repeat here that the appearance of tabi influenced
the style of walking in the tea room, as well as the colors of the tea
room. That being the case, we can consider the appearance of tabi
as one component in Rikyū’s perfecting of the appearance of tea.
Of course, in Rikyū’s time, tea attire had not been completely codified. Much that was taken for granted during Rikyū’stime was later lost. An example would be the head covering (zukin)that is almost never seen today.
Head coverings frequently appear in records of Hideyoshi’s
attire. The portrait by Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539–1610) of Rikyū
shows him wearing a head covering (see frontispiece). When Kobori
Enshū was a child of ten years old, serving as an attendant to
Toyotomi Hidenaga (1540–1591), he met Rikyū when the latter
visited Hidenaga to teach him tea. He saw Rikyū wearing a cotton head covering on that occasion.
Today head coverings are only permitted for particularly
meritorious old people, but in the past there were no such taboos;
they were worn freely. Many tea masters were tonsured religious
figures who followed in the tradition of the men who served as the
Ashikaga shoguns’ aesthetic advisors and curators (dōbōshū). To
protect their shaven heads from the cold, they needed to wear ahead covering. But with the advent of the Edo period, tea mastersof that tradition became a thing of the past. In their place, domain lords such as Furuta Oribe (1544–1615) and Kobori Enshū,
two of the greatest tea masters of their time, came to the fore.
Other tea masters in this new era included the four men known
as Sen Sōtan’s “Shitennō” (Four Heavenly Generals): Yamada Sōhen(1627–1708), Sugiki Fusai (1628–1706), Miyake Bōyō (1580–1649),

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Portrait of Miyake Bōyō. Reproduced by permission from Hayashiya Tatsusaburō and Murai
Yasuhiko, Zuroku chadōshi (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1962).

and Fujimura Yōken (1613–1699). Of the four, only Sōhen had a
Buddhist background, in his case affiliation with the True Pure
Land sect. The three others all had different backgrounds, with
Fusai a low-ranking Shinto priest from Ise, Yōken a merchant,
and Bōyō a Confucian. Naturally, none of them had a shaved
head, and none wore clerical attire. For example, the image hereof Miyake Bōyō shows that even though his hair has thinned on
account of his advanced years, he is not bald. His garments arebright red. This, combined with his silk over-jacket, is the attireof a Confucian scholar. Of course, he does not wear a head covering with this outfit. Thus, the typical image of a tea masterchanges from that of a religious figure similar to the shogun’s aesthetic advisors and curators (dōbōshū) of yesteryear to that of alayman. This aspect of the development of early modern tea issymbolized in the disappearance of head coverings.

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Tea Names and Jittoku Jackets
Assumed Names
When one has studied and attained a certain level in chanoyu, it isnormal to receive a tea name, or chamei, from the head of the tea
family. There are three Sen tea lineages descended from Rikyū, andthey bestow two-character tea names, the first character of whichis always sō. This explains why another term for chamei is sōmei.
Why is it the practice in tea not to use one’s real name, butrather an assumed name? In fact, of course, the practice is found
not only in tea; many other Japanese cultural genres involve thebestowal of an artistic name. The use of assumed names, whichhave meaning only in a given realm, became normal practice. The
assumed name expresses the idea that one’s own name belongs
to the secular world, and that one has now entered a separate,
specific realm.
As I mentioned above, in chanoyu the name that one receives
begins with the sō character. The heads of the three Sen families
respectively have Sōsa, Sōshitsu, and Sōshu as their tea names. In
giving their students a sōmei, they effectively impart the sō of theirown name to the student. We might then inquire into the originof that sō character in the three Sen families’ tea names. The
character sō was in the Buddhist names (hōki) granted by the Zen
temple Daitokuji to subsequent generations of Sen family heads.
It was the custom at Daitokuji to include the sō character,or another character read shō or jō, in the Buddhist names they
bestowed on their monks. For example, the names of famousmonks affiliated with the temple include Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481),

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Shun’oku Sōen (1529–1611), Kokei Sōchin (1532–1597), andTakuan Sōhō (1573–1646), where Sōjun, Sōen, Sōchin, and Sōhō
are their Buddhist names. Tsuda Sōgyū (d. 1591) and Imai Sōkyū(1520–1593) were two late sixteenth-century tea devotees from
Sakai who received sō names. This practice applies to the three Senfamily heads, too. Few names using the shō (jō) character were
given by Daitokuji, but one example is found in the Buddhist nameof the monk Ittō Shōteki (1539–1612). The shō or jō character informed the creation of the names Takeno Jōō and Yabunouchi
Jōchi, significant figures in the history of chanoyu.
In other words, tea names with this sō character stand as
proof that the holder is a lay person who has taken Buddhist vows
at Daitokuji, just like the Daitokuji monks, who also have sōnames. These names express the half-monk, half-layperson qualityof the tea devotee. For as long he uses his tea name, a devotee
must assume the self-awareness of one who has left the secularworld behind. Again, the idea that one must abandon the secularworld was the reason for abandoning one’s secular name. Tea
names take their cue from Buddhism.
Rikyū’s Buddhist name was Sōeki, and this is how he appears
in contemporary diaries of tea gatherings. The first time he wasreferred to as “Rikyū” was at a tea event held for EmperorŌgimachi (r. 1557–1586) in the Kyoto imperial palace in 1585. The
emperor is said to have bestowed the name “Rikyū” on him as anhonorary title of the sort given to lay Buddhists monks. Thereafter,
Rikyū used both Rikyū and Sōeki, a combination of lay Buddhist
title and Buddhist name. The name Ikkyū Sōjun is a similar pairing of Ikkyū, a lay title, and Sōjun, a Buddhist name. In brief,
tea devotees could receive the same titles as those bestowed on
Buddhist monks, all the while maintaining a lay lifestyle.
People who seem to be half-monk, half-layperson appear

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throughout Japanese history. For example, the medieval shoguns’
cultural advisors (dōbōshū) were of this type. These men took socalled ami names, such as Nōami, Geiami, and Sōami. The ami character is an abbreviation of Amidabutsu, or Amitabha Buddha, theprinciple object of worship in the Ji sect of Buddhism. Regardlessof whether or not these men were actually Ji-sect monks, their assumption of Ji-sect names enabled them to transcend ordinary
secular status. Many of these close attendants of the shogun wereof humble origins, but they were required to wait on preeminent
people. So they took on a Buddhist monk aspect and transcended
their secular selves in order to be allowed to sit with them. Theiruse of assumed names to suggest a Buddhist connection is thesame as the contemporary use of tea names. Just as in the past an
ami name differentiated a person from the lay world, so, too, does
chanoyu make such a distinction through its use of tea names.

What Is a Jittoku?
If a tea devotee’s tea name signals his half-monk, half-layperson
status, then it is the jittoku, a type of short over-jacket, which
renders that status visible.
Even today, the jittoku is formal wear for a suitably qualified
male tea devotee. It is made of black silk gauze fabric (sha), fastened with flat straps, and is somewhat shorter than the morecommonly worn haori kimono jacket.
Of course, jittoku are not only worn by tea devotees, and thejittoku of older periods seem to have been quite different fromthose of today.
Dictionaries and encyclopedias such as the Meiji-period Koji
ruien (Encyclopedia of Ancient Matters) suggest that the term
jittoku first appeared in 1422 in the Kaei sandai-ki (Record of
the Flowering Three Generations), the records of the Muromachi

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shogunate. When the military commander Hatakeyama Mochikuni(1398–1455) made his pilgrimage to the Ise Shrines, his entourage
wore jittoku. By the first half of the fifteenth century—even before the birth of Jukō and the creation of wabi-cha—jittoku werealready worn as travel attire.
The oft-quoted etymology of jittoku, which is written withtwo characters meaning “ten” and “virtues,” is that it was a corruption, or slang variant, of the monk robe known as a jikitotsu.
It is easy enough to understand that a pronunciation change may
explain how jikitotsu became jittoku, but the actual process bywhich travel attire and a monk’s robes were transformed into
jittoku is somewhat complicated.
Here I will omit the interim reasoning, and simply explainthat the most important factor is that a jittoku was originallydyed black. That is, a jittoku was an overgarment meant to symbolize the shedding of worldly attachments.
So how did the jittoku make its way into chanoyu?
The portrait of Jūshiya Sōgo (d. 1552), tea devotee and older
colleague of Jōō, shows him wearing a jittoku. The inscription isdated 1553, which makes this the oldest known portrait of a tea
devotee. The jittoku is painted in such a manner that the garment
beneath is visible through the weave; it was probably the thin,semi-translucent silk weave known today as sha. However, textual
sources also specifically describe the fabric used for jittoku as
being one of two different kinds of semi-transparent silk weaves,
known as sha or ro. Sometimes, sources list the fabric as silk.
Thus we know of instances in antiquity where the jittoku was
simply silk cloth of some description—but, crucially, it was always
dyed black.
In antiquity, the Japanese realm of refined aesthetic pursuits
was closely linked to retreats into Buddhism. For example, duringTea Devotee (Chajin) Practices

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A jittoku, as worn in a portrait of Jūshiya
Sōgo. Courtesy of Santokuan Bunko.

the Heian period (794–1185) the imperial guard Satō Norikiyo(1118–1190) found it difficult to abandon his devotion to the artof poetry, and so he severed his connection to the secular realm,
dedicated himself to poetry, and retired from the world as the poet
Saigyō. In other words, as Mezaki Tokuei (1921–2000) observes in

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his Saigyō no shisōshiteki kenkyū (A Historical Study of Saigyō’s
Thought; 1978), it was common for practitioners of the Japanesearts to act as if they had abandoned the secular world for the purpose of indulging in cultural pursuits.
But to distance oneself from the secular world did not meana monastic life. Rather, a man would take vows and live in his
own home. Such men were in effect half-monk, having received a
Buddhist name, but they were laymen with ordinary lay jobs.
They were indeed half-monk, half-layperson. This was the lifestyle
adopted by tea devotees from Jōō and Rikyū onwards.
The 1723 Chadō bōgetsushū, a set of records of the Yōken
tea tradition, relates a famous episode concerning the young
Rikyū. The youth Yoshirō (Rikyū’s childhood name) was longdesirous of participating in a tea event held by Jōō, and eventually Jōō invited him to a ceremony to mark the opening of a container of new tea leaves. (The event is known in Japanese as
kuchikiri.) The event was scheduled for the following day, but
Yoshirō took the liberty of declining, and asked Jōō to wait threedays. Three days later, Yoshirō appeared with his head newly
shaved and wearing a jittoku. He said, “I asked for a three-day
postponement because I had to go to Kyoto to get a jittoku. That
is why I sought postponement.”
This episode, edited by later generations, does symbolize
how a tea devotee begins with the wearing of a jittoku. And it isappropriate that Yoshirō was not only wearing a jittoku, but also
had his head shaved.
There is a fascinating passage in the entry for August 7, 1584,
in Tsuda Sōgyū’s Tennōjiya kaiki (Records of Tennōjiya), a recordof tea gatherings compiled by the Tennōjiya merchant family. It
explains that a person from Kyoto named Toraya Yashichi wasintroduced into the discipline of tea, whereupon Tsuda Sōgyū

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bestowed on him the name Jōi, before presenting him with a jittoku
in honor of the occasion.
The young Rikyū got himself a jittoku to wear on that day,but Tsuda Sōgyū presented a jittoku to Toraya Yashichi to markhis birth as a young tea devotee. In either case, the jittoku marked
the devotee’s new independent standing as a “tea person” (chajin).
In the Yamanoue Sōji ki, formal tea attire for a tea devotee
included the kosode kimono, a short loose-fitting overcoat or
dōfuku, and other garments. Clearly, the jittoku was not the only
formal attire. Indeed, in the portraits of Rikyū and Sōtan owned by
the Omotesenke tea tradition, both men are depicted wearing short,loose-fitting overcoats; there are no jittoku in sight. Note, however,that in the Masaki Art Museum’s portrait of Rikyū, he is wearing
a jittoku. As is evident from Tsuda Sōgyū’s record mentioned
above, some at the time did consider the jittoku to be formal teadevotee wear. Eventually, the jittoku established itself as formal
wear for tea devotees, as distinct from simple tea practitioners.
The jittoku appeared when a person was inducted into theway of tea; one wore the jittoku to assume a Buddhist bearing. In
other words, the sort of disposition demanded of someone who
undergoes Buddhist training is what qualifies him to wear a jittoku.
The Chanoyudō kikigaki (Commentary on the Way of
Chanoyu) is a tea text of unknown date written by the Kanazawa
samurai Ōhira Gen’emon and handed down in the Omotesenke
tea tradition. It includes an observation on a tea gathering heldin 1660 by the fourth-generation head of the Urasenke lineage,
Sensō Sōshitsu (1622–1697). Ōhira, who was a disciple, observedthat Sensō “took off his jittoku when he was acting as serving assistant at the gathering.” He was helping serve the kaiseki mealthat preceded tea, and of course the menu included fish dishes, so
it was not Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. At the risk of overthinking

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this, it could well be that he took off his jittoku, symbolic of his
Buddhist vows, in order to avoid breaking those vows by serving
meals that included fish.
A tea gathering was a temporary retreat from the secularworld. Tea devotees do not renounce the world and leave theirhomes permanently; they remain ordinary lay people. Is a tea
gathering not, then, a way for them to escape the secular world
temporarily? This is surely why there has been such a distaste
for the dust of the world entering the tea room, and why Rikyūadmonishes participants to avoid discussing topics of worldly interest. Indeed, tea replicates the form of a thatched hut in themountains, and demands that one stoop down to get through thecrawl-through entrance. None of this is ostentatious; what is desired by Rikyū is a wabi-ness. It is the wearing of jittoku which
symbolizes the spirit of a wabi tea devotee.

Chapter 4

TEA-GATHERING STYLE

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The Genius of Style (Shukō)Happenings
In the 1960s and 1970s, “happenings,” a type of art movement,
were all the rage. Today, the term “happening” has been absorbed
into the Japanese language with the meaning of “something unexpected,” but then it was a term referring to a specific art or theater movement. A happening had no script or libretto; it only had
actors, audience, and a performance place; nobody knew what
would happen or how it would develop. Happenings were a revolt
against earlier art forms, which were all produced in a calculatedmanner. They sought to extract some unimagined creativity byacting from a blank page. And yet, happenings sought only theunexpected, and as such, appear not to have had fruitful outcomes. That is because, from the outset, they abandoned production. A good analogy can be found in theater, where two things
are needed: a purposefulness directed at a particular outcome,and a one-off unexpectedness that is to be articulated within thespace of the stage. Both are necessary.
The same can be said about a tea gathering (chakai). The
work of the host and guests make a tea gathering a place where
unexpected developments occur. The guests’ actions are born fromaccommodating the host’s thoughts and desires. When the workings of both align, then a truly great tea gathering is achieved.
The interest of a tea event lies in that which cannot be planned or
calculated. This is similar to a happening. And yet without someform of production process, nothing significant will come of atea gathering. Such significant outcomes are premised on the roleTea-Gathering Style119of the host as producer. This is where the Japanese term shukō,
variously translatable as “style” or “ingenious idea,” comes into
it. Japanese culture is probably the culture that most delights instyle in this sense. It is hard to convey to foreigners the subtlety ofthis sort of style. It is perhaps similar to, but nonetheless distinct
from, the Western European idea of a “theme.” To put it bluntly,
style is when you apply artistic ingenuity to a given theme. As Hata
Kōhei (1935–) writes in Shukō to shizen (Style and Nature; 1975),
it is a man-made, artificial thing, but it will only succeed if it appears natural. To paraphrase the words of tea master Katagiri
Sekishū (1605–1673), as recorded in his 1665 Sekishū sanbyakuka-jō (Sekishū’s Three Hundred Articles), that which has aged isgood, and that which has been made to age is bad. However, conversely, the more that style in this sense is artificial, the more it isattractive. That is because the genius of style and the unexpected
are two sides of the same coin.
It was not so long ago, it seems, that ingenious style enteredchanoyu. During the nascent period of wabi-cha, it was chanoyu
itself that imparted style to the banquet gathering. In otherwords, banqueting’s long history, stretching back to antiquity,
indicates that banqueting styles emerged in response to the fashions and institutions of different periods. In medieval banquets, it
was linked-verse poetry (renga), flower arranging (ikebana), andchanoyu itself that gave these events their style. Thus, there weresome banquets where one drank sake and composed linked verse,
and others where the interest was in ikebana. There were alsobanquets that combined two or more of these aspects of style.
Chanoyu itself was certainly one style. Thus, it was only after tea
gatherings were released from the banquet construct and became
independent events that ingenious style could develop within them.
This development postdates the formation of wabi-cha. Tea was

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nothing more than a stylistic addition to a medieval-period banquet; it then acquired a unique style of its own. The critical juncture was “summer bath” tea (rinkan chanoyu).

Summer Bath Tea (Rinkan Chanoyu)
Even a non-drinker finds a glass of beer tasty after walking in hot
weather. And for a drinker, there is nothing tastier than a coldbeer after a hot bath. In a period when beer was not available, tea
was the after-bath drink. In the summer, rinsing off the sweat ofthe day in the bath and putting on fresh, newly washed clothes,
then enjoying a cup of tea: this was luxury, the luxurious styleof summer.
The following anecdote is from the Edo-period (1603–1867)
collection of essays Unpyō zasshi (Clouds of Floating Grasses). It
was one summer day, and Rikyū was visiting the poet and tea devotee Hechikan in the Yamashina district of Kyoto. As he was about
to enter the garden approach, Rikyū noticed that some trick wasin play. He thought, “That Hechikan, he is up to no good.” It wassome sort of pitfall. “Ok, I will play along with Hechikan’s trick.”
So did he cry out, and stumble into the trap set for him? It was
Rikyū, after all, so he may well have done something of the sort.
Hearing Rikyū’s voice, Hechikan rushes from the tea room. “Oh!
How careless of me!” Apologizing profusely, he leads Rikyū tothe bathing room, relieves him of his soiled garments, and lets him
take a bath. He lays out a new summer robe and has Rikyū change
before inviting him into the tea room. Washed clean of all the sweat
and dust of the road, enjoying the sensation of the fresh garments
on his skin, Rikyū quietly enjoys Hechikan’s inventive “style.”
This tale recounts Hechikan’s creative intent and Rikyū’s“tea-sensitivity” in responding to the host. But this is not what I
want to concentrate on here. I want to focus on the bath and its

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role in imparting style to the summer tea function. In fact, a summer bathing session was a very common way of adding style to a
medieval banquet. This practice was then inherited as an aspectof style in tea gatherings during Rikyū’s time.
The fifteenth-century Kagakushū and other medieval dictionaries include terms for summer bathing pronounced rinkan andwritten with various character combinations that can mean, forexample, “in the forest” or “washing off sweat.” According to thefolklorist Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), there were in his time
place-names where the character for forest or grove was read furo,
which is homophonous with the Japanese word for bath. So it
could be that the “in the forest” characters are very old. The word
rinkan does not simply mean bathing in summer; it implies heating the bath, inviting guests over, and enjoying all manner of performing arts after bathing. Chanoyu was one such art.
The following is the description of a rinkan tea event in the
famous fifteenth-century Kyōgaku shiyōshō, the diary of the monk
Kyōgaku (1395–1473). First, here is the relevant passage:
Today was the first rinkan of the year. All of the young membersof the Furuichi family were on bath-preparation duty. The tea
event was held in the bath area; tea from Uji (good tea) and tea
from other sources (low-grade tea) was presented in two containers. Dainties consisted of two pails of white melon and a
tray of bayberries. A light repast of sōmen noodles was served.
For seasoning, roasted salt was served on lotus leaves.

This tea gathering was held on July 11, 1469, so it was alreadysummer. The author Kyōgaku, a monk at An’iji, Kōfukuji Temple,
was invited to a banquet held by Furuichi In’ei (1439–1505), oneof the powerful warrior monks at Kōfukuji. This entry describes

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the bathing and tea event (rinkan). Kyōgaku says that this was thefirst bathing and tea event of the year, and all of the young members of the Furuichi family prepared the wood and heated thebath. It may not seem to matter who prepared the bath, but thatis absolutely not the case. Here the term taku, literally stoking thefire, would seem to indicate who was playing the role of host forthe bathing banquet. Stoking the fire for the bath—not leavingsuch bath preparation to those of lower rank—was surely one aspect of a host’s act of welcoming his guests. From a later age,
there is this comment in the Rōjin zatsuwa (Reminiscences of an
Old Man), a collection of discourses by the Confucian physician
Emura Sensai (1565–1664):
Once, when [Gamō] Ujisato entertained his vassals, he himself
donned a protective headcloth and fired the hot water for the bath.

This passage leaves little doubt that the person who fired up
the bath was unexpectedly important. Indeed, the Kyōgaku
shiyōshō always notes who fired the bath. Here lies the problem.
The chanoyu was carried out in the bathing environment, andtwo types of tea were involved: one a higher-grade tea from Uji,
another, a lower grade tea from a different region. This meantthat there was to be a tea-tasting contest in which guests would
attempt to distinguish real Uji tea from that of other regions. And
melons, bayberries, and sōmen noodles were laid out for guests
to enjoy freely. Thus, we can see that tea with a bath was central
to the ingenious style of the banquet on this occasion. Earlier
scholars dubbed this type of tea gathering “a bathing and tea
event” (rinkan chanoyu), and highlighted it as one type of chanoyu
popular during the medieval period. The Kyōgaku shiyōshō
goes on to say that Kyōgaku did likewise, and then some 150

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other men got in the bath, and even the maids got in the bath.
The Kyōgaku shiyōshō mentions many other bathing and tea
events, indicating that a banquet with bathing was an extremelycommon form of “summer style.” An examination of each of those
events shows it was not only chanoyu that imparted style to bathing
and tea gatherings. In the entry for August 26 of that same year
(1469), the author said that there was rikka- (literally, standing
flowers) style flower arranging at a bathing and tea event. Small
folding screens were set up on small boats, a painting was hung,and then two vases of flowers were arranged. Renga (linked verse)
also added style to summer bathing events. In the entry for July29, 1457, there is this:A rinkan furo event was held, Kan’en fired the bath, and a renga
poetry composition session occurred. . . . Sōmen noodles wereserved, and because one of my fellow participants said, “Let us
hold these renga gatherings once a month from now on,” we created a small folding-book-style notebook of the renga composed.
“The wind in the pines disperses the heat, a passing shower.”
The bath was prepared because the entire group desired it.

Guests clearly participated in a linked-verse session even as
they enjoyed a summer bathing event. Kyōgaku composed theopening line about wind in the pines (matsukaze). This is what I
meant when I said earlier that chanoyu, along with linked verse
and ikebana, was just one of the many different ways of adding
ingenious style to a summer bathing party banquet.

The Question of the Sairei zōshi (Festival Picture Scroll)If summer bathing events were such a common a way of adding
ingenious style to tea events before Rikyū’s time, then perhaps

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there is some visual source that conveys the appearance of suchan event. In the Zuroku chadōshi (Illustrated History of the Wayof Tea), historians Hayashiya Tatsusaburō (1914–1998) and Murai
Yasuhiko (b. 1930) introduced one scene from the Sairei zōshi, aMuromachi-period (1336–1573) picture scroll (see page 126), as
good visual evidence of bathing at a chanoyu event. Murai offered the following explanation:
The photograph is a precious picture suggestive of a bathing andtea event, with the bath in the center surrounded by duckboards,
where the tea is prepared. A man, naked from the waist up, carries in the light meal served before tea on a tray. A built-in deskand shelves can be seen in the neighboring room.

Was it actually like that?
I certainly thought that all was just as Murai described it.
However, in an essay published in the summer 1939 issue of thejournal Heishi, Sawashima Eitarō described the building as “a simple structure with a bamboo roof that accommodates a spring.”
The very idea of a bath is somewhat strange. Indeed, this building
proves not to have been a bath at all, but rather a pavilion built
over a spring.
Why would it be odd if this central area of the scene from theSairei zōshi, drawn with a water motif and surrounding duckboards, were in fact a bath? To answer this, we must first think
about the history of the bath. There are two bathing styles: bathing in a bathtub as is practiced today, and the steam bath, which
was common in the past. Generally speaking, there were three
options. The steam bath was the most common form, with the
hot-water cauldron outside. The steam would rise from it and be
drawn into a room surrounded by duckboards. The people taking

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a bath would enter the steam room through a narrow entrance,
sweat in there, and then go out to the duckboard-floor area, where
they would pour cold or hot water over themselves. This bathingstyle can be seen in the Boki-e, a set of mid-fourteenth-century
picture scrolls depicting the biography of Kakunyo (1271–1351),
the third head priest of Honganji Temple, as well as in otherworks. The second option combined the steam bath and bathtub.
In the Ippen shōnin e-den, a late thirteenth-century illustrated
biography of the monk Ippen, there seems to be both a steam
bath and an adjoining bathing room. In the third option, thebathtub was central. The mid-fourteenth-century Zegaibō emaki(Zegaibō Picture Scroll) depicts a bathhouse and outside it a largecauldron where water was boiled; the hot water was then piped tothe boat-shaped bathtub where it accumulated. These bathtubs
closely resemble today’s European-style bathtubs. The striking aspect of these different options is the fact that there was no medieval bathing style which involved heating water beneath a bathtub,
as was common in Japan until very recently. Thus, in order to fill
the bathtub, one had to either pipe hot water in or carry it in byhand. Naturally, if the bathtub is big, then it cools down quickly,
so a bath has to be small. Again, in order to economize on fuel,measures were taken to prevent the steam escaping: sealing theroom and providing a low entrance. These factors apply to both asteam bath and a bathing room.
Let us return to the problem of the Sairei zōshi. First, if thewater-ripple motif drawn in the center of that picture is a bathtub, it is the only one of its kind; it is too big. There are no pipes
for drawing the hot water from the cauldron, so it means that one
would have to take the hot water by bucket, but the bathtub is too
big for that to make sense. Second, such an exposed bathing room
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steam will escape and the humidity will go elsewhere. There aremany instances of bathhouses being separate structures, probably
on account of humidity and fire hazards. There is a shoin-style
room next to the bathhouse in the Sairei zōshi, but that cannot
be right. Given what we know of the styles of medieval baths,
the tea event depicted in the Sairei zōshi is not one of tea in abath setting. And if it is not a bath, then the water with its duckboard surround is surely a spring, and the structure is a spring
pavilion.
The mid-twelfth-century Senmen Hokekyō sasshi (Fan-Shaped
Lotus Sutra Album) owned by Shitennōji Temple is a representative set of secular paintings from the late Heian period (794–1185). One of the paintings in the set appears to show a spring
pavilion that has no walls, only pillars. The right side has duckboards surrounding a gushing spring, beside which is one man
cooling off and another fanning himself. The water flows beneathTea-Gathering Style

127

Detail from the Sairei zōshi(Festival Picture Scroll).
Courtesy of the Maeda
Ikutokukai Foundation.

the boards and out from under the veranda, and it looks extremely
cool. While the Sairei zōshi is remote from the sixteenth century
in terms of historical period, the water surrounded by duckboards
can most easily be understood as a gushing spring. Precisely because it is spring water, one might directly scoop it up and use it
to prepare tea. This clarifies the meaning of the kettle and portablebrazier placed on the duckboards. If there were a kettle, brazier,and a set of utensils on the duckboards in the spring pavilion depicted in the Senmen Hokekyō sasshi, then it would be just like theimage depicted in the Sairei zōshi.
Although this has been a rather complicated investigation
into some of the issues surrounding a single painting, it does not,of course, negate the value of the picture in the Sairei zōshi. The
water-ripple motif in the center might not be a bath after all, but it
nevertheless remains a precious historical document for learning
about medieval chanoyu. It does still show that the tea preparer

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continued to be someone of a lower status than the guests or host,and that preparation of tea was confined to the corner of a corridor.

After-Bath Facilities
The well-bucket water vessel, bentwood receptacle for rinse water, and a green bamboo lid rest were all things that Jōō thoughtof when he had tea in an after-bath relaxation area after bathing.

This comment by Kubo Toshiyo (1571–1640), also known as
Chōandō, was recorded in his memoir Chōandō ki just before his
death. It recounts Takeno Jōō’s tea preparation in an after-bathingarea. Kubo was a craftsman from Nara who specialized in making
cloths, cloth pouches, and bags for tea utensils. Kubo followed
Kamo no Chōmei in favoring a small, square abode like that ofa temple abbot’s quarters. He asked Kobori Enshū to name hishouse, whereupon Enshū said, “You are ignorant, unlike Chōmei,so I name your house Chōandō.” Enshū was here playing on theword chōmei, which can mean “abundant light,” and chōan, which
can mean “abundant darkness.” Such is the origin of the nameChōandō (the suffix -dō means “abode”). The Chōandō ki was
Kubo Toshiyo’s record of the tea stories he had heard and seen in
his youth; the citation above is one such example. His point isthat the well-bucket style of water vessel, the bentwood rinsewater receptacle, and the freshly cut green bamboo lid rest were
all Takeno Jōō’s contrivances. In turn, those contrivances all camefrom his idea of holding the tea gathering in the after-bath area.
There are thus two parts to Kubo’s observation.
There is a reference to a well-bucket water vessel. Today there
is an extant example of such a water vessel owned by Rikyū. It is adistinctive tea utensil in that it was an everyday object which nonetheless appealed to the wabi-cha aesthetic. The bentwood item

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referred to is made of unvarnished wood and intended for rinsewater. The use of bare wood, instead of a more formal lacquered
utensil, was meant to convey the unvarnished beauty of the wooditself. The same can be said for the green bamboo lid rest. In otherwords, these three tea utensils were chosen for their wabi aesthetic, selected intentionally for the beauty of their unvarnishedquality, unlike formal lacquered utensils. However, according to
the Chōandō ki, Jōō’s creative achievement here, his repurposingof these ordinary items as tea utensils, was born from the geniusof his style, which is evident in the combining of bath and tea.
Indeed, an after-bath relaxation space is an extension of thebathing experience. It might be useful to imagine again the bathat the Hiunkaku in Nishi-Honganji Temple, with its steam bathin the back, the wood-floored area in front of the bath, and then,
one step higher, the after-bath relaxing room, which faces thepond. Precisely because this was chanoyu hosted in an after-batharea, the host cleverly incorporated utensils that were intended
for the bath; or at least they were reminiscent of those used in thebath. This ingenious scheme of his was surely ideally suited to arinkan chanoyu, a “summer bath tea.”
As noted previously, rinkan meant summer hospitality in theform of bathing. Rinkan itself is not directly linked to chanoyu.
Therefore, the style imparted to the Furuichi family’s summer
bathing banquets sometimes took the form of flower arrangement,
at other times tea, and still other times linked verse. Consistentacross all these events were a liberated sensibility, an indulgent
gathering that featured sake and performing arts, and a spirit ofplay. And yet the ingenious style of summer bathing tea did not
emerge directly from such events. In addition to a bath, critical tothe creation of this summer bathing style of chanoyu were newutensils and a new spirit. Jōō’s after-bathing tea essentially formed

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Chapter 4a single innovative style, with tea as the main component andbathing as a subsidiary component. Later tea masters—more specifically Rikyū—took Jōō’s liking for summer bathing tea, kept
the utensils, and stripped away their bathing context.
Jōō’s bathing tea—that is, his contriving of a summer tea
function—was perhaps a major discovery for chanoyu, whichdrew typically on winter style. However much Jōō innovated withhis summer tea function, so long as he linked the tea event to bathing, he could not remove the licentiousness associated with bathing parties. The relaxed, liberated season of summer and the still
more liberated mood of bathing were contrary to Rikyū’s chanoyu,
which aimed for a higher spirituality and a greater tension.
Tea at the spring pavilion as depicted in the Sairei zōshi is aningenious summer style. The half-monk, half-layman shogunal
attendant-like figure shown preparing tea on the duckboard flooring of the spring pavilion is a pre-wabi-cha figure. A situation
where a host and guests enjoy a more complete style of tea preparation (temae) in a single room—where the spring pavilion does
not impose its tastes on the surrounding mood, or prevent the tea
gathering from affecting its participants—was probably more inline with Rikyū’s emphasis. For Rikyū, a summer bathing party
was but a trick contrived to surprise guests, and as such, it had tobe rejected.
This does not mean that bathing tea events completely disappeared after Rikyū. Bathing and tea still appeared together, connected in some way with pleasure. One such event was held at
Matsudaira Fumai’s Kanden’an tea room. Matsudaira Fumai (1751–
1818) was responsible for the Izumo Matsue domain’s reforms.
He was an important late Edo-period daimyo and a tea devotee
known for the major tea-utensil collection chronicled in his Unshūkurachō (Unshū Storehouse Catalogue; 1811). He preferred tea

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The second-story tea room in an Edo-period bathhouse. Reproduced bypermission from Santō Kyōden, Kengu irigomi sentō shinwa, 1802, kibyōshi
illustrated book, 3 vols., University of Tokyo General Library. Courtesy of
the University of Tokyo General Library.

rooms with annexed bathing rooms. Today, visitors to Kanden’an
do not approach via the formal route; rather, they are directedaround the back. Originally, however, one first arrived at the hutlike waiting area constructed on the highest point in the Kanden’an
compound. The tea room was built as a place where one could relieve the fatigue of a day spent outside, on the way back fromhunting or some other such pursuit. So he had a steam-room-stylebath built in this waiting area. Here Fumai’s “ingenious style”
was to have guests wash away their sweat and don fresh clothing,
before descending the stone steps of the garden approach to thetea room. So while we could say that the Kanden’an is indeed arevival of the bathing and tea combination, we must not forgetthat the pleasure of hunting also had a vital role to play.
The bathing–tea connection was also not completely severed
among ordinary people. In 1802, the novelist and ukiyo-e artist

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Santō Kyōden (1761–1816) produced an illustrated satirical novel
titled Kengu irigomi sentō shinwa (New Bathhouse Tales of
Wisdom and Folly). This book was a so-called kibyōshi, literally
a “yellow cover,” a type of popular fiction. The novel describes
commoners relaxing in the second-story after-bath area of a twostory bathhouse. The illustrations depict people sitting, eating
snacks, and sipping bitter tea. The text states, “Well, have somesnacks!” rather than repeating esoteric concepts emphasized in
the way of tea and in Zen, such as “Written words have no standing.” This is probably Kyōden’s ironic comment on how the wayof tea had become so distanced from tea with its former associations of uninhibited play. The spirit of summer bathing tea lived
on among the common people.

Furyū, Yatsushi, Mitate:
Elegance, “Humble Guise,” and Refashioning
Elegance (Furyū)
Summer bathing tea, tea-tasting contests, and tea events held ina palace were all ways of adding style (shukō) to a banquet. They
do not mean that the tea gathering had now been perfected.
Indeed, the style of tea gatherings did not become established until the development of wabi-cha under Jukō and later tea masters.
However, “elegance” (furyū) was one of the concepts which exerted a profound influence on tea-gathering style. Elegance in thissense was the most elevated form of style in medieval-period performing arts.
An entry in the Kanmon gyoki (Diary of Imperial PrinceTea-Gathering Style

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Fushimi no Miya Sadafusa) for April 12, 1416, describes a scene
where various handmade objects exemplifying elegance were shownto Prince Sadafusa (1372–1456) for his enjoyment. Elegance is thequality of handmade objects that are the epitome of style. The
concept of elegance today is slightly different from what it was formerly, and the differences are marked by a difference in pronunciation: furyū for the older concept, and fūryū in contemporary usage.
For example, first there was an object made in the image of thefolk deity Daikokuten. It was said to be made entirely from vegetarian foodstuffs, vegetables, and seaweed. The diary entry records
that the form of the object was exactly like a real Daikokuten
sculpture. A second example was a handmade figure of a court
official wearing the formal sokutai outfit with sword. This figure
was placed beneath a setting of willow and cherry trees, and it,
too, was made entirely of edible items. The dewdrops on the willow branches were made of edible materials, and there was a banner made of kombu seaweed. Next there was an ox cart, and thenMount Fuji. Those two objects were made of silk, paper, andfolding fans. In this fashion, various handmade items epitomizing
elegance were lined up before the prince. People said, “We gapedin shock, they were so amazing.” To this day, objects that embody
elegance in this sense can be frequently seen in the adornmentsof the portable shrines and carts that appear at festivals held
throughout Japan.
What we understand from this diary entry is, firstly, that elegant objects were greatly enjoyed for their entertainment value by
the court nobility in medieval Japan. Second, their elegance wasappreciated as a type of style. There was a mysteriousness about
the materials and their combinations, and there was the qualityof surprise in the completed object. The extravagance of it all
was amazing. Third, while I have not cited relevant sections here,

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this elegance was often on display at regular monthly chanoyu
events. Thus, we can easily imagine that style, as it applied to tea
gatherings, was influenced by such ideas of elegance. Might weperhaps say that Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s tea events of a somewhat
later period partook of this elegance? Was Hideyoshi’s golden tea
room not a case of elegance in its most extravagant form? Again,
when Hechikan at the Great Kitano Tea Gathering opened up ahuge red-lacquered umbrella one and a half tatami lengths in diameter to shield the tea-serving area from the sun, was this notalso an example of elegant style intended to amaze?
Elegance always placed the highest value on extravaganceand eccentricity. Elegance meant material objects that drew interest on account of their ability to amaze people. This being thecase, the mainstream of wabi-cha style was bound to flow along
its own distinctive path.

The Yatsushi Aesthetic
No matter how extravagant the object, and regardless of its
capacity to amaze, the concept of elegance in the end implies
artifice. The stylish quality of this sort of elegance lay in the factthat the object concerned was not the real thing; it was made ofmaterials you would never expect the genuine article to be madeof. There is an inherent interest in this sort of “fakery” (modoki
in Japanese). To fake is to challenge the original. Indeed, to fakeis by definition to imitate. But, fakery has its own appeal andits good qualities, too. Tea masters had an eye for noticing its interest. Ganmodoki, literally “fake goose,” is of course not real
goose meat; it is just a tasty substitute for goose in the vegetarian
food world.
If we set aside the slightly humorous feel of the idea of fakery, then yatsushi emerges as another concept that has a similarTea-Gathering Style

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sentiment, but it evokes rather a sense of pathos. The wabi-cha
spirit is to be found in the twin concepts of “fakery” (modoki) and“humble guise” (yatsushi). A wabi tea devotee may wish to competewith the real thing, but he can hardly re-create the world of sublime
Chinese objects (karamono). This is what led to the creation of aseparate realm featuring the treasures of fifteenth-century Higashiyama Culture in a “humble” imitation of those Chinese objects.
Indeed, the four-and-a-half-mat reception room created by
Jukō was itself an example of the humble guise. A true formal
reception room meant that the display alcove (tokonoma) had paper applied to its walls, on top of which was applied a paper layer
decorated with ink painting. The aforementioned Nanpōroku
states, however, that the papering on the wall of Jukō’s display
alcove had no painting; it was just plain white “chicken’s-egg
paper” (torinokogami). The display alcove had taken on a humble
guise. It maintained the basic form, but eliminated extravaganceto keep it simple. Jukō’s ceiling was cedar-paneled, unlike thosefound in a room of the shoin architectural style, and for the roof
he used small wood-strip shingles like those used for Buddhist
temples. The Nanpōroku goes on to say, “In general, the sorts ofobjects which would be displayed on a shoin built-in desk wereplaced there, but they were fewer than usual.” Shoin-style tea waspared down to the extreme and assumed a humble guise in Jukō’s
four-and-a-half-mat room.
And yet there were some who said that even Jukō’s employment of the “humble guise” was only half-hearted. Takeno Jōō
experimented with an even more thoroughgoing type of humble
guise. Jōō rejected the practice of papering the display alcove
walls and left the bare earthen walls exposed. He switched thewood lattice in the window to bamboo. He changed the crosspieceat the foot of the display alcove from pure black lacquer and gave

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Plain wood container for fresh water (mizusashi)

it either a thin lacquer coating or left it completely unlacquered
as plain white wood. Abbreviation and the use of raw, untreatedmaterials together constituted the aesthetic of the humble guise.
The beauty of plain materials is to this day symbolic of one aspect of the tea world. In the eye of the tea devotee who dares toavoid porcelains and lacquered wares, and chooses an unvarnished wood container for fresh water, we can discover the irreplaceable aesthetic of the pure and simple that is at the heart ofyatsushi, the assuming of a humble guise.
The verb from which the noun yatsushi derives literally means“to render something shabby,” “to change something so it is nolonger conspicuous,” “to abbreviate.” These only go some way inconveying the idea of the aesthetic involved. The humble guisealways involved a double-layered appearance. To take examples
from the kabuki theater, one could say that the figure of the townsman Sukeroku is the humble guise of Soga no Gorō, a samurai
character; or that the greengrocer’s daughter Yaoya Oshichi is thehumble guise of the Heian-period poet Ono no Komachi, though
this perhaps takes the comparison too far. Sukeroku and Oshichi
are both assumed guises, and in reality they both possess rareTea-Gathering Style

137

powers and appearance. To borrow the words of the kabuki researcher and director Gunji Masakatsu (1913–1998),
It is when the wealthy man Izaemon appears as a povertystricken figure in the play Yūgiri Izaemon that the expression“humble guise” (yatsushi) appears. The idea always implies a layer
on top of that person’s actual status, and that overlap functions
as the object of appreciation.*

Some might question the wisdom of applying impressions of
premodern society to medieval tea. But I find there was an awareness of the aesthetic of the humble guise in the pursuit of beauty
by both Jukō and Jōō. If that is so, what is the genuine article
against which tea’s humble guise measures itself? It goes without
saying that it is the world of sublime Chinese objects. There is noneed to interpret Jukō’s expression, “It is good to tether a finehorse to a straw hut,” as simply a case of the harsh contrast between a straw hut and a fine horse. The “fine horse” here is thegenuine article. In this case, the humble guise of that genuine
article is the straw hut in its fallen-on-hard-times, destitute form.
In any case, this humble-guise aesthetic informed ideas of style
from the early fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century, fromthe age of Jukō through to Jōō.

Rikyū’s Style
If we go looking for style in tea, unexpectedly Rikyū rarely appears. This is not to say, of course, that there is no style in Rikyū’stea. And yet in one aspect, I think that Rikyū sought to rejectstyle. The Nanpōroku is a work of literature which hoped to* Gunji, Kabuki no bigaku [The Aesthetics of Kabuki].

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resurrect Rikyū’s form of tea, and while we cannot take it as atrue historical record, there are these words of Rikyū’s in the section on tea gatherings:
Of all the tea gatherings held in a year, the only events recordedin this diary were those which involved changes in utensils orstyle. I do not approve of such a selection process. This is something I want to discuss when we meet. Even if one does not seek
any change at all, one’s thoughts and emotions change bit by bit
amid the same things, day after day. The interesting aspects of atea gathering lie in how such change always occurs. I have no interest in a tea gathering that pursues the rare or unusual in tea
preparation, adornment, or utensil selection.

When Nanbō Sōkei, a late sixteenth-century Zen monk andtea devotee, wrote of Rikyū’s tea gatherings, he omitted those thatused the same utensils and tea-making procedures (temae), recording only those events that manifested changes. When he presented his writings to Rikyū, Rikyū rebuked him. He explainedthat it is not good to pursue only those events which featured
stylish preparation and unusual decorative displays. The changes
in the heart that occur when both the utensils and tea-making
procedures are the same are what matters. In fact, if we look at
the Rikyū hyakkaiki (Record of Rikyu’s Hundred Tea Gatherings), a reliable record dated 1590 of about one hundred tea gatherings held by Rikyū, it is surprising how few changes there are in
the utensils. No doubt as he faced his guests, Rikyū experienced
changes in his emotions not revealed in the tea record, but the stylethat would have been evident on those occasions is very hard to
put into words.
Since Rikyū’s tea had little patience with changes in utensils,Tea-Gathering Style139

or the appeal of decorations, or inspired combinations of utensils, what did his tea emphasize? The historical materials introduced by Horiguchi Sutemi in Rikyū no cha (Rikyū’s Tea; 1951)
contain a record of a tea gathering in the shoin daisu style hosted
by Rikyū on October 23, 1588, at Jurakudai, a palace constructedin 1587 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. There were four guests, including
Shun’oku Sōen of Daitokuji. One of the guests mentioned by namewas Kokei Sōchin, a Zen monk close to Rikyū. Beneath Kokei’s
name was appended a comment to the effect that “because ofproblems with Hideyoshi,” the event was held while Kokei wasaway in the west of Japan. Kokei had aroused Hideyoshi’s anger
during the enshrinement of warlord Oda Nobunaga, in what was
known as the Tenshōji incident, and was banished from Kyoto towestern Japan. His name was listed, but he was not actually present. He was in exile in Kyushu. The aim of this tea gathering wasfor Rikyū to bring together Zen monks with whom he was intimate, drink tea together, and think of the now-distant Kokei.
Rikyū decorated the alcove (tokonoma) on this occasion withcalligraphy by the Chinese Zen monk Xūtáng Zhìyú (1185–1269),
who was commonly known as Ikushima Kidō. This calligraphy—a poem of four seven-character lines, known as qiyan jueju in
Chinese—encapsulated all aspects of that tea gathering’s theme:
On a cool misty morning when the tree leaves had separated
from their branches,an exceptional monk set out from the Zen temple,
East, west, south, or north, not a soul out there,
Hurry back to tell me your thoughts.

The tea gathering was on October 23, 1588, and appropriately
for that season the poem describes the clear freshness of a cold

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Chapter 4morning as the leaves fall. A monk whose brilliance is beyond
compare leaves the Zen temple. And yet no one is there, east,
west, north or south. Return and narrate your feelings! It was asif the poet were speaking of Kokei, banished to far-off westernlands. There could be no hanging scroll more appropriate for thistea gathering. Moreover, concealed here was Rikyū’s bold challenge to Hideyoshi.
This work by Zhìyú (Ikushima), considered a great treasure(meibutsu), was in fact owned by Hideyoshi. It just so happened
that Hideyoshi had recently ordered Rikyū to get the precious
scroll remounted, and Rikyū therefore had it in his keeping. Rikyū,
unbeknownst to Hideyoshi, then used this scroll in his farewellparty for Kokei, whom Hideyoshi had sent into exile. Here is surely
evidence not only of Rikyū’s shrewdness, but also of his thoughtfulness in offering hospitality to Kokei, who was not actually present.
Rikyū’s style at its finest might be found in these intense interpersonal relations, or in the encounters between person andobject. In comparison, the significance of style more commonly
associated with, say, a sensitive matching of utensils failed to interest him.
In fact, the honing of intricate sensibilities about utensil combinations probably only occurred after Rikyū’s time. The selectionof utensils for their seasonal feel, the choice of utensils and adornments in line with utensil names and forms: Is this not all a midEdo-period sensibility, several generations after Rikyū’s time?

Tsukeai and Mitate: Linking and Refashioning
Linking and refashioning were concepts central to early modernera style.
The concept of linking emerged from the renga, or “linked
verse,” poetry form. Linked verse is a literary art in which theTea-Gathering Style141

repeated adding of a first stanza (5-7-5 syllables) and a second
stanza (7-7 syllables) of a waka five-line poem gradually serve toexpand the poem’s imagery; in such instances, a close connection
between first and second stanzas is essential. The connection is
known as “linking” (tsukeai). The high-ranking aristocrat Nijō
Yoshimoto (1320–1388) identified thirteen types of linking, andKonishi Jin’ichi (1915–2007), the great scholar of Japanese literature, wrote the following explanation of a representative type oflinking called “four hands” (yotsude).
yotsude (four-hand link)
These verses should dovetail firmly without overtones:
futatsu tatsunari

two standing

mizudori no koe

waterbirds’ voices

kamishimo no

upper and lower

Kamo no kawara no

Kamo/duck riverbed

miyabashirashrines

The futatsu tatsunari (two standing) of the first verse can betaken to modify the two shrines, Kamigamo and Shimogamo, inthe second. The place-name Kamo is understood to mean kamo
(duck) and thus is related to “waterbird.” (This is the process of
torinashi described above.) Riverbed and waterbird are “related
words” (engo). This is a model shinku.*

The two “shrine pillars” and the “two standing” are an exampleof linking, as are “waterbird” and “Kamo” (or kamo, the characterfor duck). These diagonal connections across the poem’s structure* Konishi, “The Art of Renga,” trans. Karen Brazell and Lewis Cook, 53–
54. Translation adapted.

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constitute a four-hand linking. There is nothing lyrical about this;
it is an example of taut but unimaginative linking. Real linking ismore complex. There are many types, such as kokoro-zuke, when
the second verse picks up and links to the meaning or sentiment of
the opening verse; kotoba-zuke, word-based connections; or yojō,
which is suggestion rather than open expression. Many chains ofassociations typical of linking are alive in the style of tea gathering.
For example, if a host were to use a tea container known as tamamizu (literally, “jewels of water”) together with a fresh-water vessel known as shiba no iori (literally, “brushwood hut”), then thiswould be an example of aesthetic linking. The link derives fromwaka poetry, in which both phrases commonly appear. Be that as
it may, given that Takeno Jōō practiced as a linked-verse master until he was thirty years old, the spirit of linking presumably existed
in tea from the nascent period of wabi-cha, but it is not clear.
Then again, what about “refashioning,” or mitate?*
Not only in tea, but in kabuki, in haikai (an early form ofJapanese verse or prose from which the haiku form was developed), and in everyday relationships—indeed in all aspects ofpre-modern life—the concept of “refashioning” (mitateru) was
prominent. One type of publication unique to early modern Japan
was the “refashioned ranking chart.” These were refashioned
versions of the sumo ranking chart, and there were all sorts, fromthose ranking restaurants and wealthy men and scholars to others
ranking ceramic incense containers made from molds, for example.
The style associated with “refashioning” became deeply embedded in tea.
Refashioning in the sense intended here is best reflected in the* This translation follows Timon Screech in rendering mitate as “refashioning.”

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Ranking chart of ceramic incense containers. Reproduced bypermission from page 145 of the original Japanese edition.

realm of tea-utensil names. During the earliest period of utensil
naming, relatively simple names were assigned, such as the owner’s name, or a name derived from an episode in which the utensil
was involved, or from some association conjured by the shapeof the utensil. But then, in the early modern era, the number ofpeople involved in chanoyu increased, and the number of existingutensils failed to keep pace, which made it necessary to identify

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new utensils of renown. Kobori Enshū was active during this period. In response to popular demand for renowned utensils,
Enshū selected and named an overwhelming number of them. But
this did not mean that Enshū had at his disposal an endless numberof names. What he frequently used, therefore, was names takenfrom poetry. He would “refashion” some ancient poetic sentimentto suit the shape of a vessel, or choose a name from some ancient
waka verse, then write that verse on the box or cylinder made tocontain the utensil. This procedure was Enshū’s invention. For
example, the marutsubo (literally “round jar”) tea container
named Ōsaka had its name selected by Enshū from a poem in the
waka anthology Kokin wakashū (Collection of Japanese Poetry
Ancient and Modern; commonly abbreviated as Kokinshū). The
poem is as follows: “Though the stormy wind of Ōsaka is cold,
without knowing my destination, I sleep with my lonely thoughts.”
Utensils named in this manner came to occupy a place of distinction, and a central theme for tea gatherings was the style thatderived from aligning the utensil, based on its name, to the season
and to the particular guests present.
Jumping to the modern era, there is a relevant story fromaround 1912. Here let me record the details of a tea gathering
which brought about the renaming of a tea connoisseurs’ group;
the group had previously been known as the Wakeikai, and its
name was changed to the Rakankai.
There were sixteen Wakeikai members, and this was an occasion when their cultured friend Tominaga Fuyuki invited all sixteen to his new residence in the Honjō Yokoami district of Tokyo.
Given that Tominaga always thought the members resembled
arhats (rakan), and that there were exactly sixteen of them—sixteen being the number of a typical Buddhist arhat grouping—
he decided to refashion the name of the connoisseurs’ groupTea-Gathering Style145

accordingly. He wrote the nameplates Tsuruhiko Sonja for Ōkura
Tsuruhiko, and Katsunori Sonja for Masuda Katsunori, giving toboth the Buddhist honorific sonja. He used Zen-temple tableware
to serve Indian cuisine at the banquet. One of those present
added up all of the monetary gifts given to celebrate his new residence, and the sum amounted to more than the cost of the newbuilding. Masuda Katsunori immediately made a comic verse(kyōku) about this cost: “Shujin wa ‘yokuami da,’ kyaku wa mina‘son ja.’” Literally, “The host is yokuami; the guests are sonja.”
Yokuami plays on the Yokoami district, where the host’s residence
is located, while also humorously implying that the host is ayokuamida, or greedy Buddha. Sonja plays on the losses (son)made by the guests who contributed to the banquet, as well as
their status as guests of honor (sonja). The verse was met withgreat acclaim, and the group duly came to be known by its nickname, the Arhats’ Club (Rakankai).
I refer to this episode to show that it was actually in the modern period that the concept of “refashioning” established itself in
an informal context. Particularly, Takahashi Sōan (1861–1937)
and other tea connoisseurs used a type of wordplay in their “refashioning.” This was an attempt to summon tea back from its
overly rigid realm. Conversely, it is true that it also created a fashion for tea events with a farcical quality. The use of style associated with refashioning always carries such a risk, and yet it
remains central to the style of tea today. The overuse of linking
and refashioning can create “over-linking,” with all the negativity
which that entails. Thus, the tea devotee must be innovative withthe style of his tea gatherings while striving for a subtle balance
between “connection and separation.”

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The Advent of Seasonal Sentiment
Seasonal Greetings
A sense of the seasons is rapidly being lost from contemporary
life. Today, it seems as if the performing-arts world will be theonly sector to maintain a sense of the seasons. Haiku, ikebana,kabuki, and chanoyu, too, all are important parts of that sector.
There are few people today just starting the study of tea who are
not surprised at the level of importance which the tea world attaches to the seasons. Be it through hanging scrolls, utensils, oradornments, the seasons contribute the most important aspectsof tea style (shukō). For example, in October tea gatherings at theend of the “portable brazier season,” the worn brazier (yatsureburo) is used. This distinctive type of brazier invokes the remnantsof late autumn, and its style adroitly combines the visual interestof its worn appearance with a sense of the seasons.
But let us look through the historical sources. Was a sensitivity to the seasons there in wabi-cha’s formative period? That ismost likely not the case. Indeed, even in Rikyū’s time, seasonalsensitivity was in much shorter supply than has been thought.
Sense of the seasons proves unexpectedly to be a product of theearly modern era.
This applies not only to chanoyu. Let us look at an example.
Letters carry seasonal greetings. We are taught that letters startwith a respectful address, and must always contain a greeting
related to the season. We learn that using the simple phrase
zenryaku—that is, “[opening seasonal greeting] omitted”—is extremely rude. In fact, though, the convention of putting time- orTea-Gathering Style

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Worn brazier (yatsureburo)season-sensitive greetings into letters is a relatively recent one.
By way of example, let us look at Rikyū’s letters. A cursory
glance through Kuwata Tadachika’s 1961 book on Rikyū’s letters, Rikyū no shokan, reveals that few of his letters begin withseasonal greetings. Letters typically start with the reason for writing, as in “The lid of the tea container is ready . . .” He omits
almost all extraneous words. One letter that has something like aseasonal greeting—“Amid the ongoing rain . . .”—is an invitation
to a tea gathering during a long period of autumnal rain. That isabout all.
I do not yet have a real grasp of when the requirement forseasonal greetings in letters began. I imagine it was in the early
Edo period, around the Genroku era (1688–1704), but I cannot be
sure. In older times, Muromachi-period guides to letter writing
do contain seasonal greetings. But this was one form of letter-writing among many, and it may have been atypical. Looking at
the writing on the back of the paper reused for the Sanetaka kōki,
the diary of the nobleman Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537), we
find that examples of seasonal greetings are extremely rare. The
addressee is unknown, but there is a letter dated to 1473.

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The snows where you are must be as charming as they are
here. Your coming-of-age robes (genpuku) have been finished asscheduled . . .

We can see that the writer was moved to begin by recording
his joy at the snowy scene, which suggests his refined sentiment,
but this was uncommon. The roughness of the letters written bysamurai of the Warring States period did not demand the writingof seasonal greetings. Nor do such greetings appear in letter-writing
etiquette books from the later Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568–
1600) through the early Edo period. In which case, we must assume
that the first articulation of seasonal sensitivity was in the Edo
period. This was when everyone became conscious of the seasons.

The Seasons in Tea Gatherings
I wonder how much seasonal sensitivity worked its way into tea
prior to Rikyū. Let us look at a tea-gathering record for an event
hosted by Takeno Jōō, included in the Matsuya kaiki. The entry
is for May 27, 1542, and we find in it almost no evidence of asense of the seasons. The event is described in considerable detail,but most of this is given over to descriptions of the famous paintings, tea jar (chatsubo), and tea container (chaire). In other words,
the tea devotees of Jōō’s period were interested above all in utensils of renown. Rather than rejoicing at the style the host imparted
to his tea gathering, guests wanted to see the famous utensils in
the host’s possession. This applies to Jōō’s tea gathering referred
to above. Matsuya Hisamasa and Hachiya Matagorō traveledfrom Nara to attend the tea gathering to be held in Sakai. Whenthey arrived at their inn, a messenger from Jōō visited them there
and asked whether they would like to see the Matsushima tea jar
or the wave painting by Yu Jian, both famous objects owned byTea-Gathering Style

149

Jōō. The two guests, Hisamasa and Matagorō, discussed the matter. Matagorō wanted to see the Matsushima jar, but Hisamasa
was obsessed with the wave painting. In the end, the two failed toagree, so they said to the messenger that either object was fine;they would leave it up to the host. The following day, they went to
the tea gathering, and Jōō generously brought out both treasures
for them to see: the wave painting and the Matsushima jar. The
two men were overjoyed.
While it is a mistake to take a single tea gathering as a measure for the whole, we can get from the above episode some indication of how insensitive tea gatherings were to the seasons fromthe items displayed in the alcove (tokonoma). Works of Zen calligraphy suggest no seasonal sensitivity on the part of the host,but if the object displayed in the alcove is a painting or waka calligraphy, then naturally the host would choose a subject suited tothe season. Or, at least, this is what we might expect. However,another old record of tea gatherings, the 1548–1566 diary of themerchant and tea devotee Tsuda Sōtatsu (1504–1566), covers a totalof 380 tea gatherings which he himself hosted, and mentions
hanging scrolls 160 times. Content-wise, there are seventy-two
mentions of Muxi’s painting of Chuanzi Heshang, fifty-seven of apainting of a round fan, eight of color paintings, four of calligraphy other than Zen, and nineteen of Zen calligraphy. This meansthat there were 129 occasions on which either one or the other of
two hanging scrolls—Muxi’s painting of Chuanzi Heshang or theround fan painting—featured; that is, 80 percent of the total. To
put it bluntly, when Tsuda Sōtatsu was selecting a scroll to hangin the display alcove, he repeatedly used these two scrolls over thecourse of eighteen years. Evidently, he gave no thought to expressing the seasons through his choice of hanging scroll.
This trend continued for a considerable time, as is evident

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from the Tennōjiya kaiki (Records of Tennōjiya) tea diary cited inchapter 3. It includes a total of 1,488 entries for the tea gatherings
either hosted or attended by three generations of tea masters:
Tsuda Sōtatsu, Sōgyū, and Sōbon.* It has been calculated that only
fifteen types of hanging scrolls of any description are recorded inthose entries. This appears to suggest that tea devotees were notespecially interested in hanging scrolls of any description.
Reading through the Tennōjiya kaiki in search of seasonalsensibility, you would perhaps look first to the adornments in the
alcove, to flowers in addition to the hanging scroll. And you would
expect seasonal foods to be included in the kaiseki meal, and teautensil names to reflect seasonal style.
In fact, flowers feature only rarely in early records of tea gatherings. In the aforementioned record of Tsuda Sōtatsu, he only
makes twenty-one mentions of flower vases for the 380 tea events
he records. Of course, we cannot say with certainty that only
5 percent of tea gatherings had flower arrangements, but at thevery least it is clear that the interests of tea devotees of the time
did not lie in flowers. Tea utensils, however, were a different matter
altogether. The Bunrui sōjinboku (Classifications of Tea) cited inchapter 3 notes that there were “proximate” tea utensils—in otherwords, utensils in which the owner was deeply interested—and
conversely, those in which they had lesser interest, “remote” utensils.
There are proximate (chikai) and remote (tōi) utensils. Chaire(thick-tea containers) and tenmoku [tea bowls] are the mostproximate. Mizusashi (water vessels), mizukoboshi (rinse-water
receptacles), chashaku (tea scoops), hishaku-tate (water-ladle* The Tsuda were a family of wealthy merchants from Sakai; Tennōjiya is
the name of their business establishment.

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151

Arranging flowers for tea (chabana).
Photo provided by author.

stands), and futa-oki (lid rests), are the next most proximate.
Ha-chatsubo (leaf-tea storage jars), kōro (incense burners), paintings, and hana-ike (flower containers) are remote. However, it issaid by some that ha-chatsubo are the very most proximate.*Thus, it is clear that hanging scroll paintings and flower vases
were of less interest to tea people than tea containers and tenmoku
bowls. This explains why there are few records of hanging scrolls
and flower vases in the tea-gathering records mentioned above.
And yet it seems that flowers attracted attention earlier thanhanging scrolls. While Tsuda Sōtatsu mentions flower vases in only
5 percent of his entries, his son Sōgyū records flower vases 25 percent* Tanikawa, “The Esthetics of Chanoyu, Part 3,” 38, 40. Translation
adapted.

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Chapter 4of the time. Fully one-quarter of all entries mention flower vases
and the kinds of flowers used. Thus was established the practiceof “flowers for tea” (chabana).
Flowers were not governed by form in wabi-cha, as is impliedin the expression nage-ire or “throw-in.” Flowers were simply“thrown into” a flower container suspended from a hook on thewall or pillar. Very few flower types were included. It is in themodern period that we get hundreds of types of flowers. Flowers
are by definition seasonal, but there was no interest in rare flowers. Rather, interest focused on “forbidden flowers”; those thatwere not to be used. The flowers not to be used were patterned
after the forbidden flowers in ikebana, but tea also forbade flowers
with a strong scent. There were flowers which, though not forbidden, did not find favor with Rikyū.
The Rikyū-den (Transmissions Pertaining to Rikyū) makes
it clear that Rikyū disliked both Japanese gentians and chrysanthemums because it was impossible to tell whether a few days had
passed and the flowers were no longer fresh. For Rikyū, the splendor of flowers lay in the fact that they were alive and were subject
to change. As Murata Sōshu, Jukō’s successor who was active inthe sixteenth century, said, “What we admire in a flower is thebeauty in the moment it is seen. So look first at the flowers; thepainting may be enjoyed later.” Flowers that changed from moment to moment were considered flowers appropriate for tea,
and this awareness marked what was likely the first type of seasonal sensitivity to emerge in chanoyu. I am reminded here ofan early anecdote about Rikyū’s morning-glory tea recorded in tea
master Fujimura Yōken’s collection of anecdotes on tea, the Sawa
shigetsu shū. It tells of how Toyotomi Hideyoshi, having heard of
the beautiful morning glories in Rikyū’s mansion, requested amorning-glory tea gathering. When he went to attend theTea-Gathering Style

153

gathering, Hideyoshi was appalled to find each and every morning glory in the garden had been pulled out. Mightily displeased,
he continued into the tea room. There he was met with the sightof the single most beautiful morning glory in the garden on display. Morning glories wilt rapidly; it had been masterfully displayed at the height of its beauty. Rikyū, it is said, was lavishedwith praise.

“I offer thin tea to Bashō’s spirit on his memorial day,thinking, ‘How cold it is!’”*There are many episodes told about Rikyū in which he places
great emphasis on the seasons. And yet were all of these episodes
really about Rikyū? Most are nothing more than unreliable folklore. During Rikyū’s time, it seems that the idea of seasonal teamaking procedures had yet to be established. To begin with, tea
gatherings were not held throughout the year. They were generally winter events, which left little scope for seasonal expression.
In Rikyū’s time, it seems that tea functions finally came to be heldin spring, summer, autumn, and winter. And yet, unlike the practice of today, it was by no means strange for a sunken hearth to be
used in summer, for a brazier to be used in winter, or indeed, for a
kettle chain and bamboo hook to be in evidence all year round.
There is an article in the Nanpōroku which has Rikyū scolding Nanbō Sōkei. It was just before the start of the rainy season,and on the day in question it had started to drizzle, and it was extremely chilly. Nanbō was hosting guests Rikyū and Sōgyū. It wasso cold that Nanbō removed the lid of the fresh-water vessel, but
did not pour more water into the kettle before preparing the tea.
* Translated from a haiku by the poet Miura Chora (1729–1780): baseo[bashō] ki ni / usucha tamukuru / samusa ka na.

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Chapter 4Fellow guests praised Sōkei’s adroit attempt to prevent the hot water from cooling, but Rikyū scolded him. His point was that adding
cold water to hot water had nothing to do with the surrounding
air temperature. Rather, it was a matter of yuai, the state of the hotwater. At that time, the processed leaves used for making powderedgreen tea were preserved by sealing the newly picked tea leaves ina tea jar. They would be taken out in early winter. That is why thistea had the greatest vitality in early winter. Tea from that same tea
jar would be used over the course of a year, and so summer tea wasmost lacking in vitality. Rikyū said that adding water to the kettle
was to aid the tea’s vitality; it was a fundamental step in the teamaking procedure (temae). It was not permissible to alter at will
fundamental elements of tea on account of the season or the outside temperature. The Rikyū hyakkaiki shows that Rikyū held tea
gatherings day in and day out, rarely changing utensils, in orderto adhere to the same principles. Such was Rikyū’s tea.
With Rikyū’s disciple Furuta Oribe, and Oribe’s own disciple
Kobori Enshū, the form of tea changed greatly. Oribe placed greatemphasis on the use of flowers in the tea gathering, as is evident
from events he hosted where he would display flowers but noscrolls. In Enshū’s time, tea events with a clearly defined seasonalsensibility gradually started to appear. First, there was the factthat the poetic names that Enshū liked to assign to objects were
often seasonal in nature. The poetic traditions from the Kokinshū
waka anthology period onward underwent a major revival, cherished as they were by Enshū. However, it was the power of haikai
which firmly rooted seasonal sensibility in the world of tea, andin the lives of the Japanese people.
The intertwining of tea and haikai was not yet apparent.
There is evidence of the haikai world’s awareness of tea in one
passage of Matsuo Bashō’s (1644–1694) famous poetic travel

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diary from 1687, Oi no kobumi (Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel),
where he writes:
Saigyō’s waka, Sōgi’s renga, Sesshū’s painting, Rikyū’s tea—the
spirit animating them is one.*

Clearly, the haikai world was taking notice of tea before Bashōplaced Rikyū in the aesthetic tradition that began in the medieval
period. The following is a verse entitled “Chashitsu nite” (In the
Tea Room) by Nishiyama Sōin (1605–1682):
Smoothly
the guests risea passing shower falls.†

Looking even further back, there are also these verses in the1633 Enokoshū (Puppy Collection) haikai anthology by the poetsof the Teimon school:
Just as repeated bidding determines price, in passing the bowl ofthin tea (usucha), it is truly thin pickings to draw the last straw!

From the beginning of the Edo period, then, haikai had an
extremely close relationship with chanoyu.
After Bashō, chanoyu appeared even more frequently in haikai.
The verse on Bashō’s death anniversary at the beginning of thissection was written by the poet Miura Chora (1729–1780), active
during the period of haikai’s revival. Is it not an excellent poem
* Blyth, Haiku, 335.
† kyakujin ya / sarari to tatta / hito shigure.

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Chapter 4on the chanoyu theme? Quite often specialist tea words were used
to mark seasonal themes in haikai. Here are some examples:ōbuku-cha or “good fortune tea,” drunk at the beginning of theyear; hatsu chanoyu, or “first tea” of the new year; hatsu chasen,“first [use of a new] tea whisk”; cha-tsumi, tea picking; cha-yama,“tea mountains”; shincha, “new [season] tea”; sencha, tea selection; ha-cha, leaf tea; kairo, “beginning of the ro (sunken hearth)”season; ro-fusagi, “end of the sunken hearth” season; kuchikiri,“unsealing the [tea leaf] jar”; shiro-zumi, “white charcoal.”
Conversely, from the tea side, how did tea connect to theworld of haikai? I have yet to investigate when haiku, the poetic
form developed from earlier haikai, was first displayed at tea
gatherings. And yet the use of short comic waka verses (kyōka)
which appear in the writings of tea devotees might indicate thepotential for a sudden shift to haikai. Sōtan was one of those who
occasionally included comic verse in his letters, and he was also
adept at haikai composition. But the generation of Sōtan’s students
was more familiar with haiku than with waka. As mentioned inchapter 3, Sōtan’s four main disciples were known as the Sōtan
Shitennō. One of them, Sugiki Fusai (1628–1706), was particularlyinterested in haikai. There is a theory that his interest grew out ofinteractions with Bashō. This is a possibility we cannot necessarily
discount, given that they did in fact live relatively close in what ispresent-day Mie Prefecture: Bashō in Iga, Fusai in Ise. More certainis the fact that Fusai’s mother Sugiki Mitsu (1583–1647) was anaccomplished poet and disciple of the haiku poet Sugita Moichi(1586–1643). Thus, haikai interests abounded in Fusai’s environs.
This is precisely why an incident like the following occurred.
Determined to go to Kyoto, Fusai set out from Ise, and had
just reached the Suzuka pass when he heard two cries from acuckoo. Fusai abruptly turned back. Ah! he thought, this must beTea-Gathering Style157

the time for the first catch of katsuo tuna. He sped back to Iseand immediately hosted a tea gathering at which katsuo tuna wasserved. The first catch of harvest is said to abound in vitality, and,invigorated by the thought that through this tea gathering he had
extended his life by seventy-five days, he headed off to Kyoto once
more. It was as if Fusai was performing the content of poet
Yamaguchi Sodō’s (1642–1716) “Me ni aoba” verse about new
green foliage, a cuckoo in the mountains, and the first tuna (katsuo) catch of the year.
Horinouchi Senkaku (1675–1748) was one chanoyu poet, but
first we must credit Kawakami Fuhaku (1719–1807), the founding
patriarch of the Edo Senke tea lineage, who went so far as to leavea haiku anthology.
Fuhaku’s “Saitan” (New Year’s Day) from the Fuhaku-ō kushū
anthology contains the following line:
Cha no michi ya / furuki o mote / kesa no haru
Carrying on the old chanoyu ways, I greeted the New Year’s dawn.

From the middle of the early modern period onward, chanoyu
began to incorporate seasonal references. As a result, seasons became the most important aspect of style at a tea gathering.

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The History of the Tea Whisk (Chasen)
Tea-Whisk Development“No one in the world has ever set out to interrogate the tea whisk(chasen).”Thus declared the great Edo-period literatus Konoe Iehiro(1667–1736) to his physician, Yamashina Dōan (1677–1746), whorecorded the former’s words in his Kaiki (Chronicles; 1724). Whowould propose interrogating something that, though beautifully
made, is used once and then simply discarded, never to reappear
in a formal setting? Absolutely no one investigated the origins of
the tea whisk. From the time of Iehiro’s lament until very recently,
nobody had taken on the tea whisk. Then, in 1974, Uchiyama Kazumoto published his book Chasen hakubutsushi (An Encyclopedic
Chronicle of the Tea Whisk). This was the first book written about
the tea whisk, and it is a valuable piece of fine scholarship. There
have been numerous splendid, sumptuous books on tea bowls andtea containers (chaire), but, strangely, no monograph on the tea
whisk. The fact is that, as Iehiro lamented, not a single person had
ever set out to write such a book.
Uchiyama clarified many things, including, for example, theexistence of burial mounds for tea whisks, known as chasen-zuka.
Along with such new information, his book also corrected common misunderstandings of the past. However, the one thing that I
cannot agree with is Uchiyama’s insistence on using a particularcharacter in writing the compound word cha-sen. The characterfor cha is not a problem, of course, but there are multiple possibilities for the character for sen. Uchiyama insists that sen should

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never be written with the character that can be read as sasara; itshould be always written with a character whose alternative reading is uke or ue. A sasara is a small stiff brush used to scrub a pot
or steamer. The sasara character has long been in common use
because the tea whisk is shaped like a small brush. Uchiyama’s
point is that the tea whisks of today, superbly artistic and intricately worked, merit the uke or ue character—which, incidentally,means a type of fish trap made of bamboo. I choose to use themore common sasara character, and will here leave aside myargument for that. In any case, Uchiyama was that rare soul who
finally investigated the history of the tea whisk, a history alreadybecoming obscure by Iehiro’s time at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Following Uchiyama, I, too, decided to investigate
the tea whisk from some angles that Uchiyama did not addressin any detail. The tea whisk, in fact, is a unique presence amongtea utensils.
It was, naturally enough, not in Japan but in Chinese tea thatthe whisk first appeared. The oldest known mention occurs in the
Daguan chalun (Daguan-Era Treatise on Tea; c. 1107), an important
historical document on the Song-dynasty tea ceremony attributed
to Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126). According to that text, there
was an extremely strong type of bamboo known as jinzhu (Jp. sujitake; literally “fibrous bamboo”). Even at the bamboo-shoot phase,the fibers of this bamboo variety were so strong that they wereused to make strings for musical instruments, and in mature form
it made good tea whisks. While the text does not clearly explain
how to make the tea whisk, it seems artisans would shave off andbundle together thin strips of bamboo, and wrap their ends arounda “shaft” of some sort. The Chaju tuzan (An Illustrated Guide to
Tea Utensils), a thirteenth-century illustrated book on tea ware in
China, includes one image of such a tea whisk, but here I have

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Tang tea whisk (Tō chasen). Reproduced by permission
from page 163 of the original Japanese edition.
Courtesy of the Urasenke Konnichian Library.

chosen to show a different picture. This is a Tang-period (618–907)
Chinese tea whisk from an Edo-period book titled Chasen no ikken(On the Matter of Tea Whisks). The book explains that a thread
holds together the ends of thin strips of bamboo, and the threadis then wrapped around the neck of the shaft. The caption here
states that images of Chinese unicorns, phoenixes, tortoises, anddragons were etched there, suggesting the shaft might have been
made of metal. The Daguan chalun says that the body should bethick and heavy. In any event, clearly the Chinese tea whisk was asplendid tea utensil. It was etched and made of extremely durable
bamboo, which suggests it was expected to last for quite a while.
It clearly gives a quite different impression, in both form and usage, from the Japanese tea whisk which was treated without care.
So how did the Japanese tea whisk become what it is?
Naturally, the type of tea whisk seen in the Daguan chalun must

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have entered Japan during the age of the monk Yōsai; that is,during the Kamakura period (1185–1333), when Song-dynasty-stylepowdered green tea was imported to Japan. But in Japan, a lengthof bamboo was cut and fashioned into a strong brush-style tea
whisk. The oldest visual evidence of a tea whisk can be seen in thelate fourteenth-century handscroll known as the Fukutomi sōshi(Tales of Fukutomi). A tea whisk is depicted on a shelf next totenmoku tea bowls, and it is essentially the same in form as apresent-day tea whisk. It is made from a single piece of bamboo,
and so is not the Chinese style. The form of the tea whisk, the endof which does not splay out, appears close to that used today in
Shimane Prefecture in the making of botebote-cha, a coarse tea.
The tea whisk that appears in the Fukutomi sōshi is similar in form
to that which became common after the completion of the Taiheiki(Chronicle of the Great Peace) around the late fourteenth century.
Kamakura-period tea whisks probably looked something similar,
but there is no visual evidence extant. The Teikin ōrai (Correspondence on Home Education), an elementary textbook written
in the fourteenth century around the same time as the Fukutomi
sōshi, lists the following tea utensils: tea scoop (chashaku), tea
cloth (chakin), tea whisk (chasen), and tea-whisk rest (tosoku).
The character used here for the sen of chasen is different
again from the two I referred to above. It means a bamboo strip.
There is, then, visual and textual evidence to confirm that, fromaround the fourteenth century, the form of the tea whisk gradually became clear.

Ōbuku chasen yuraiki (Account of the Origin of Ōbuku Tea Whisks)
It was not until the Northern and Southern Courts period (1337–1392) in the fourteenth century that a legend arose about the as
yet unclear origins of the tea whisk. This is the legend in the164

Chapter 5Ōbuku chasen yuraiki (Account of the Origin of Ōbuku Tea Whisks).
Reproduced by permission from page 163 of the original Japanese edition.

Edo-period Ōbuku chasen yuraiki, which tells that the Heianperiod itinerant monk Kūya (903–972) was the creator of theJapanese tea whisk. This document was likely printed as a handbill distributed by tea-whisk sellers to prospective customers. The
text is as follows:
Origins of Our Temple’s Traditional Ōbuku Tea Whisks
Our founder, who was known as Kūya Shōnin, was the second
son of the sixtieth-generation emperor Daigo. He resolved toseek merit by practicing the Ten Virtues, and became a monkfor the sake of suffering beings in the Nine Spheres. He was an
early proponent of the nenbutsu invocation in Japan. In an firstyear of the Tengyō era [938], during the reign of the sixtyfirst-generation emperor Suzaku, he built a structure which hecalled Shiunzan Kōshōji Gokurakuin, which was none other thanWabi-cha Environs

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Kūyadō Temple. In the summer of the fifth year of the Tenryaku
era [951], during the reign of the sixty-second-generation emperor Murakami, a plague entered the palace in [the capital of]
Heian and spread throughout the land, and countless people
died. [Kūya] Shōnin pitied the people, and prayed to the deity
Gozu Tennō of Gion [Yasaka Shrine]. In the night, he saw a vision of Kannon of Eleven Faces, and upon praying, he received
instruction to offer tea to Kannon and then give it to the plaguestricken people. The healing powers of tea had long been recognized. [Kūya] Shōnin, expressing his thanks, climbed the hill to
Kiyomizu Temple, where he carved a statue of Kannon. He
mounted it on a cart and pulled it around the city, exhorting thepeople to recite the nenbutsu and to have faith. He then set up a
kettle in a grove south of Gion, crafted a chasen, and made tea.
After offering tea to Kannon, he gave it to the sick, and they
were immediately cured. The townspeople were overjoyed.*This paragraph first relates the connection between Kūya andtea whisks. There is no need for me to elaborate at length on
Kūya, but he was a mid-tenth-century Buddhist saint and early
nenbutsu practitioner whose asceticism attracted so many worshippers that he came to be considered an incarnation of thebodhisattva Mañjuśrī. An earlier work written in 972, the Kūyarui (Eulogy for Kūya), had already recounted how in 951 Kūya
had built a statue of Kannon (the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara) in
his effort to stop the spread of an epidemic. The legend is built on
the overlapping of the townspeople’s supplications to Kūya, the* Kumakura, “Chasen: The Tea Whisk,” trans. Rebecca Otowa, 44. All
subsequent quotations in the section “The History of the Tea Whisk(Chasen)” of this book are adapted from Rebecca Otowa’s translationsin this article.

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Chapter 5“saint of the marketplace,” the people’s faith in Kannon, and thecreation of the tea whisk.
The core of the Kūya legend, however, is the tea offering.
If at that time Kūya had had no special powers, he could nothave saved the people from the plague. Following his good example, it became the practice to offer tea on the third day of the
New Year; this practice was respectfully known as ōbuku (“serving the sovereign”). Even in these days, many people go to worship at Gion at the hour of the tiger, around four in the morning
on New Year’s Day, and carry home a spark from the fire whichburns before the deity, using it to [heat water to] make tea which
they whip with a Kūyadō tea whisk in observance of the customof ōbuku. The purpose of this is to guard against plague during
the coming year.

Ōbuku-cha is a religious offering of tea. Tea is offered to the
Buddha and distributed to the people as a beneficence. Drinking
this tea was originally a way to ward off poverty, but later it became an annual ritual to ward off evil influences. The selling pointfor Kūyadō Temple in Kyoto was that a Kūyadō tea whisk wassomething to be thankful for, in that it brought good fortune. But
given the origin of the legend, this gets things the wrong way
around. It is highly improbable that tea was commonly consumed
in Kūya’s time. That being the case, it is likely that, far later, those
who were associated with the temple and sold Kūyadō tea whiskssought to increase sales by fabricating the story that Kūya was theoriginator of the whisks they sold, and connecting the story to
the ideas of faith in Kannon and warding off evil (yakubarai).
According to the Ōbuku chasen yuraiki, not only did Kūyadō
Temple present tea whisks to the imperial court in the twelfthWabi-cha Environs

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month of every year, but they sold tea whisks to everyone, fromnobility to townspeople. Also, the document claims that if you
use the whisk to shake water onto the affected place or person,that water can dislodge bones stuck in the throat, and enhance theefficacy of any medicines that you drink.
An image of a tea-whisk seller is printed on the end of thishandbill. He shares a likeness with the mendicant monks or hachitataki—literally “gourd-beaters” or “bowl-tappers”—that appear in
the play Hachitataki (The Gourd Beaters), a piece in the repertoireof the comic kyōgen theater. It contains the following description:
Because his head is not shaved, he is not a monk; in that he wears
a monk’s robe, he is not of the ordinary world. Selling tea whisks,
he wanders through the world. With a gourd hanging from his
hand, he chants verses about the evanescence of things. . . .

Thus the Kūyadō tea-whisk seller was also a half-monk, halflayman gourd-beater.
It was not only Kūyadō Temple that sold tea whisks throughthe medium of faith, particularly faith in Kannon. Tradition has itthat stalls selling tea whisks appeared before the gates of Sensōji
Temple in Edo every New Year; and in Nara, tea whisks werealso sold at Nigatsudō Hall, a Kannon temple located within the
Tōdaiji Temple compound. This we know from the Unpyō zasshi(Clouds of Floating Grasses), also discussed in chapter 4:
In the old days, rough tea whisks made from green bamboo weresold at Nigatsudō in Nara. It was a custom of the Southern Capital[Nara] for men and women, young and old, to purchase theseand take them home as a souvenir of their visit to the temple,
and to use them in their homes when making tea for guests.

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While it is not clear if the Nigatsudō tea whisks were sold ata particular season of the year, the mendicant tea-whisk sellers
are said to have walked around selling their wares as preparation
for welcoming in the New Year. They were made of green bamboo
precisely because of its ability to ward off evil, and they were used as
whisks for the special first tea of the New Year, the “great fortune”
tea (ōbuku-cha), by way of celebrating the year that lay ahead.

The Folk Nature of Tea Whisks
In his research, Uchiyama found that the oldest burial mound for
tea whisks (chasen-zuka) is located at Gesshōji Temple in Matsue,
Shimane Prefecture, and it dates to around the 1870s. The nextoldest tea-whisk burial mound is at Tokyo’s Mukōjima-Hyakkaen
Gardens. Interestingly, the inscription on the Hyakkaen stone thatmarks the tea-whisk burial mound is by the Meiji-era (1868–1912)
scholar Ōtsuki Joden (1845–1931). It was erected in 1892. At thepresent time, there are no known tea-whisk burial mounds datingback to the Edo period.
Of all the many utensils used in tea, why is it only tea whisksthat merit burial mounds and commemoration? That is precisely
because they were only to be used once, and then discarded.
Even though tea scoops (chashaku) are also made of bamboo, they
are carefully preserved and reused. The idea of making burial
mounds for the exquisitely made tea whisks fated to be discarded(like calligraphy brushes and needles, for which there also exist
burial mounds) is probably a modern phenomenon. So the practical question arises as to why tea whisks were used and discarded.
There is also the question of why, in extreme cases, they wereused only once. As I mentioned earlier, this is because of the teawhisk seller’s sales pitch about their magical power to ward off
evil and invite good fortune. The tea whisk itself has a purifying

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A kezurikake. Reproduced by permission from page 169 of the original Japanese edition. Courtesy of
the Urasenke Konnichian Library.

function, and removes the evil. In removing the evil, though, thewhisk is polluted, which is why it must be discarded and neverused again.
The aforementioned Chasen no ikken manuscript bears nocolophon and is a pamphlet of thirteen pages, but it is an extremely important historical document. Judging from the writing
style and the paper quality, it is a late Edo-period transcription.
Of particular value is the section on the shape of the tea whisk.
That section notes a kezurikake—an implement made of a whittled chopstick—as the source of the tea-whisk shape:
As to the wood, a white [willow wood] chopstick should be shaved
to a thickness a little greater than is usual. While cedar may also

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be used, its pith is rather rough; therefore, white chopsticks aremost suitable. The chopstick depicted on the right is the kindwhich was used before true tea whisks were made. It was used
for offering tea to the Buddha or gods.

This text is accompanied by a picture of a white-wood chopstick with its top part whittled into slivers. The caption says, “Asin the drawing, the upper part of the chopstick . . . is to be whittled into curls similar to those formed when shaving dried bonito.”
The size should be “roughly 2 sun (6.06 centimeters) in width”
and “about 9 sun (27.27 centimeters) in total height. The exact
size of the whittled chopstick may be adjusted according to use.”
Thus, although we do not know the source from which thewriter of Chasen no ikken draws his information, he says that thetea whisk was born from the kezurikake, and that the kezurikake
was indeed most suitable for the sacred preparing of a tea offering to the Buddha or Shinto deities. Further, white-wood chopsticks are the best material. Here, white wood means willow. Thisreadily brings to mind the yearly New Year’s Eve okera pilgrimages to Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, during which the pilgrims lighttwisted ropes of bamboo at the shrine, bringing the fire home andusing it to prepare “good fortune tea” and the traditional New
Year’s meal in the hope of good health in the year to come. The
kezurikake is an integral element of the shrine procedures for this.
Further, the Ōbuku chasen yuraiki mentions that on New Year’sDay, at the hour of the tiger—around four in the morning—one
obtains a spark from the fire that burns in front of the gods enshrined at Gion. This is a reference to the okera pilgrimage.
A splendid circularity emerges from a single idea: tea-whisk
creator → Kūya → Gion → okera pilgrimage → whittled chopstick →tea-whisk creator. The theory that the tea whisk derives from theWabi-cha Environs

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whittled chopstick was first suggested by Tada Yūji (1915–2013),
and then introduced by Hayashiya Tatsusaburō as a “fascinating
concept” in his coauthored volume Zuroku chadōshi (Illustrated
History of the Way of Tea; 1962). The theory finds confirmationin the Chasen no ikken.
However, it is still not clear how the whittled chopstick developed into the tea whisk. Even if it was used for tea offerings to the
Buddha and Shintō deities, I cannot imagine that the shaved section was dipped into the tea. Whittled items long ago developedout of a folk practice related to shide, those white strips of paper
used in shrine rituals. “Flowers created from shaved wood (kezuribana) attached to sericea [Lespedeza cuneata]” appears alongside
an explication of the “three trees and three birds” as related in thepractice known as kokin denju, the secret transmission from master to disciple of interpretations of the Kokin wakashū anthology
of waka poems. Perhaps those flower shapes whittled from wood
resembled whittled chopsticks. The flowers in question were hanging decorations, and we might, if pushed, make a connection withthe “tea-whisk display” (chasen-kazari) style of tea-making procedure (temae) which exists today, wherein the tea whisk is the
special attraction. In any event, it seems that the tea whisk was
inspired by the kezurikake shape.
The question, then, is when chanoyu became aware of theunique aspects of the tea whisk. To the best of my knowledge, therule that a new tea whisk must be used each time first appears in
the early tea text Yamanoue Sōji ki and also in the Rikyū hyakushu (Rikyū’s Hundred Verses), a collection of approximately one
hundred waka verses on chanoyu practices. Even in Rikyū’s time,
tea whisks numbered among the items which had to be new for eachtea gathering. Even so, this alone is not sufficient for us to maintain that there has been any special recognition of the sacred nature

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Chapter 5of whisks in tea history. How far can we trace back the first appearance of the Kūya legend’s tea whisk seller? The kyōgen play
Hachitataki was not about Kūyadō Temple, but it was clearly about
the sale of tea whisks. It is hard to determine the date of kyōgenplays, but I assume it dates to sometime early in the premodern
era. Other textual sources include the Kefukigusa (Grass like
Blowing Hair), a 1638 manual on haikai compiled by the early Edoperiod haiku poet Matsue Shigeyori (1602–1680), which states,
The whisks of the Yamashiro area in Kyoto are poorly made; amendicant (hachitataki) makes them at Kūyadō.

And in the geographical record Yōshū fushi (Topography of Yōshū)of 1684, published by Edo-period historian Kurokawa Dōyū (1623–1691), there is this:
In Gokurakuji Temple in the Shijō area, a disciple of Kūya Shōnin
concentrates on making tea whisks.

Whisks thus definitely appear in the early seventeenth century. However, the historical texts are usually cited in connection
with tea whisks made at Yamato Takayama in Nara Prefecture.
The Takayama tea whisks were of high quality, and were used as
tea utensils, as is evident from the Yōshū fushi comment that
“this type was favored by Rikyū.” By contrast, the Kūyadō whisks
were shoddy, and one imagines that they were sold not so muchfor their use in tea as for their religious significance.
The following is complete conjecture, but is it not perhaps
the case that Rikyū and other creators of wabi-cha tried to strip
away the talismanic folk quality that tea whisks were originallycredited with? The rough brush-like whisk gradually evolved intoWabi-cha Environs

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the intricate, many-tined style of whisk. Was it perhaps in thatevolutionary process that tea whisks began to lose their “shavedflower” aspect, and strengthened their tea-utensil nature? From
Rikyū onward, tea sources frequently discuss how to handle the tea
whisk, but not a single fragment suggests the sacred nature of atea whisk. This is because, from an early stage, the sacred natureof a whisk was erased from the world of tea. The tea world banished sacred whisks of the Kūyado tradition as “shoddy items”(sosōmono). However, they continued to live on in annual folk
rituals, and even the tea world could not completely eliminate their
special powers. Tea whisks are discarded after a single use; burial
mounds for tea whisks have been erected; and acts of commemoration are still performed. All of which goes to show that the powerof the tea whisk flows deep through the world of tea to this day.

The History of the Tea Shop (Chaya)
Purveyors of Herbal Extracts (Senjimono-uri)
I have been able to clarify here, albeit only partially, how the distinctive, highly refined performing art of chanoyu is actually deeply
rooted in the folk customs of the Japanese people, and has beenstrongly influenced by contemporary performing arts and rituals.
Returning to the questions I raised at the beginning of this volume,
chanoyu is absolutely not solitary. Indeed, tea embedded itself indaily life to the extent that the word “tea” appears in the colloquial
Japanese expression for “everyday occurrence.” This is precisely
why, in some regards, tea reached perfection as a performing art.

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However, the perfection of chanoyu was achieved by a continuous
denial of the everyday, even as it engaged with the everyday. To put
it another way, chanoyu greedily incorporated the most commonplace things, and having incorporated them, it strove to remove
from them all traces of mundanity. We can see that tension between incorporation and exclusion in the history of tea sellers.
In medieval times, Japanese people could freely enjoy tea asa luxury item. This was before the formulation of wabi-cha. The
term cha-uri, literally “seller of tea” or “tea purveyor,” appeared in
1400. In 1403, the Tōji monjo (Documents of Tōji Temple) mentioned the presence of tea purveyors called ippuku issen, literally“one cup one coin,” in front of the gates of Kyoto’s Tōji Temple:
Written Oath (ukebumi) for One-Cup-One-Coin Tea Purveyors
at the Great South Gate
We, the tea purveyors at the Great South Gate, humbly accept thefollowing rules:• As in earlier times, we shall live on the southern edge of thetemple moat, and not move to the foot of the stone steps
leading up to the gate, even for a short time;• We shall not leave tea utensils in the room of lower-ranking

shrine priests for the Chinju-Hachimangū house in Tōji, evenfor a short time;• Likewise, we shall not take fire from the fires used for lighting

incense at the various halls;• We shall not draw water from the offering well at the Kanjōin(Abhiseka Hall).
Any of our number found in violation of even one of the above
rules will be immediately expelled from the vicinity of the temple, as stated in this written oath, which we faithfully accept.

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Fourth Month of Ōei 10 [May 1403][Dōkaku?] (seal)
Hachirō Jirō (seal)[Dōkagoke?] (seal)

The “tea purveyors at the Great South Gate” phrase clearly
indicates that the one-cup-one-coin tea purveyors sold tea to people passing along the street in front of Tōji Temple’s main gate,
but it is hard to imagine that they normally set up stalls there.
This document implies that tea purveyors would occasionallytake up a position at the bottom of the stone steps leading up to
the gate, and leave their tea utensils in a room in the Hachimangūhouse inside the temple precinct, and light their fire from embersin the temple. Thus, they were merchants who had portable tea
utensils—not shops—and would sell tea on the street. One suchtea purveyor is featured in the early sixteenth-century picture
scroll Shichijūichi-ban shokunin uta awase (Poetry Competition
between Artisans in Seventy-One Pairs); he sits on a low platform
placed on the ground, with brazier and water bucket in front ofhim, as he sells tea. The equipment used for carrying the articles
is not visible. In addition to the one-cup-one-coin tea purveyor,
there is in the same picture a purveyor of herbal extracts, also
known as a senjimono-uri, literally a “seller of brewed or infusedthings.” This figure, who would have sold steeped herbal or medicinal drinks, carries his equipment suspended from either endof a pole. It appears that, initially, tea purveyors did not set out all
their tea utensils as in a stall; rather, they carried their equipment
to a specific place where they sat down to sell tea. Before long, tea
purveyors would arrange their tea utensils in cases, like those of
the herb-extract purveyors, so they could transport them in simple fashion. Later, it seems that they made chest-like containers

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to carry their braziers and utensils around with them. Later still,there was a more developed form of portable tea stall which canbe seen in Rakuchū rakugai zu (Scenes in and around the Capital)
paintings, and in the sixteenth-century six-panel screen Takao
kanpūzu (Maple Viewing at Takao).
These simple portable tea stalls soon evolved into tea shops(chaya), small structures that remained open at all hours. Eight
years after the publication of the historical materials cited above
about Tōji Temple, there was a prohibition on tea purveyors operating in front of the gate, “gathering prostitutes for the benefit ofvisitors.” Prostitutes were clearly now involved with tea shops. In
the Edo period, chaya or tea shops were always regarded as being
associated with the pleasure quarters. Tea shops did not simply
serve tea; they were connected through tea to pleasure-seeking.
But let us omit here the process by which tea shops developed into
purveyors of tea specifically for pilgrims and pleasure-seekers, andturn our focus back to the issue of the portable tea stall.
Another prompt for us to imagine today the reality of portable tea stalls is to be found in kyōgen performances. The play
Senjimono (Herb Extract), found in the 1792 collection of playscripts Ōkura Torahiro-bon, is one such example. The eponymous
herb-extract purveyor, having heard there is to be a music rehearsal
in preparation for the Gion Festival, arrives in the hope of selling
his herbal brews. He has a special festival license known as achaya no za needed to set up a tea stall, and appears searching fora good spot, carrying a portable tea stall “in boxes on a shoulder
pole.” Here is the exact kind of portable tea stall later used by
Edo-period street peddlers, who would carry their wares suspended
from either end of a pole carried across their shoulders.
It is not clear whether this purveyor of herbal extracts is true
to the Muromachi period, or whether he has been subject toWabi-cha Environs

177

Herb-extract seller and one-cup-one-coin tea seller—detail from the Shichijūichiban shokunin uta awase (Poetry Competition between Artisans in Seventy-One
Pairs). Courtesy of the Maeda Ikutokukai Foundation.

Edo-period revisionism. I think during the Muromachi period thepurveyor of herbal extracts did not in fact sell tea; rather, he sold
drinks infused with citrus peel and herbs. There remains, however, the question of when the term senjimono, literally “brewed
or infused things,” came to mean nothing but tea. If we understandthe term to mean tea, then anyway it was not powdered green tea,
but rather steeped tea. The spread of steeped-tea drinking is fully
documented for the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568–1600), but
in the absence of research it is hard to be sure about earlier periods. Some research shows it had begun to spread from quite an
early period. The aforementioned Shichijūichi-ban shokunin uta
awase makes it clear that in the medieval period the herb-extract
purveyors were itinerant, walking and carrying portable equipment; the one-cup-one-coin tea purveyor reacted against this practice by setting up a stall on a specific spot.
However, the seller in the Senjimono comic play referred toabove was clearly selling tea, and he wielded a tea whisk even

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Chapter 5though the tea was steeped rather than powdered. This tells us twothings: firstly, that there were people called senjimono-uri who soldtea on the road from portable tea stalls; and secondly, that there wasa form of steeped-tea drink that was prepared with a tea whisk.
It was thought that the tea served by both itinerant purveyors
and by those who ran the portable tea shops seen in the Rakuchū
rakugai zu was of the powdered variety; in fact, though, most of
it was steeped-tea, which, it seems, was drunk after being whipped
to a froth.
Whipped steeped tea might seem strange to many people, but
consider botebote-cha, which is still consumed today in Izumo
Province. It is a snack-like drink of low-grade green tea (bancha)
with cooked rice and other things added in, whipped up with awhisk. It was precisely because there were itinerant purveyors of
the handy steeped tea in the Azuchi-Momoyama period that tea
came to be more closely linked to the lives of ordinary people. Of
course, not all purveyors were itinerant; some set up more permanent structures.

The Higaki Tea Shop
There is one precious building which conveys to us today the appearance and format of the portable tea stall popular among themasses from the medieval period through the Azuchi-Momoyama
period and on to the Edo period. That is the Higaki Tea Shop(higaki no chaya; literally the “cypress-fenced tea shop”) in Kyoto.
The Higaki Tea Shop, with the arrival of summer, would traditionally open its doors and serve not only tea but also small
dishes of food in the Tadasu-no-mori forest of Shimogamo Shrine
in Kyoto. But by the beginning of the Shōwa era, around the late
1920s, this custom had already died out.
From its former location in Kyoto’s Tadekura-chō, the tea

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179

shop moved to the side of the road that cuts across the Shimogamo Shrine precincts and leads to Mikagebashi Bridge. There,
the tea-shop owner would set up small platforms along the stream
where customers would drink tea and enjoy snacks. This practice,
too, came to an end in the mid-1960s.
However, even though the shop itself has disappeared without a trace, there is a record of its history. When we look for theproper origin of one-cup-one-coin tea sellers, this extant recordof the Higaki Tea Shop is about the only resource available to us
today, making it very valuable.
Unexpectedly, the Higaki Tea Shop appears in Kiichi Hōgensanryaku no maki (Kiichi Hōgen’s Book of Strategy), attributed
to the playwrights Hasegawa Senshi (1689–1733) and Bunkōdō.
A play set to a chanted narrative accompanied by a shamisen(jōruri), it is known for its fourth act, entitled Ichijō Ōkura monogatari (The Tale of Lord Ichijō Ōkura). The Higaki Tea Shop is
the setting for this act.
Sung:

Is this the Higaki Tea Shop I have heard about? Excuse
me, please allow me to sit.

Spoken: Yes, this is the Higaki Tea Shop. And as is widely
known, my [tea shop] is actually also named Yoichi’s
Tea Shop. The shop is not permanently open, but I oblige
if there are noh performances. Because I draw waterfrom the Shirakawa River, where I live, and carry it over,the imperial name Higaki was given to my shop. Here issome freshly made venerable tea; please first let me servea cup to you.

As is indicated by this passage, the Higaki Tea Shop was essentially a special tea shop that provided service when events were180

Chapter 5held in the imperial palace. The Higaki-ki, a history in scroll format handed down through the generations at the tea shop, claims
that the Higaki name derives from an ancient document styled“Higaki of Shirakawa [White River].” In this document, an elderly
woman, who is in fact the renowned poet and courtesan Lady
Higaki, is composing a poem when Fujiwara no Okinori, a seniorranking official from Dazaifu (in present-day Kyushu), passes by
her hut and requests some water. The poem is as follows:
My jet-black hairHas turned as white
As the waters of the White River;I at last realize
How old I’ve become.*

And yet it seems there are various theories regarding theplace-name Shirakawa. Some say that it is the Shirakawa in Mutsu
Province in northeast Japan. Others claim it derives from a female
entertainer who built a cypress-fenced (higaki) home in Dazaifu,
and later moved to a hut in Shirakawa in Japan’s northeast, where,
as in the previous account, Fujiwara Okinori stopped by to ask forwater. Still others insist that it is the Shirakawa in Higo Province,
present-day Kumamoto Prefecture, where there is a temple called
Rendaiji. This theory draws on the fact that when the nobleman
Kiyohara no Motosuke (908–990) became lord of Chikuzen Province, he took with him a woman named Inari and another named
Higaki, and they lived in a place there called Shirakawa. Even though
we cannot determine exactly which Shirakawa is referred to in the
Higaki-ki, there is clearly some connection with the Shirakawa* Tahara, “Yamato Monogatari,” 13.

Wabi-cha Environs

181

stream that runs through the Higashiyama district of Kyoto.
I lived in Shirakawa in Jōshū (present-day southern Kyoto Prefecture), and whenever an emperor was enthroned or there wasan annual ceremony or religious rite, I would always present myself, setting up shop within a simple enclosure woven out of thin
strips of Japanese cypress. Everyone, from members of the nobility there on official business to lower-ranking officials in service
to court society, would stop by my cypress enclosure and ask fortea. I can say that I was truly blessed to be permitted to ascend
to the Shishinden Hall [Imperial Palace].

At some stage, the Higaki Tea Shop earned the privilege ofsetting up shop at the imperial palace. We do not know when thatprivilege began or ended. However, the aforementioned Higaki-ki
states that it began in the time of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu(1358–1408). What was the Higaki Tea Shop like at this early stage?
The service rendered to the imperial palace is described in the
Higaki-ki as follows:
Anyway, when there was some important ceremony, such as anenthronement, I would always set up in the gardens of the imperial palace. . . . I would offer tea to princes and to members of thefive great courtier families, calling at their respective gates, andto senior courtiers and the emperor’s consorts. And every year on
the second day of the new year and the first day of the eighth
month, I presented tea to the court to mark those auspicious
days, and in return I was honored with gifts. . . .

Of course, he did not only serve the great court families; he also
purveyed tea to low-ranking courtiers.

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Chapter 5

The almost complete dearth of extant historical documents
means that the history of the Higaki Tea Shop remains unclear.
One reason for that dearth is the fire that swept through Kyoto in
1708, destroying the tea shop. Fire broke out in April of that year
around the Aburanokōji District, and most of central Kyoto wasburned to the ground. The fire claimed all the utensils and recordsof the Higaki Tea Shop. The Higaki-ki was compiled as a recordof the lost Higaki Tea Shop.
Of course, during the current fire, I attended to the nobles andsenior court officials—those allowed to enter the imperial presence—as well as lower-ranking officials in service to the nobility.
I set up shop and served tea by way of contribution to the court
in its plight. The documents and books of the Higaki Tea Shop
were lost in this fire, but after things had calmed down, I asked
for information here and there, and I am writing all these recollections down now to the best of my ability. But there are sure to
be many things I have missed.

The Higaki-ki was compiled in the year after the fire, 1709,
by Nobutaru, a holder of Junior Second Court Rank and a priestof Shimogamo Shrine. The new tea shop moved to Shimogamo
Shrine after the fire, which explains Nobutaru’s involvement.
One summer day, I set out in search of the portable tea stallthat was formerly located at the Higaki Tea Shop. This set of
equipment constitutes the actual physical form of the higaki noninaijaya (portable tea stall of higaki). It is a superb piece of artisanship. This portable tea stall is at least one hundred years old,
possibly even dating back to the Meiji era (1868–1912). It is still
sturdy in spite of its unfortunate fate in the intervening years.
For the stall once bore a chrysanthemum crest, described in theWabi-cha Environs

183

Portable tea equipment from the Higaki Tea Shop.
Reproduced by permission from Hayashiya
Tatsusaburō and Murai Yashiko, Zuroku chadōshi(Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1962).

Higaki-ki as having been there “from time immemorial.” But the
crest was deliberately damaged during World War II, seemingly
on the grounds that it was a vulgar use of the imperial symbol.
Today the openwork petals are almost completely missing, cruelly
broken off in several places by the work of some heartless person
who was perhaps unaware that the use of the symbol had in fact
been authorized.

Rikyū’s Departed Soul
If the age of the portable tea stalls had indeed ended with theworld of tea as enjoyed by common people, then there would be
no need to mention them in the present research on wabi-cha.
And yet the portable tea stall crosses paths with chanoyu in several
settings. The historian Kuwata Tadachika (1902–1987) publisheda chronology of tea history (Chadōshi nenpyō) in 1973, and the

184

Chapter 5following appears in his entry for the seventh day of the seventhmonth of Tenshō 5 (August 1, 1577):
Sen no Sōeki [Rikyū] was instrumental in opening a tea room inside Azuchi Castle. This tea room copied the style of a roadsidetea shop, and is revealing of Rikyū’s wabi intentions.

The entry thus makes particular note of how Rikyū brought
the lowly “roadside tea shop” into tea. Of course, the portabletea stall was among the kinds of roadside tea shops referred to.
This is undoubtedly one of the intersections between portable tea
stalls and chanoyu. I would really like more detail on the subject.
Much remains unclear to me, and I am unfamiliar with the majority of related historical documents. But surely one source forthis chronology is an entry for the seventh day of the intercalaryseventh month of the same year (August 30, 1577) in the Tennōjiya
kaiki (Records of Tennōjiya), mentioned earlier in chapters 3 and4. (Kuwata seems to have mistaken the intercalary seventh monthfor the seventh month.) This is what it says:
Sen no Sōeki, Ryūsen, and Dōshitsu opened a tea room (chashitsu). A large suspended kettle, tripod, and a water container
were placed within a yoshidana [large folding screen made ofreeds, supporting a shelf of cedar wood].

The “large suspended kettle” can be taken to mean that the
kettle hung from a pole-and-hook device above a sunken hearth(irori), evoking a certain ambiance. The sense is that this was
no ordinary tea gathering. There are many examples of Rikyūadroitly introducing elements of the common people’s tea culture
into chanoyu, and it would not have been beyond him to take a

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185

commoner’s tea room as the stylistic theme for a tea gathering.
Hechikan’s use of a red-lacquered umbrella to create a tea
room at the Great Kitano Tea Gathering slightly reflected the airof a commoners’ tea room. However, the first clear use of a portable tea stall at a tea event occurred after Rikyū’s death; and, indeed, at a gathering held by people to mourn Rikyū’s death. The
Oribe-den, one of four biographies making up the Chadō shiso
densho (Transmissions Pertaining to the Four Pioneers of the Wayof Tea), compiled by the tea master Matsuya Hisashige, records acherry-blossom viewing at Yoshino on April 1, 1599.
It describes how the party—comprising Furuta Oribe, Kanamori Yoshishige (1558–1615), Kobori Enshū (Sakusuke), Ishikawa
Sadamichi, and others—set out to view cherry blossoms in
Yoshino. There were about thirty in all, including Tennōjiya Sōbon,the Kyoto cohort, and the Sakai cohort. The Nara cohort, meanwhile, stopped by at Jōshū’in Temple as directed by Lord Inoue
Gengo, where from morning to evening there was one feast after
another of delicacies from the mountains and sea. “It goes without saying that everything was served on the special trays used toserve the nobility.” Various dances were also performed. At Hase,they were entertained by Lord Ozaki Kisuke, and Lord Kobori
Sakusuke danced while Lord Oribe beat the drum.
The entry concludes: “We were invited to the garden of
Chikurinbō Temple in Yoshino, where there was a portable tea
stall on which hung a sign that read “Rikyū’s Departed Soul,”
and there we had tea.”
Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in 1598. He had repeatedly asked
those who survived him to care for his young son Hideyori, and soensure order in the realm endured, but the year after his tumultuous
life ended Japan had once more descended into chaos. This anxiety and people’s love and/or hate for the man erupted in that

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Chapter 5

raucous tea gathering at the height of the cherry-blossom season.
After the banquet of delicacies from the mountains and sea, thepeople danced as the cherry-blossom petals fell. Of particular noteis the last part of the quote. It states that a portable tea stall appeared in the garden approach (roji) in place of a regular tea room.
Moreover, a plaque with the words “Rikyū’s Departed Soul” wasattached to it. The entanglement of two deaths—that of Rikyū,
who was forced to commit ritual suicide, and that of Hideyoshi,
who ordered Rikyū’s death—gave rise to Rikyū’s soul appearing
beneath those cherry blossoms. The portable tea stall was a temporary stage for this posthumous gathering.
Since then, tea devotees have on several occasions turned toportable tea stalls to generate the spirit of wabi. The Nara tea
master Kubo Toshiyo (Chōandō), who encountered Rikyū in his
youth, gave his chanoyu over to the portable tea stall in his later
years.
Now that I have accumulated seventy springs and autumns, I
have placed myself outside the floating world. I have built athatched hut attached to a seven-shaku hall, which I have named
Noda no Sansō, and I have set up a portable tea stall. Alongside,
I have arranged a small folding screen.

So the old wabi tea devotee lived out his days quietly, onetime taking his portable tea stall along through the mountains
and over the bridge at Mizuya to Mount Wakakusa. The portabletea stall was not for selling tea; it was an expression of the spiritof wabi.
The portable tea stall was then revived in the modern era.
Chanoyu has become ever more refined since Rikyū, and all
the more distant from the world of everyday things. However, itWabi-cha Environs

187

Misonodana portable tea table unit. Reproduced by permission from Sadōgu hyakka 3: Temae dōgu (jō) (Kyoto: Tankōsha,2007).

is also a fact that it has been animated by the regular incorporation of vitality from everyday life. It was the contribution of the
fourteenth-generation head of Urasenke, the late Tantansai (SenSōshitsu XIV; 1893–1964), to revive the completely forgotten
chanoyu of the portable tea stall. Anyone who has practiced theUrasenke style of chanoyu is familiar with the misonodana, aspecial tea table used for the table-and-chair style of tea, whichtakes after the shape of a portable tea stall. Tantansai is said tohave designed it drawing on the ingenuity of entertainer and tea
enthusiast Tanaka Takeko (1878–1947). Harada Tomohiko’s Kindaisukisha taiheiki (Modern Tea Enthusiasts: A Chronicle of theGreat Peace; 1971) provides a detailed description of this female
tea master under her tea name Tanaka Chikkō. She was a womanof Gion, Kyoto, who appeared at the 1936 Shōwa Great Kitano
Tea Gathering. According to Harada’s book, she spent one thousand yen for that one-day event, a huge sum at the time. On thatoccasion, Tanaka used a white-wood table-type tea stand, andthat became the prototype for the misonodana. I myself heard directly from Tantansai’s younger brother, tea master Iguchi Kaisen

188

Chapter 5(1900–1982), that Tantansai praised the idea, and that he thus redesigned it to create the misonodana. The portable tea stall has
been ingeniously reborn as the misonodana portable tea-table
unit. Misono means “imperial garden,” and one wonders whether
it was perhaps inspired by the higaki no chaya set up in the imperial palace gardens in an earlier age. In any event, the portable tea
stall tradition has crossed paths several times with chanoyu, andthe connection endures to the present day.

189

Conclusion

I set out to make this book a somewhat different history of theJapanese way of tea. For this reason, I started with the questionof why the style of tea known as chanoyu arose.
For example, why is the entrance to a tea room, known as thenijiriguchi or “crawl-through entrance,” so small? Why do wepass the tea bowl when drinking thick tea (koicha)? Why do we sit
in seiza—that is, on our knees with our legs tucked under us—in
the tea room? When did this practice begin?
To answer these questions, I decided to use methods applied
to the study of the history of performing arts. The idea behind
this was to consider what might be revealed—and what might remain obscure—by analyzing the history of the way of tea as a
type of performing-art history.
There are two methods used in formulating the history of theperforming arts. One is the “bearer method” or the “contextual
method.” The other is the “performance method.” The former
has been used in many previous histories of the way of tea; it involves reflecting on the kind of people who were responsible fordeveloping and sustaining the way of tea through different eras.
Who were these people, the “bearers” of the way of tea?
Let us consider Jukō (1422–1502), regarded as the patriarchof wabi-cha. Jukō was a monk at Shōmyōji, a Buddhist temple inNara, and reached psychological maturity within the appropriate
cultural traditions of Nara. In addition to his Buddhist training,
Jukō also interacted with Furuichi Chōin (also known as Furuichi
Harima; 1452–1508) and other powerful small landholders in190Conclusion

Yamato Province. This suggests that he knew about tea drinking
as a popular pastime, since it was precisely such newly enriched
members of society who were responsible for invigorating thepractice of tea as a popular pastime. Furthermore, Jukō traveled
to Kyoto, where he encountered the Higashiyama culture of theruling military aristocracy of the day. We know that he was fully
conversant with the aristocratic world of distinguished Chinese
goods encapsulated in the fifteenth-century Kundaikan sa’u chōki(Records of the Shogunal Throne Room), a single-volume bookwhich describes numerous Chinese objects and tea-ceremony utensils. The work is attributed to the poet and artist Nōami (1397–1471), curatorial advisor to the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–
1490). Through the monk Ikkyū (1394–1481), he also came into
contact with the esoteric doctrines of Zen culture. It has been argued that Jukō’s personal characteristics prescribed the essential
nature of the wabi-cha which he invented. In other words, Jukō’s
historical role as a representative “bearer” during tea’s nascentperiod determined the nature of the way of tea itself; namely, as afusion of the tea practices of the common class with those of thearistocracy. Such, anyway, is what I mean by the “bearer method”
of tea history. It is a way of expounding the character and role ofa performing art through the environment which created it.
Yet the autonomous development of a performing art cannot
be explained solely through this method. Hence the need for thesecond “performance method.” This considers the essence of aperforming art from and through its “forms,” or kata. For example, when we watch a noh performance, an actor will occasionallypound the stage with his foot—this is a type of kata. The same
technique or “form” can be found in both traditional dance (buyō)
and in sacred kagura dance. It is known as henbai, and originatedin the appeasing, or containing of, an evil spirit by stomping on

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191

the ground. In fact, the same technique can be seen in sumo, too.
Wrestlers perform a ritual stomp known as a shiko, a word which
originally meant “evil spirit” or “demon”; the stomp was intended
to trample evil spirits into the ground. In brief, the performance
method considers the essence and evolution of artistic expression
by means of comparisons between different performing arts.
Up until now, there have been no studies of the history of tea
using performance-art theory. Such practices as the ritual purification of the hands and mouth before entering a tea room, andthe very nature of the crawl-through entrance, lend themselves toa performative perspective. I am fully aware that this method
alone is insufficient. Nonetheless, in this book I have set out toexplain the various forms and conventions of chanoyu from thevantage point of contemporary performing arts, rituals, and folk
customs. My aim has been to write a history of tea that uses boththe “bearer” and “performance” methods to answer the innocent
questions that arise when we look at chanoyu today.

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Appendix 1: Historical Sources

1. Kokoro no fumi: “Letter of the Heart”
A thesis on tea, written as a letter to Furuichi Chōin (also known
as Furuichi Harima) by Jukō, patriarch of wabi-cha.
To the Venerable Monk Furuichi HarimaJukō
In this Way,
chief among evils is the heart’s
overbearance, attachment to self.
Begrudging the masterly andscorning beginners
is thoroughly wrongheaded.
You must approach the masterful,beseech their least word,
and never fail to guide novices.
Critical above all elsein this Way
is the dissolution of theboundary line
between things native and Chinese.
This is vital, truly vital;
attend to it with care.

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Appendix 1: Historical Sources

Further:
These days mere novices
take up pieces of Bizen or Shigaraki,talking of the “chill and withered”;
and they make a show of
being “advanced and deepened”
though ignored by everyone—
the situation defies all utterance.
“Withered”
means owning splendid pieces,knowing their savor fully,
and from the heart’s groundadvancing and deepening
so that all after
becomes chill and lean:
it is thisthat has power to move.
Further:Though it is so,
the person wholly incapablemust not turn contentious
over the tools of the Way.
And however artful one’s manner,a painful self-awarenessis crucial. Overbearance and attachment
simply obstruct.
And yet the Way
lies unattainable
if there’s no self-assertionat all also.

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

195

A dictum of practicestates:“Grow up heart’s master,
not heart mastered”—
words of an ancient.*Jukō (1422–1502) was from Nara. At a young age, he entered thepriesthood at Shōmyōji Temple, and later studied Zen Buddhism
under Ikkyū Sōjun, who certified his attainment of enlightenment.
Jukō received a work of calligraphy by the Chinese Chan (Zen)monk Yuánwù Kèqín (1063–1135) as proof of that attainment.
While he is said to have reached a deep mastery of Zen, all is legend, and the real Jukō is difficult to fathom. Meanwhile, Nara washome to an extremely flourishing cultural circle, focused primarilyon powerful local landholders. As noted in chapter 4, the highly
successful tea banquets hosted by the Furuichi family were partof this cultural scene. Undoubtedly, Jukō was also thoroughly conversant with this realm of tea as entertainment. And yet he wrote
a memorandum known as Kokoro no fumi for Furuichi Chōin(1452–1508), the Furuichi family head, to teach him somethingthat was diametrically opposed to tea as entertainment; namely,
the tea of the heart. Jukō’s wabi-cha may well have been influenced by the Zen philosophy of Ikkyū, but at its core was an aesthetic sensibility derived from the then-popular poetic form of
linked verse (renga), which Jukō took as the basis for his attempt
to find in tea a beauty of insufficiency.
First, in Kokoro no fumi Jukō mentions as obstacles to progress in the way of tea conceit (pride) and attachment to self (egoism), and urges that they be discarded. He proposes that the* Hirota, “Heart’s Mastery,” 10. Translation adapted.

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Appendix 1: Historical Sources

important thing for tea is to dissolve the line between native
Japanese and Chinese elements. The shoin daisu style of tea was
focused uniquely on Chinese art. Conversely, the unrefined tea ofthe commoner uses miscellaneous Japanese implements. Jukō contrasted the perfection and flawlessness of Chinese aesthetics withthe “cold and withered” imperfect beauty symbolized by JapaneseBizen ware and Shigaraki ware ceramics. He sought to dissolve
the line between native Japanese and Chinese elements, the betterto achieve a fusion of Chinese and Japanese beauty. The dissolution also involved combining the utensils employed in the shoin
daisu style of tea with those employed in the popular style of tea
as a common entertainment. It was here in this dissolution thatJukō discovered the way of wabi-cha. Moreover, this new form of
tea took issue with the stance of one’s heart (kokoro). An egoistic
heart had no place in Jukō’s wabi-cha. And yet an egoistic heartremains a heart, without which there is no hope of progress. It isa matter of attaining a state where one’s actions are not dictatedby conceit and attachment to self, but where, rather, one can use
the heart with freedom. At this moment, tea begins to follow thepath towards a method of self-cultivation.

2. Buddhist verse (gatha) by Dairin Sōtō on a portrait of Takeno Jōō
A Buddhist verse, or gatha, appended to a portrait of Takeno Jōō
by Dairin Sotō, successor to Kogaku Sōkō of Daitokuji Temple.
Portrait of Ikkan Jōō, master of Daikokuan. Takeno Shingorō,
Minamoto Nakaki. Native of Sennan.
Formerly, he had bonds with the unhindered cause of enlightenment, Amida’s Vow,
Then changed schools and actively endeavored [in Zen].

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

197

Realizing that the taste of tea and the taste of Zen are the same,
He scoops up all the wind in the pines, his mind undefiled.*

Takeno Jōō (1502–1555) inherited Jukō’s tea style and greatly
influenced Rikyū. Jōō was a townsman of Sakai, modern-day
Osaka Prefecture, whose real name was Takeno Shingorō. As ayoung man Jōō set out to be a master of linked verse (renga). He
was a merchant and, as one of Sakai’s wealthiest citizens, owned
numerous renowned art works and tea utensils.
Jōō first trained in Zen under the monk Kogaku Sōkō (1464–1548) of Daitokuji Temple, and is thought to have received the
Jōō name from him. After Kogaku’s death in 1548, Jōō continued
his Zen practices under Kogaku’s disciple Dairin Sōtō (1480–
1568), who inscribed the above Buddhist verse (gatha) on his portrait. The first line of the verse links Jōō with a vow to Amida(Amitabha), which indicates that Jōō was first a disciple of the
Honganji, a sect dedicated to Amida. He later changed allegiance
to Zen practices, seeking deeper understanding. The verse explains that as a result, he was enlightened to the fact that the tasteof tea and the taste of Zen are the same. It is possible that theexpression chazen ichimi, meaning “tea and Zen are one taste,”originated from these words in Dairin Sōtō’s verse. Of course,
Zen and tea are completely different things, but there is something
very similar in the states to which they both aspire, and there is agreat deal of spiritual overlap between them.

* Hirota, Wind in the Pines, 81. Translation adapted and expanded.

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Appendix 1: Historical Sources

3. Matsuya kaiki: Record of a tea gathering hosted by Sen no Rikyū
A record in the Matsuya kaiki (Matsuya Family Records of Tea
Gatherings) of a tea gathering held by Sen no Rikyū on the morning of January 25, 1568.
Attended a tea gathering held by Sen no Sōeki in Sakai. There
were three guests: Hachiya Jōsa, Yamatoya Shōtsū, and [Matsuya]
Hisamasa.
After the meal, he placed the Tsuru-no-hashi vase in the display
alcove (tokonoma) on a lacquered board, with water in the vasebut no flowers.
[Sketch of Tsuru-no-hashi vase] purplish bronze (shidō), undecorated, approximately one shaku tall, with a ring base.
A narrow chain suspended a flat kettle over the sunken hearth. A
bucket served as the water vessel. A Fujian tenmoku bowl on astand and a yarō [yakurō] tea container. A lid rest in the style ofa kettle tripod (gotoku). The rinse-water receptacle was Bizen
ware and of the bōnosaki type. A Korean-made tea bowl wasused for thin tea.
The food was a dish of a vinegared mixture (namasu) of raw
snapper, sea cucumber, abalone, and burdock. Soup contained
greens. Later, a second soup serving (hikijiru) contained rolled
pieces of snapper. Rice. Pounded burdock root served as anaccompaniment.
The dainties (kashi) were torreya nuts (kaya), persimmons, andoctopus, laid on tree leaves on a tray.

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199

Sen no Rikyū’s childhood name was Yoshirō; he was born the sonof a merchant in Sakai in 1522. It seems he became interested
in tea in his teens, and from the time he took the tea name Sōekiin his youth he began to acquire renown as a figure involved in
chanoyu. This record recounts the details of a tea gathering heldby Rikyū (Sōeki) at the age of forty-six, when his status as a tea
devotee had risen. He served a simple meal of two soups and twoside dishes for the first sitting. For the latter sitting he used his
beloved Tsuru-no-hashi (literally “crane’s bill”) flower vase, madeof a type of bronze. (The vase has also been known as Tsurukubi,
literally “crane neck,” from the resemblance of its long thin neckto that of a crane.) He put water in the vase but did not arrange
any flowers in it, and welcomed his guests back into the room. The
placing of a vase on display without flowers was a Rikyū original.
This was presumably purely because he wanted the guests to admire the vase itself.
He prepared thick tea in a tenmoku bowl from Fujian Province in China, which came with a stand for such bowls. Thin tea
he prepared in a tea bowl produced on the Korean Peninsula.
Given that he used just the one medicine case (yakurō) style tea
container, we can surmise that he used the same powdered tea toprepare both thick and thin tea.

4. Kōshin gegaki: On Rikyū’s design of the Amidadō kettle
An article in the Kōshin gegaki (Kōshin’s Summer Notes), a seventeenth-century tea book of memoranda by the fourth head of the
Omotesenke lineage, Kōshin Sōsa (1613–1672).
The priest of the Amidadō (Amitabha Hall) in Arima wanted
a large kettle. As he was acquainted with the person who then

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served as Rikyū’s amanuensis, he asked that person to have Rikyū
fashion a paper pattern for him, and to have the kettle-smith
Yojirō make the kettle. By and by, the finished kettle was delivered
to Rikyū from Yojirō, and when Rikyū saw that it had turned
out remarkably nicely, he made it a part of his own collection
and used it at a tea gathering. After that, feudal lords requested
permission to make copies of this “Amidadō” kettle, and the kettle
became very popular. Because the kettle was originally requestedby the priest of the Amidadō, it was named “Amidadō.” Whenhe commissioned Yojirō to make the first kettle, Rikyū noted in
his instructions that a rough surface should be used for the overall texture. Sōtan said that he was eleven years old at the time,and he remembered being there when the order was placed.*

So we see that the Amidadō kettle, the most famous of thosefavored by Rikyū, began with a priest at Amidadō in Arima wanting a large kettle. When Rikyū learned of this, he immediately cut
out a paper model of the kettle he had in mind and commissioned
kettle-maker Tsuji Yojirō to get to work. Rikyū was so pleased
with the outcome that he kept it for himself.
In this manner, Rikyū was actively involved in the designingof new tea utensils. Until then, it had basically been a case of
selecting existing utensils for use in tea, but Rikyū went one stepfurther. He challenged himself to create new utensils for chanoyu.
This was how kettles such as the Amidadō kettle came about, andhow the “Raku tea bowls” of the late sixteenth-century potter
Chōjirō (d. 1589) were created. This particular historical document is fascinating because it relates that Rikyū’s grandson Sōtan* Kumakura and Tsutsui, “Anecdotes About Sen Rikyū,” trans. Gretchen
Mittwer, 46–47. Translation adapted and expanded.

Appendix 1: Historical Sources201

was present at the kettle master’s workshop and that he overheard
Rikyū telling the kettle master to score the surface of the kettle to
make it rougher.
Sōtan recalled that this happened when he was eleven years
old. It is a tale with a true sense of immediacy.

5. Yamanoue Sōji ki: Yamanoue Sōji’s notes on Rikyū’s wabi-cha (1)An excerpt from the Yamanoue Sōji ki record kept by Rikyū’s
disciple Yamanoue Sōji, detailing some of Rikyū’s thoughts on
wabi-cha.
Concerning guest etiquette: attention should be given to building a unified gathering (ichiza konryū). There are many secretly
transmitted provisions. Jōō spoke of this matter for the benefit
of beginners. At present, however, [such provisions] are rejectedby Rikyū. He revealed fragments [of teachings] during a nightfall
tea gathering. To begin with, even during a morning or evening
gathering, and needless to say a gathering for the first showingof a treasured utensil, or, of course, the cutting of the seal on thejar of new tea, or even an ordinary chanoyu gathering, from themoment you enter the garden pathway until the time you depart,hold the host in most respectful esteem. Approach in the spiritthat the encounter will occur but once in your life. Worldly gossip has no place here. Mu’an wrote a satirical verse:
waga hotoke
tonari no takara
muko shūtotenka no ikusa
hito no yoshi-ashi202

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

The Buddha I worship,
the neighbor’s treasures,sons-in-law, fathers-in-law,the battles throughout the land,
and the judgement of others.
From this poem you should be able to grasp the point. All conversation during a gathering should be of matters relating tochanoyu. Further, there should be no talk until after the tea has
been prepared.*Rikyū’s disciple Yamanoue Sōji (1544–1590) left valuable historical records of his observations on chanoyu and of the teachings
about tea he received from Rikyū.
For example, one passage in the Yamanoue Sōji ki has Rikyū
speaking on the subject of the rules regarding conversation
during a tea event. Ichiza konryū is a term used for tea etiquette,
and it means “establishing a seated-as-one experience.” Takeno
Jōō is said to have coined this for the benefit of novices. Rikyū,
however, reportedly greatly disliked the expression, and proposed
replacing it with the phrase ichigo ni ichido, “once in a lifetime.”
In his teachings, Rikyū emphasized that one must approach a tea
gathering in a state of tension, as though it were a once-in-alifetime experience. This he applied to morning or evening tea
gatherings, and still more so to events where new utensils weredebuted or the jar containing the year’s new supply of tea was tobe opened; the same went for ordinary tea gatherings. The greatlord Ii Naosuke (1815–1860) later adjusted the phrase, changing
it to ichigo ichie, “once-in-a-lifetime encounter,” a phrase thatwas thereafter adopted widely in society. This approach to a tea* Hirota, Wind in the Pines, 205–6. Translation adapted and expanded.

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

203

gathering explains why senseless chatter and everyday gossip
must never be allowed to intrude. As Mu’an (Botanka Shōhaku;
1443–1527) writes in his verse, one must not bring the following
topics into a tea gathering: public affairs’ such as legal proceedings; small talk; “the Buddha I worship” or any talk of religion;“the neighbor’s treasures” or money; “sons-in-law, fathers-in-law”(i.e., family affairs); “the battles through the land” or politics; and“the judgement of others” or gossip about others. While this verse
was probably first written as a guide for etiquette at linked-verse
gatherings, Rikyū said the same applied to chanoyu.

6. Yamanoue Sōji ki: Yamanoue Sōji’s notes on Rikyū’s wabi-cha (2)A further excerpt from the Yamanoue Sōji ki record kept by
Rikyu’s disciple Yamanoue Sōji, detailing some of Rikyū’s thoughts
on wabi-cha.
Sōeki (Rikyū) was the first to construct a tea room of one and ahalf mats in Kyoto. It was unusual for the time, and of questionable value for anyone other than Sōeki. Since he was a master(meijin), Sōeki could transform mountains into valleys, change
west to east, and break the rules of chanoyu. He did it freely, andit was always interesting. But if the ordinary person were simply
to imitate him, there would be no chanoyu.*

This is another passage from the Yamanoue Sōji ki that relates
how Rikyū’s tea was gradually distancing itself from populartea (the tea of the common people) to become a unique tea. Thisdistancing was permissible because of Rikyū’s standing as a tea* Translated by Gretchen Mittwer.

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master. When Rikyū created the ichijō daime tea room (that is,
one full-size tatami mat and one mat of approximately threequarters length), people were no doubt surprised and astonishedat how confined a space it was. This was the reality of Rikyū’s
breaking of conventions and, as Yamanoue Sōji puts it, transforming mountains into valleys and changing west into east. The more
profound the ingenuity of his rule-breaking, the more Rikyū’s tea
distanced itself from society and set off on its own solitary path.

7. Nanpōroku: On the substance of wabi-cha (1)An excerpt from the Nanpōroku (Southern Record) text.
We draw water, gather firewood, boil the water, and make tea. We
then offer it to the Buddha, serve it to others, and drink ourselves.*

What is chanoyu? A poem in the Rikyū hyakushu (Rikyū’s Hundred Verses) collection of waka verses states: “Know that chanoyu
is a matter of simply boiling water, making the tea, and drinking
it.” Chanoyu is not a matter of obsession with form. And yet
when many set out to study tea, they tend to fixate on rules andprocedures (temae), such as how to hold the ladle (hishaku) or
how to fold the silk cloth (fukusa). The same applies to utensils.
And it is no different for those who have become tea experts. Theyend up obsessed with utensils, wanting to gather and collect all
those that take their fancy.
Yet what lies at the root of chanoyu is nothing more thanboiling water, preparing tea, and drinking it. The Rikyū hyakushuverse warns us against focusing solely on the details of technique* Hirota, Wind in the Pines, 217.

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

205

without understanding the fundamentals. In this regard, the Nanpōroku quotation above makes the same point: “Draw water, gather
firewood, boil the water, and make tea.” This much is the same forboth, but what follows in the Nanpōroku quotation is important.
It states that after preparing tea, “We then offer it to the
Buddha.” This is because tea as articulated in the Nanpōroku is tea
for Buddhist ascetic practice, and so the Buddha comes first. Next,
you “serve it to others.” The verb “to serve” (hodokosu in Japanese)
can mean “to distribute widely” or “to offer up for someone’s benefit.” In this context, we can suppose that it means not much morethan making tea for people and having them drink it. But the mostimportant point is that “[we] drink ourselves.” Does it not often
happen that the host forgets that an important part of hospitality
involves him or her partaking in the blessings of the occasion?
We tend to think that hospitality means only wholehearted service to others. Hospitality, in this thinking, is one-directional. Muchin the way of saint-like religious dedication, it can also mean service
without demands or expectations of recompense. Japan’s hospitality, however, is not a one-way service; it is important that it comesback around. That is the significance of “[we] drink ourselves.”
In Buddhism, there are the twin concepts of altruism andself-interest. Altruism is to perform acts of charity or virtuous
deeds for others; it means sacrificing oneself for the benefit ofothers. Conversely, self-interest means to receive merit and benefit
through one’s own actions. Buddha encourages altruism, and permits self-interest.
Japanese hospitality cannot be genuine if there is no self-interest. In chanoyu, tea preparation demands that every effort bemade in preparing utensils, meals, and tea for the guests. So far,this is altruism. However, during the tea gathering, it may be thatthe conversation between host and guests takes off, and the host

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might benefit from unexpected suggestions from the conversation
or from the guests’ behavior. The host might also gain new knowledge. Here, then, is self-interest. Of course, the pleasure of hostinga tea gathering is in itself the greatest example of the host’s selfinterest. By devoting oneself to others, one grows. This is what ismeant by Japanese hospitality not being a one-way service; true
hospitality lies in mutual enrichment.

8. Nanpōroku: On the substance of wabi-cha (2)This is a further excerpt from the Nanpōroku (Southern Record)text.
To delight in the refined splendor of a dwelling or the taste ofdelicacies belongs to the worldly life. There is shelter enough when
the roof does not leak, food enough when it staves off hunger.*

There is a tendency to view chanoyu as something extravagant.
And indeed, it does have its extravagant aspects. Tea containers(chaire) and tea bowls at their most expensive can cost millions ofdollars. Even among the utensils used at ordinary tea gatherings,
there are any number that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Tea rooms themselves at first glance look rough and unfinished,but in fact sometimes they command a price of more than one
hundred thousand dollars for every two tatami mats of space.
The enjoyment of such extravagance is certainly one aspect ofchanoyu. To deny that would be to discredit chanoyu.
However, there is a form of chanoyu that is quite the opposite.
Rikyū’s name for it was wabi-cha. In wabi-cha, all that is needed* Hirota, Wind in the Pines, 217.

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

207

is a house that does not leak, and meals that prevent starvation.
Wabi-cha describes an extreme form of chanoyu in which there isnothing left to discard.
Indeed, it is what might be termed sosō in Japanese, a word
formed from the characters for “coarse” and “appearance.” Thatis, it indicates something with a rough, shabby aspect. Rikyū created a tea room that was the exact opposite of the elegant shoin
zukuri architectural style that informed the design of homes ofthe military class and nobility of his time. For example, the pillars in these refined residences are always strictly straight, squarepillars. Further, the edges of the square pillars are smoothly planed,
to make them look beautiful. But in Rikyū’s tea room, the focal
pillar was a log. For the thin pillars, too, he used logs where thebark was left partially intact and knots left exposed. Similarly, heused this kind of wood for the crosspiece at the foot of the display alcove. No one before Rikyū had attempted anything similar.
Shifting our attention to the interior of the display alcove, we
notice Rikyū’s tea room had earthen walls. In Taian, the tea room
created by Rikyū that is today designated a national treasure, thesurface plastering of the walls is done away with; the walls havebeen left rough and the straw mixed into the viscous clay is left
exposed on the surface. Moreover, this clay has been spread tocover the ceiling, so the interior of the display alcove is like anearthen cavern. It is the ultimate in coarse appearance, or sosō.
Rikyū made a tea room that perfectly captured the extreme ideaof “a roof that does not leak.”
Allow me a slight digression here. Rikyū’s originality is in fact
the origin of modern Japanese architecture. Even now, the display
alcove in traditional “tea-house style” (sukiya zukuri) architecture
has earthen walls (although they are given a finishing coat of smoothclay). Logs of cypress or cedar (of course, beautifully polished) are208

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

used as the pillar of the display alcove. It is no exaggeration to saythat these innovations began with Rikyū’s tea room.
Anyway, as I noted above, extravagant tea is one form of tea.
The Nanpōroku refers to it as tea of the secular world. It acknowledges the existence of extravagant tea in the secular world,
but then denies it here. Why would this be? We find the following
in the same text: “Chanoyu of the small room is above all a matter of practicing and realizing the way in accord with the Buddha’s
teaching.” Distinct from the tea of the secular world, there is aform of chanoyu that follows Buddhist teachings and leads to enlightenment. It is a tea that has no need for anything superfluous.
As mentioned in item 2 above, there is an expression, chazen
ichimi, meaning “tea and Zen are one taste.” Indeed, there aremany similarities between chanoyu and Zen. Chanoyu has beenstrongly influenced by Zen, and it seeks its spiritual goals in Zen.
The idea that chanoyu practices and Zen practices are one is expressed in the Nanpōroku assertion that tea practitioners should
train themselves in the Buddha’s way and so achieve enlightenment.
From the Zen standpoint of “having nothing” (mu ichi motsu),
surely a roof that does not leak and meals that prevent starvation
are sufficient. Herein lies the ideal of chanoyu.

9. Nanpōroku: On the substance of wabi-cha (3)A further excerpt from the Nanpōroku (Southern Record).
In summer, impart a sense of deep coolness, in winter, a feelingof warmth; lay the charcoal so that it heats the water, prepare
the tea so that it is pleasing—these are all the secrets.** Hirota, Wind in the Pines, 223.

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

209

One day, someone asked Rikyū, “Please teach me the essence ofchanoyu.” The person asking the question hoped that Rikyū
would teach him some secret not given to others. Rikyū’s reply,
however, came as a surprise. “In summer, impart a sense of deep
coolness, in winter, a feeling of warmth. . . .” The secret turned out
to be something utterly banal. When the questioner huffily said,“Everyone knows that,” Rikyū replied, “If that is the case, try
and do tea in the way I have just described. If you succeed, I will
become your disciple.”
The Zen monk Shōrei Sōkin (1490–1568) of Daitokuji heard
this exchange. Sōkin was a renowned monk and Rikyū’s own Zen
teacher. On hearing this exchange, Sōkin said, “It is as Rikyūsays.” He then told the tale of Niaoke Daolin.
Niaoke (741–824), a Chinese Chan monk who lived in
Hangzhou, would always sit in a tree for his meditation sessions.
Indeed, his name Niaoke, literally “bird nest,” came from thispractice of his. Bai Juyi (772–846), the leading Tang-dynasty
poet, was then governor of Hangzhou. Bai Juyi visited Niaoke
and asked, “What is the essential meaning of the Dharma?”
Niaoke replied, “Shun all evil, perform only what is good.”
Bai Juyi replied, “Even a three-year-old child knows this!”
Niaoke replied, “A three-year-old child may be able to say it, but
not even an eighty-year-old man can do it.”
Enlightened by this response, Bai Juyi bowed deeply and departed, or so it is said.
In an age when air conditioners did not exist, it was no doubt
hard to devise a way of creating cool in summer. In chanoyu,
summer tea gatherings are held in the morning when the coolnight air still remains. In winter, an ample amount of charcoal
is put in the sunken hearth, and a wide-mouthed kettle is used
to create plenty of steam and warmth. These contrivances are210

Appendix 1: Historical Sources

not themselves a problem, but the challenge is to understandthe reasoning behind them. And that reasoning lies in what iscommonplace.
There is another story that is similar. Someone came to Rikyū
and gave him money, saying, “Please buy a utensil that would suitme.” Rikyū duly bought him a length of white linen suitable formaking the tea cloths (chakin) used in chanoyu. The recipient was
dissatisfied, for anyone could buy such white linen. “I wanted autensil that only Rikyū could select, and he comes up with justwhite linen cloth,” he said. When Rikyū heard this, he replied thatwhite linen cloth with which to purify utensils is the life of a tea
devotee; it matters more than even the most impressive utensils. It is
the mediocre who tend to be obsessed with reputations, appearances, and trivial details. Here, too, Rikyū pointed out something
entirely matter-of-course; namely, that what must be cherished isthe “purity and cleanliness” which lies at the root of chanoyu.
What, then, is meant by the terms hiden, mitsuden, and hiji,
which translate as “secret transmission,” “transmission of mysteries,” and “mysteries”? When a master teaches a secret to his disciples, he orders them to not tell it to anyone else. Keeping a secretis important. The fourteenth-century noh performer and dramatist Zeami (1363–1443), credited with the perfection of noh drama,
once said, “What is hidden is the flower; what is not hidden isnot.” By this he meant that people think something is rare or precious precisely because it is secret; nobody finds interest in something that is not secret. The content of secret transmissions is
unexpectedly the commonplace. There are many secret transmissions which, when we learn them, make us think, “Is that all there
is to it?” That said, it would be wrong to dismiss secret transmissions as banal. The problem is not with the content of the transmission; it is with the enlightenment of the receiver.

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211

Even in the story of Bai Juyi, he was enlightened when heheard Niaoke’s words. If, for the receiver of such teachings, thetime is just right, even the slightest prompt can lead to enlightenment. But if it is not, then no matter how splendid the secrettransmission, it ends up as a banal assertion of commonplaceknowledge.

10. Matsui-ke monjo: A letter in Rikyū’s hand
A letter written by Rikyū that is preserved in the Matsui-ke monjo(Matsui Family Documents).
Thank you very much for taking the trouble to send your message by courier.
I immediately departed [Kyoto] last evening, as Lord Hideyoshi,
through his emissaries Master Tomisa [Tomisa Sakon] and Master
Tsugesa [Tsuge Sakyō-no-suke Yoichi], ordered me to leave for
Sakai.
I was surprised when I spotted Uyo-sama [Hosokawa Tadaoki]
and Furuori-sama [Furuta Oribe] at the boat landing; they had
come all the way to Yodo to see me off. Please express my gratitude to them both. With all best regards,

Fourteenth day of the second month [April 6][To] Matsusa-sama [Matsui Sado-no-kami Tasuyuki][From] Rikyū Sōeki (handwritten seal [kao])This is Sen no Rikyū’s last letter. In spring 1591, Rikyū’s seventiethyear, Hideyoshi’s hatred of Rikyū suddenly flared up. Undoubtedly,
Hideyoshi and Rikyū’s relationship had been gradually deteriorating.

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The death of Hidenaga—Hideyoshi’s most trusted younger
brother and a person who understood Rikyū—may have been acatalyst for this deterioration. As the leadership of Ishida Mitsunari and other direct retainers of Hideyoshi, who planned the mobilization of troops to the Korean Peninsula, grew more assertive,
supporters of Rikyū gradually diminished in number. The decisive
blow that led to Rikyū’s fall from favor was the denouncement of
the wooden statue of Rikyū placed in the main entrance gate(sanmon) of Daitokuji Temple. That the statue of Rikyū—wearing
leather-soled sandals (setta)—was placed on the upper floor of thetemple gate was deemed the height of disrespect, since imperial
envoys and Hideyoshi himself passed under it. This was the farfetched reason for the censuring of Rikyū. Up until now, various
theories have been advanced regarding the reasons for Rikyū’sritual suicide. It can be considered the result of the complex interaction between Rikyū’s “mountains into valleys, west into east”
spirit as recorded in the Yamanoue Sōji ki—that is, his insurrectionary belief in breaking with common sense and establishedrules—and Hideyoshi’s own measures to formalize a centralized
power structure with himself at the pinnacle.
Rikyū no doubt took measures to reestablish himself amidst
the growing criticism against him, but the situation suddenly deteriorated in spring 1591. By now, Rikyū had given in. On April 6,
Hideyoshi ordered Rikyū to leave the capital immediately for
Sakai. It was banishment from Kyoto. It is easy to imagine thatritual suicide awaited him next. Rikyū was to leave Kyoto alone,aboard a night boat on the Yodo River bound for Sakai. Needlessto say, not a soul would be there to see him off. But surprisingly,
when the boat arrived at the Yodo dock, Rikyū spotted his beloved disciples Hosokawa Sansai and Furuta Oribe, who had
come to see him off in the pitch-black night. Rikyū was travelingAppendix 1: Historical Sources

213

towards his death. And, indeed, in seeing him off, they were risking their own lives. One can only imagine Rikyū’s delight when henoticed the two of them. This letter conveys that joy to Matsui
Yasuyuki, Hosokawa Sansai’s chief retainer. On April 19, Rikyū
was called back to Kyoto. Then, on April 21, he committed ritualsuicide.

11. Rikyū’s last words
A death poem in Rikyū’s own hand.
Seventy years of life—
Ha ha! and what a fuss!
With this sacred sword of mine,
Both Buddhas and Patriarchs I kill!
I raise the sword,
This sword of mine,Long in my possession—
The time is come at last—
Skyward I throw it up!*

Rikyū wrote these words of farewell while facing his death.
The opening phrase about seventy years of life is a conventionaldescription of someone’s age at their death. The next phrases—translated by Suzuki as “Ha ha! and what a fuss!”—have been interpreted as a Zen monk’s sharp, strong voice, like the sound ofsilk cloth tearing. The third and fourth lines are based on thewords of the Chinese Zen monk Linji Yixuan (d. 866). Rikyū’s* Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, 319.

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treasured sword was a famous blade known for its sharp cuttingedge. With this sword, Rikyū severed once and for all his doubts
and attachments. Not only that, he severed ties with all the ancestors and Buddhas he had relied on in his Zen observances, andbecame nothingness itself. Such was the state he attained. But thisprocess was incomplete, since the treasured sword remained in his
hand. So the sword, too, he threw up to the sky, abandoning allthings to attain a free, unfettered release, liberated from all obstacles. Such was Rikyū’s state of mind as he faced death.

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Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

Explanations for the key terms listed here draw heavily on Tankōsha
Henshūkyoku, ed., A Chanoyu Vocabulary: Practical Terms for theWay of Tea (Tankōsha, 2007), an invaluable source for anyone interested in tea in Japan.
anza

安座

lit. “relaxed sitting style”; a comfortable sitting posture similar to a cross-legged position

chabana

茶花

lit. “tea flowers”; flowers used for display in thetea room; the arrangement is “throw-in” (nageire) stylechadō (sadō)

茶道

lit. “way of tea”; often used interchangeably
with chanoyu, yet, more accurately, chadō
consists in the spiritual discipline of chanoyu,
implying a cultural realm of self-cultivation
through the preparation, serving, and sharingof teachaire茶入

tea container; the small, lidded ceramic jar for
powdered green tea used in thick-tea preparation

chaji

茶事

formal tea function; usually of about fourhours’ duration and held for a small numberof guests, it comprises an initial seating at
which a kaiseki meal is served, an intermission, and a latter seating where thick tea andthen thin tea are served

chajin茶人

lit. “tea person”; a “tea devotee” or “tea master”; one whose primary occupation is chanoyu;
a true follower of the way of tea in demeanor
and attitude

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Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

chakai茶会

tea gathering; in contrast to the formal tea function, the format is highly flexible; often only themore casual thin tea is served

chakin茶巾

lit. “tea cloth”; a small, white, linen cloth witha rolled hem on the long sides, used in the teamaking procedure for wiping and purifying tea
bowls

chamei (sōmei) 茶名(宗名) tea name; a name received by a student from thehead of the chanoyu lineage, acknowledging acertain depth of understanding in the art andspirit of tea; tea names given by the three Sen lineages (Omotesenke, Urasenke, Mushakōjisenke)
and many others comprise two characters, thefirst of which is invariably sō, meaning “religious
principle”; these names are commonly called sō
nameschanoyu

茶の湯lit. “hot water for tea”; the art of preparing andserving powdered green tea

cha o tateru

茶をたてる

lit. “to whip up tea”; implies both using the tea
whisk to make the tea and “stirring up the spiritof the tea”

chasen①茶筅
②茶筌

tea whisk; tea utensil used to blend the tea powder
and hot water together; made of a single lengthof bamboo, with a handle and thin tines; ① ishistorically more common, with the second character (sasara) referring to a stiff bamboo brush;② is an alternative, where the second character(uke or ue) refers to a bamboo fish trapchasen-zuka

茶筅塚burial mound for tea whisks, typically located intemple grounds; chanoyu devotees here express
their gratitude to the tea whisks which have served
them wellchashitsu

茶室

tea room; a space designed for chanoyu; may indicate both the room itself and the entire structure in which the room is locatedAppendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

217

chatsubo茶壼

tea jar; the ceramic jar for packing, sealing, andstoring the processed tea leaves picked in springcha-uri

茶売り

lit. “tea seller”; a purveyor or street-seller of tea
as a beverage

chaya

茶屋

lit. “tea house” or “tea shop”; an establishment
selling tea and other refreshments; historically,some also acted as brothels

chōzu

手水

washing or rinsing the hands and mouth for ritual purification

chōzubachi

手水鉢

stone basin for hand and mouth rinsing; in wabicha garden approaches, the basin is low to theground, requiring the guest to crouch downchūmon中門

lit. “middle gate”; the gate separating the outerand inner approach to the tea room

daisu

台子

classical form of stand on which tea utensils are
set out for display and use; the original and mostformal daisu are of black lacquer

dero

出炉

outside sunken hearth; a ro or sunken hearth situated outside the mat where tea is made; typicalfor rooms of four and a half mats or morefukusaふくさdouble-layered square of silk cloth, folded in atriangle which hangs from the host’s sash; used
to purify utensils during tea-making

furo

風炉

brazier in which charcoal is burnt to boil water ina kettle set above it; the furo season comprises
the warm months from May to October, whereas
the ro (sunken hearth) season spans the cooler
months of November to April

furyū

風流

elegance; an important concept influencing thestyle (shukō) of a tea gathering; signifies objects
that embody a certain extravagance, eccentricity,
and ability to amaze the viewer

218

Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

ganro no ma

丸炉の間

room having a ganro or round hearth built into
the floor; in the early history of chanoyu, tea wasmade in a room equipped with such a hearth

goza

後座

lit. “latter seating”; the second part of a formal
tea function following the first seating (shoza) andintermission, during which tea is made and drunk

gozumi

後炭lit. “latter charcoal”; the replenishing of charcoal
in the brazier or sunken hearth during the latterseating of a formal tea function

hiroma広間

lit. “wide space” or “spacious room”; a tea room
greater than four and a half tatami mats in size,
often incorporating basic elements of a shoin reception room

hishaku柄杓ladle made of bamboo; used to scoop water outof the kettle or water vessel

honzen ryōri

本膳料理banquet-style meal; a highly formalized cuisine
in which various dishes arranged on lacquer trays
are placed before the guest

ichigo ichie

一期一会

lit. “one lifetime, one encounter”; the conceptthat every tea gathering is to be approached as aonce-in-a-lifetime experience

ichimi dōshin 一味同心

lit. “one taste, same heart”; idiom meaning people gathered for the same purpose, sharing thesame feelings

ichiza konryū 一座建立

lit. “establishing seated-as-oneness”; establishinga feeling of unity among all those in a group

jittoku

十徳

lit. “ten virtues”; a jacket-like garment of blacksilk gauze worn over a kimono by tea masters

kabuki-cha

かぶき茶“tea-competition” guessing game involving participants’ blind tasting of several bowls of tea
from different regions; also a term used in historical documents to refer to passing the bowl or“tea sipping”

Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

kaiseki

懐石kakufukudate 各服だて

219

meal in chanoyu; kaiseki means “breast-pocket
stone,” in reference to the heated stones Zen
monks placed in their robes to ward off hunger;
the simple kaiseki meal comprises a small number of side dishes in addition to rice and souplit. “individual-portions” tea-making; the preparation and serving of one bowl of thick tea perpersonkamei

亀居lit. “turtle position”; a sitting posture with buttocks positioned on the floor and legs folded withfeet spread to the left and right

karamono

唐物

Chinese articles; a term used in chanoyu for articles of fine artistic quality introduced from China
to Japan during the medieval periodkashikomaru

かしこまる

to adopt a respectful attitude; by extension, to
adopt a respectful sitting posture, meaning to sit
in seizakoicha濃茶

lit. “thick tea”; a smooth, dense blend of powdered green tea and hot water, usually preparedand served in a single tea bowl for passing fromone guest to another

koma

小間

lit. “small space” or “small room”; a tea room offour and a half tatami mats in size or less, andcharacteristic of wabi-cha

koshikake(-machiai)

腰掛(待合) waiting bench; roofed bench located in the gar-kuchikiri

口切

unsealing the mouth of the tea jar (chatsubo);
also, the celebratory tea function held for the
event, often in early November, coinciding withthe opening of the sunken hearth

kusari no ma

鎖の間lit. “chain room”; a drawing room with a kettle
suspended by a chain over a sunken hearth

den approach to the tea room, where guests wait
both before being invited into the tea room by
the host and also during the intermission

220

Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

makkyaku

末客

last guest; sits at the end of the row of guests andtakes on a variety of small tasks to facilitate thegathering

matcha抹茶

powdered green tea made from stone-milled tea
leaves which have been steamed, dried, and rid ofstems and veins; matcha for thick tea comes fromnewly sprouted tea leaves, and that for thin tea
comes from mature tea leaves; matcha may also
refer to the beverage made from powdered green
tea and hot water

mawashinomi 回し飲みthe “passing-the-bowl” manner of shared thicktea drinking; mawashi- derives from the verb
mawasu, meaning “to pass [something] along,”
and nomi means “to drink”; guests typicallyshare a single bowl of thick tea, each sipping his
or her own portion and wiping the rim of thebowl before handing it to the next guest, with thelast guest drinking up the remainder; introduced
by Sen no Rikyū as suicha, “tea sipping,” during
the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568–1600)

mitate見立て

refashioning; from the verb mitateru, “to liken
something to something else”; the concept of perceiving an object in a new light and repurposing
it; often involves playful techniques of allusion
and wordplay

mizusashi

水指vessel for cold water; usually made of ceramic;
water from the mizusashi is added to the kettle oris used to rinse the tea bowl or tea whisk near theend of the tea-making process (temae)

mizuya水屋

lit. “water room”; kitchen area attached to thetea room where utensils are readied for use in thetea room; the host accesses the tea room throughthe mizuyamukōzuke

向付dish in the kaiseki meal, usually of sashimi or a
mixture of vinegared ingredients; it is placed at
the far side (mukō) of the meal tray (oshiki), behind the bowl of rice and bowl of soupAppendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

221

nakadachi

中立intermission in a formal tea function, during which
guests return to the waiting bench in the garden
approachnijiriguchi

にじり口

crawl-through entrance leading into the tea roomfrom the garden approach (nijiri- derives fromthe verb nijiru, “to move forward or backward
while maintaining seiza seated posture”); createdby Sen no Rikyū as one element in his elaboration of a new style of tea room for his wabi-cha

ninaijaya

荷茶屋

portable tea stall; a tea vendor’s portable stallōbuku-cha

①王服茶
②大福茶

① tea offered at a temple or shrine; distributed

oshiita

押板

lit. “push board”; an earlier form of what is today
called the tokonoma (display alcove); an alcove
or niche with a long, narrow bottom board, inwhich objects and artworks are displayed

oshiki折敷

meal tray used in a kaiseki meal; generally footless, rimmed, and made of lacquered woodōyose chakai

大寄せ茶会

large-scale tea gathering; caters for many guests
and often involves successive seatings through theday; separate rooms or venues may be provided
for serving thick tea, thin tea, and a light meal

rinkan(chanoyu)

淋間茶湯summer bath tea; a bathing event involving theenjoyment of chanoyuro炉

sunken hearth; a fireplace built into the floor of atea room, used to boil water for tea; the ro season is winter, between November and April,whereas the furo (brazier) season is the summer
months of May to Octoberand consumed as a way to ward off poverty andevil influences, deriving from the practice of ōbuku
(“serving the sovereign”); ② literally “great good
fortune tea”; a special tea drunk at the start of
the year to celebrate good fortune in the New Year

222

Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

roji

露地

lit. “dewy ground”; garden approach to the tea
room, so named by Sen no Rikyū to associate
its environment with the spiritual realm of the
Buddhas and imply a purification as guests walkthrough to the tea roomrojiguchi

露地口

entrance to the garden approach; most often asmall, simple gate built into a wall or high fence
surrounding the garden approachsake sankon

酒三献

lit. “three offerings of sake”; the conventional way
to serve sake during a kaiseki meal in a formal
tea function; the host pours sake for each guest
three times over the course of the meal

sarudo猿戸

lit. “monkey door”; a type of simple swinging
door with a latch referred to as a saru (“monkey”); employed in separating inner and outer
sections of the paths in the garden approach

seiza

正座

formal sitting posture; involves kneeling withbackside resting on heels and insteps flat on thefloor or groundsencha

煎茶

steeped tea; tea that has been prepared throughthe infusion of tea leaves in hot water

senjimono-uri 煎じ物売り lit. “seller of brewed or infused things”; an itinerant seller of steeped herbal or medicinal drinks
senmotoせんもと・盞本host or teishu; a term used in the sixteenth century,
the characters for which mean “sake-cup origin”

setta

雪駄

leather-soled sandals; devised by Sen no Rikyū
to be worn in the garden approach, avoiding thenoisy distraction caused by inexperienced tea
practitioners wearing elevated wooden sandals,
or getashoin

書院drawing room; a large tatami-floored reception
room typically having a large display alcove, builtin staggered shelves, and a built-in tsuke-shoin
deskAppendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

223

shoin daisu

書院台子

chanoyu which employs a daisu utensil stand andis conducted in a shoin-style reception room; typifies the formal style of chanoyu that originated in
the Higashiyama period (late fifteenth century)

shōkyaku

正客main guest; sits in the main seat during a tea
function as the guest of honor

shoza

初座

lit. “first seating”; the first half of a formal tea
function, involving the first laying of charcoal(shozumi) and service of the kaiseki mealshozumi初炭

lit. “first charcoal”; the first laying of charcoal
during the formal tea function

shukō

趣向

style; the unique feature or cast of a tea gathering, achieved by applying artistic ingenuity to agiven theme

suicha吸い茶lit. “tea sipping”; term used by Sen no Rikyū todescribe the “passing-the-bowl” (mawashinomi)style of tea drinking

sukiya zukuri 数寄屋造り lit. “tea-house-style construction”; refined and simple traditional architectural style informed by theart of chanoyu, employing such features as the decorative alcove (tokonoma) and stylized shelving
sumidemae

炭点前procedure for laying charcoal in the brazier orsunken hearth, performed before guests; the firstlaying is called the shozumi and the second, toreplenish the charcoal, the gozumi

suri-ashi

すり足lit. “foot sliding”; the standard walking style inchanoyu wherein the foot slightly rubs the surface of the tatami

tachimizu

立水

final sprinkling of water in the garden approachby the host during the formal tea function; takes
place before the guests leave (see also uchimizu)

tatehiza

立膝

lit. “raised knee”; a sitting posture with the kneeof one leg raised

224

Appendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

teishu亭主

host; the person who hosts the tea gathering andperforms the tea-making; usually the sponsor of
the event

temae

①手前

general term for tea-making and charcoal-laying
procedures performed before the guests; writtenwith either ① the “hand” character or ② the“point” character②点前tencha点茶

the making of thick tea or thin tea by blending
powdered tea leaves with hot water using a whisk

tenmoku

天目style of tea bowl characterized by its funnelshaped body, small foot, and delicate structure;said to be named for the area around Mount
Tianmu in eastern China, where in the thirteenth
century many Japanese monks studied at Zen
temples, and from where they brought back tea
bowls to Japantokonoma

床の間

display alcove; a decorative alcove or recess fordisplaying hanging scrolls, precious artistic objects, and flower arrangements; characteristic of
all shoin-style reception rooms and tea rooms;
upon entering the tea room, guests approach the
tokonoma and view the display

tuánchá ordancha団茶

Chinese brick tea; a form of preserved tea deveoped in ancient China; involves compressing anddrying steamed ground tea into bricks for use as
powdered or steeped tea

uchimizu

打水

sprinkling of water in the garden approach; wateris sprinkled on three occasions during a formal
tea function: first before the guests arrive (hatsumizu), where the host sprinkles water to welcome
the guests; subsequently before the intermission(nakamizu); and finally before the guests leave(tachimizu)

usucha薄茶

lit. “thin tea”; a relatively thin blend of powdered
tea and hot water compared to thick tea; served insingle portions in separate bowls for individualAppendix 2: Glossary of Key Terms

225

consumption; thin tea is made by briskly moving
the tea whisk back and forth to whip the tea
powder and hot water together
wabi

わび

an aesthetic developed in chanoyu primarily by
Sen no Rikyū; wabi, which derives from the verb
“wabu / wabiru” (to be disappointed, to comedown in the world) finds beauty in the austere,
the simple, and the unostentatious; it also has aquality of untainted newness

wabi-cha

わび茶lit. “wabi tea”; the style of chanoyu developed by
Sen no Rikyū; characterized by its use of a tea
room of limited space (koma), unassuming utensils, and focus on the concept of a “once-in-alifetime encounter” (ichigo ichie)wabi chajin

わび茶人

lit. “wabi tea devotee”; a person deeply involved
with chanoyu and who embodies the aesthetic
principles of wabi

yatsureburo

やつれ風炉

worn brazier; a style of iron brazier (furo) thathas a weathered appearance, either from naturaluse over time or by design; conventionally onlyused during the final days of the furo season,heightening the sense of nostalgia felt at this timeof the year

yatsushi

やつし“humble guise”; the subtle act of taking on aninconspicuous, humble appearance

yuai

湯相

temperature of the hot water; essential to ensure
the powdered tea has vitality and the bowl of tea
made from it is as delicious as possible

yoritsuki

寄付antechamber or waiting room where guests prepare themselves upon arrival at the tea-gathering
venue

227

References & Further Reading
References
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Blyth, Reginald H. Haiku. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1949–1955.
Chadenshū [Collection of Tea Transmissions]. 1847. Private collection.
Chasen no ikken [On the Matter of Tea Whisks]. Late Edo period.
Konnichian Library, Urasenke Center, Kyoto, Japan.
Chawashō [A Short Collection of Tea Stories]. Vol. 10 of Chadō
koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Way of Tea], editedby Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Chikamatsu Shigenori. Chanoyu kojidan [Old Chanoyu Tales]. In
Chawa to itsuwa [Tea Stories and Anecdotes], vol. 13 of Chasho
koten shūsei [Compilation of Classic Tea Texts], edited by Tani
Akira. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2021.
Chōbazu byōbu [Folding Screen Depicting Horse Training].
Circa 1600. Folding screen, 6 panels, 154 cm × 355 cm. Taga Taisha
Shrine Collection, Shiga Prefecture.
Emura Sensai, and Itō Tan’an. Rōjin zatsuwa [Reminiscences of an
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Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 1983–1984.
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to the Moon]. Compiled and edited by Kusumi Soan. Vol. 10 of
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edited by Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962. Translated
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Tea as a Buddhist Path (Fremont: Asian Humanities Press, 1995),
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———. Rikyū no cha [Rikyū’s Tea]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1951.

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Hosokawa Sansai. Hosokawa chanoyu no sho [Hosokawa’s Book on
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Kamiya Sōtan. Sōtan nikki [Diary of Sōtan]. Vol. 6 of Chadō koten
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———. Fuhaku-ō kushū [Old Man Fuhaku’s Collection of Haiku].
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Otowa. Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 37 (1984): 41–54.
———. “Rikyu and the Birth of the Nijiriguchi.” Translated by
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———. Chadōshi nenpyō [Chronology of the History of the Way ofTea]. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 1973.
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Matsudaira Fumai. Unshū kurachō [Unshū Storehouse Catalogue].
Vol. 10 of Chadō koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the
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Matsue Shigeyori, ed. Kefukigusa [Grass like Blowing Hair]. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1971.
———. Enokoshū [Puppy Collection]. Tokyo: Koten Bunko, 1967.

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References & Further Reading

Matsuo Bashō. Oi no kobumi [The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel].
In Nozarashi kikō, oi no kobumi [The Records of a WeatherExposed Skeleton, The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel], edited
by Yuzawa Kennosuke. Tokyo: Shintensha, 1982. Translated in
Yuasa Nobuyuki, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other
Travel Sketches (London: Penguin Classics, 2005).
Matsuya Hisashige. Matsuya kaiki [Matsuya Family Records of Tea
Gatherings]. Vol. 9 of Chadō koten zenshū [Complete Classic Worksof the Way of Tea], edited by Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha,1956–1962.
———. Oribe-den [Transmissions Pertaining to Furuta Oribe]. In
Gendaigo yaku, chadō shiso densho: Rikyū-den, Oribe-den,
Sansai-den, Sōho-den [Modern Translation, Transmissions Pertaining to the Four Pioneers of the Way of Tea: Rikyū, Oribe, Sansai,
Sōho], edited by Kumakura Isao. Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2021.
———. Rikyū-den [Transmissions Pertaining to Rikyū]. In Gendaigo
yaku, chadō shiso densho: Rikyū-den, Oribe-den, Sansai-den,
Sōho-den [Modern Translation, Transmissions Pertaining to theFour Pioneers of the Way of Tea: Rikyū, Oribe, Sansai, Sōho],edited by Kumakura Isao. Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2021.
Mezaki Tokuei. Saigyō no shisōshiteki kenkyū [A Historical Study of
Saigyō’s Thought]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1978.
Minamoto no Morotoki. Chōshūki [Record of a Long Autumn].
Vols. 16–17 of Zōho shiryō taisei [Expanded Compendium ofHistorical Documents], edited by Zōho Shiryō Taisei Kankōkai.
Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 1934–1944.
Minamoto no Tamenori. Kūya-rui [Eulogy for Kūya]. 972. Scroll, 1
fascicle. Translated by Clark Chilson in “Eulogizing Kūya as Morethan a Nenbutsu Practitioner: A Study and Translation of the
Kūyarui,” Journal of the International Buddhist Association 34,
no. 2 (2007): 305–327.
Mukashimukashi monogatari [Tales of Long Ago]. In Zoku Nihon
zuihitsu taisei: Bekkan 1 [Complete Writings of Japan, Continued:
Supplementary Volume 1], supervised by Mori Senzō and Kitagawa
Hirokuni. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1981. Translated by Gerald

References & Further Reading

233

Groemer in Portraits of Edo and Early Modern Japan: The Shogun’s
Capital in Zuihitsu Writings, 1657–1855 (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2019).
Murai Yasuhiko. Sen no Rikyū: Sono shōgai to chanoyu no imi[Sen no Rikyū: His Lifetime and the Meaning of Chanoyu]. Tokyo:
Nihon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1971.
Namihira Emiko. Kegare no kōzō [The Structure of Pollution].
Tokyo: Seidosha, 1984.
Nanbō Sōkei. Nanpōroku [Southern Record]. Vol. 4 of Chadō koten
zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Way of Tea], edited by Sen
Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Nihon kōki [Later Chronicle of Japan]. Shintei Zōho Kokushi Taikei[Compendium of Japanese History, Revised and Expanded],edited by Kuroita Katsumi and the Compendium of Japanese
History Editorial Association. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1984.
Nishibe Bunjō. “Zen Monks and the Formation of the Way of Tea.”
Translated by Hirota Kimiko. Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 28 (1981):
7–46.
Nishibori Ichizō. Chadō kōgenroku [Records of Sayings on the Wayof Tea]. Kyoto: Kawara Shoten, 1942.
Nobutaru. Higaki-ki [Records of the Higaki Tea Shop]. Private
collection.
Ōbuku chasen yuraiki [Account of the Origin of Ōbuku Tea Whisks].
Private collection.
Ōe Sumi. Reigi sahō zenshū [Complete Etiquette Methods]. Tokyo:
Chūōkōronsha, 1938.
Ōhira Gen’emon. Chanoyudō kikigaki [Commentary on the Way of
Chanoyu]. Vol. 11 of Chanoyu kenkyū: Wahi [Chanoyu Research:
Harmony]. Kyoto: Fushin’an Bunko, 2019.
Ōkura Torahiro. Ōkura Torahiro-bon: Nō kyōgen [Ōkura Torahiro
Edition: Noh Kyōgen]. Revised by Sasano Ken. Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1942–1945.
Rakuchū rakugai zu [Scenes in and around the Capital]. Seventeenth
century. Folding screen, 6 panels, 162.5 cm × 54.2 cm. Private
collection.

234

References & Further Reading

Rikyū hyakkaiki [Record of Rikyū’s Hundred Tea Gatherings]. Vol. 6
of Chadō koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Way ofTea], edited by Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Rikyū hyakushu [Rikyū’s Hundred Verses]. Edited by Iguchi Kaisen.
Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1973.
Rikyū kyaku no shidai [Rikyū’s Precepts for Guests]. Vol. 2 of Chadō
zenshū [Complete Works of the Way of Tea]. Osaka: Sōgensha,
1935–1937.
Rodrigues, João. Nihon kyōkaishi [History of the Church in Japan].
2 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967–1970. Originally published
as Historia da Igreja do Japão (1627).
Ryūtei Tanehiko. Ryūtei ki [Ryūtei’s Diary]. Late Edo period.
National Diet Library Digital Collection, Tokyo, Japan.
Sanjō Kintada. Gogumaiki [Diary of Sanjō Kintada]. 4 vols. Dai-Nihon
Kokiroku [Old Diaries of Japan] series. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1980–1992.
Sanjōnishi Sanetaka. Sanetaka kōki [Official Diary of Sanjōnishi
Sanetaka]. In Zoku gunsho ruijū [Collection of Historical
Documents, Continued], compiled by Hanawa Hokiichi. Tokyo:
Keizai Zasshisha, 1902–1911.
Santō Kyōden. Kengu irigomi sentō shinwa [New Bathhouse Talesof Wisdom and Folly]. 1802. Kibyōshi illustrated book. 3 vols.
University of Tokyo General Library, Tokyo, Japan.
Senmen Hokekyō sasshi [Fan-Shaped Lotus Sutra Album]. Midtwelfth century. Shitennōji Temple; also Tokyo National Museum.
Sen no Rikyū. Nanbō ate densho [Writings Addressed to Nanbō]. In
Sen no Rikyū zenshū [Collected Works of Sen no Rikyū], edited by
Suzuki Kei’ichi. Tokyo: Gakugei Shoin, 1941.
Sen Sōshitsu (supervisor), Kumakura Isao, and Tanaka Hidetaka, eds.
Chadōgaku taikei [Compendium of Tea Studies]. Kyoto: Tankōsha,1999–2001.
Shichijūichi-ban shokunin uta awase [Poetry Competition between
Artisans in Seventy-One Pairs]. Picture scroll. In Maeda Ikutokukai
Sonkeikaku Bunko shozō, Shichijūichi-ban shokunin uta awase[Maeda Ikutokukai Foundation Sonkeikaku Bunko Owned, PoetryReferences & Further Reading

235

Competition between Artisans in Seventy-One Pairs]. Tokyo: Bensei
Shuppan, 2014.
[Sōami]. Chōka chanoyu monogatari [Epic Poem of the Tale of Tea].
In Shoki no wakan chasho [Early Sino-Japanese Tea Texts], vol. 1of Chasho koten shūsei [Compilation of Classic Tea Texts], editedby Takahashi Tadahiko and Kōzu Asao. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2019.
Tahara, Mildred. “Yamato Monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 27,
no. 1 (Spring 1972): 1–37.
Taiheiki [Chronicle of Great Peace]. Vols. 34–36, Nihon koten
bungaku taikei [Japanese Classic Literature Systematic Edition].
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1960–1962.
Takeno Jōō. Bunrui sōjinboku [Classifications of Tea]. Vol. 12 of
Chadō zenshū [Complete Works of the Way of Tea]. Osaka:
Sōgensha, 1935–1937.
Tamiya Kitsuan. Guzasso [A Collection of Foolish Thoughts]. In
Nihon zuihitsu taisei [Compendium of Japanese Essays]. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1977.
Tanaka Yutaka and Akase Shingo, eds. Shin kokin wakashū [NewCollection of Poems Ancient and Modern]. Vol. 11 of Shin Nihon
koten bungaku taikei [New Compendium of Japanese ClassicalLiterature]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1989–2005.
Tani Akira and Yagasaki Zentarō, eds. Chafu [Tea Notes]. Tokyo:
Shibunkaku, 2010.
Tanigawa Kotosuga. Wakun no shiori [Syllabic Guide to JapaneseWords]. Edited by Ozaki Satoakira. Tokyo: Benseisha, 1984.
Tanikawa Tetsuzō. “The Esthetics of Chanoyu, Part 3.” Chanoyu
Quarterly, no. 26 (1981): 33–49.
Teikin ōrai [Correspondence on Home Education]. Vol. 3 of Nihon
kyōkasho taikei, ōrai-hen [Compendium of Japanese Textbooks,
Correspondences]. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1968.
Tōji monjo [Documents of Tōji Temple]. Kyoto Institute, Libraryand Archives. Kyoto, Japan.
Tosa Mitsunobu. Fukutomi sōshi [Tales of Fukutomi]. Fifteenth
century. Picture scroll, 2 fascicles.
Tsuda Sōgyū. Tennōjiya kaiki [Records of Tennōjiya]. Vols. 7–8 of236

References & Further Reading

Chadō koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Way of Tea],
edited by Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Tsutsui Hiroichi. “Sōami Chōka chanoyu monogatari to shokichadō” [Sōami’s Epic Poem of the Tale of Tea and the Beginningsof the Way of Tea]. “Chadō no keisei” [The Formation of the Wayof Tea] (special issue), Chadō bunka kenkyū [Research on the
Culture of the Way of Tea] 1 (August 1974): 37–66.
Uchiyama Kazumoto. Chasen hakubutsushi [An Encyclopedic
Chronicle of the Tea Whisk]. Tokyo: Tōkyō Shobōsha, 1974.
Unsen Taikyoku. Hekizan nichiroku [Hekizan Diary]. Edited by
Takeuchi Rizō. Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 1982.
Usoshū [Crow and Rat Collection]. In Shoki no wakan chasho [Early
Sino-Japanese Tea Texts], vol. 1 of Chasho koten shūsei[Compilation of Classic Tea Texts], edited by Takahashi Tadahikoand Kōzu Asao. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2019.
Uwai Kakuken. Uwai Kakuken nikki [Diary of Uwai Kakuken]. Dai
Nihon Kokiroku [Old Diaries of Japan] series. Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1954.
Xu Jing. Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing [Illustrated Account of the
Embassy to Goryeo in the Xuanhe Era]. Taipei: Guoli Gugong
Bowuyuan, 1974.
Yamanoue Sōji. Yamanoue Sōji ki [Record of Yamanoue Sōji]. Vol. 6
of Chadō koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Way ofTea], edited by Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Yamashina Dōan. Kaiki [The Sayings and Deeds of Konoe Iehiro].
Vol. 5 of Chadō koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Wayof Tea], edited by Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Yanagisawa Kien. Unpyō zasshi [Clouds of Floating Grasses]. 4 vols.
Revised by Mori Senzō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1936.
Yōsai. Kissa yōjōki [Drinking Tea to Nourish Life]. Vol. 2 of Chadō
koten zenshū [Complete Classic Works of the Way of Tea], editedby Sen Sōshitsu. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1956–1962.
Zegaibō emaki [Zegaibō Picture Scroll]. Vol. 27 of Shinshū Nihon
emakimono zenshū [Complete Japanese Picture Scrolls, New
Edition], edited by Umezu Jirō. Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1978.

References & Further Reading

237

Further Reading
Chanoyu Quarterly (journal)
Chiba Kaoko. The Japanese Tea Ceremony: An Introduction. London:
Routledge, 2023.
Corbett, Rebecca. Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in
Edo and Meiji Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018.
Ferris, Wayne. A Bowl for a Coin: A Commodity History ofJapanese Tea. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2021.
Haga Kōshirō. Sen no Rikyū. Jinbutsu Sōsho series, no. 105. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1963.
Hellyer, Robert. Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled
America’s Tea Cups. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
Hirota, Dennis. Wind in the Pines: Classic Writing of the Way of Tea
as a Buddhist Path. Fremont: Asian Humanities Press, 1995.
Kumakura Isao. Kumakura Isao chosakushū [Kumakura Isao
Collection]. Vol. 1, Chanoyu: Kokoro to katachi [Chanoyu: Heartand Forms]. Vol. 2, Chanoyu to chajin no rekishi [Chanoyu and
Tea Person History]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2016.
———. Nanpōroku (Gendaigo yaku) [Southern Record (Modern
Translation)]. Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2009.
———. “Chasen: The Tea Whisk.” Translated by Rebecca Otowa.
Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 37 (1984): 41–54.
———. “The History of Chanoyu in Early-Modern Japan.”
Translated by Zane Ferry. Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 75 (1994): 7–22.
———. “Kan’ei Culture.” Translated by Gaynor Sekimori. Chanoyu
Quarterly, no. 42 (1985): 12–23.
———. “Matsudaira Fumai: The Creation of a New World of
Chanoyu.” Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 25 (1980): 22–30.
———. “Rikyu and the Birth of the Nijiriguchi.” Translated by
Alfred Birnbaum. Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 44 (1985): 41–46.
———. “Seated in Solitary Contemplation.” Chanoyu Quarterly,
no. 21 (1978): 7–14.
Konishi Jin’ichi. “The Art of Renga.” Translated by Karen Brazell andLewis Cook. The Journal of Japanese Studies 2 (1): 29–31, 33–61.

238

References & Further Reading

Kōzu Asao. Chanoyu no rekishi [The History of Chanoyu]. Tokyo:
Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan, 2009.
Nishibe Bunjō. “Zen Monks and the Formation of the Way of Tea.”
Translated by Hirota Kimiko. Chanoyu Quarterly, no. 28 (1981):
7–46.
Ohki Sadako. Tea Culture of Japan. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2009.
Okakura Kakuzō. The Book of Tea: A Japanese Harmony of Art,
Culture, and the Simple Life. New York: Duffield & Company, 1906.
Oshikiri Taka. Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture
and Consumption in the Meiji Period. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
Pitelka, Morgan. Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons, and Tea
Practitioners in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005.
———, ed. Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice. London:
Routledge Curzon, 2003.
Surak, Kristin. Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism inPractice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.
Tahara, Mildred. “Yamato Monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 27,
no. 1 (Spring 1972): 1–37.
Varley, Paul, and Kumakura Isao, eds. Tea in Japan: Essays on the
History of Chanoyu. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989.

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About the Author
Kumakura Isao is the current director of the Tea Museum, Shizuoka
Prefecture, as well as the Miho Museum in Shiga Prefecture. He received his BA, MA, and a DLitt in Japanese cultural history from theTokyo University of Education. He has been a lecturer at the Institutefor Research in Humanities, Kyoto University; professor in the History
and Anthropology Department, University of Tsukuba, and at the
National Museum of Ethnology; director of the Hayashibara Museumof Art; and president of Shizuoka University of Art and Culture. His
wide-ranging research interests and activities include the history of
the tea ceremony, Kan’ei era (mid-seventeenth century) Japanese culture, the history of Japanese food culture, and the mingei or folk art
movement. Among his published works are Cultural Atlas of Japan(1988), coedited with Martin Collcutt and Marius Jansen; Tea inJapan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu (1989), coedited with Paul
Varley; Chanoyu no rekishi: Sen no Rikyū made (The History of
Chanoyu: Until Sen no Rikyū; 1990); and Nihon ryōri no rekishi (TheHistory of Japanese Cuisine; 2007). A seven-volume collection of his
works was published as Kumakura Isao chosakushū (The Collected
Writings of Kumakura Isao) in 2016–2017.

About the Translator
Martha J. McClintock is an art historian, former museum curator,
and, since 1991, Japanese-to-English translator of texts on art andcultural properties for individuals, organizations, and museums
worldwide. She received her BA in History of Art from Smith College,
and an MA in History of Asian Art as well as a PhD in History ofJapanese Art from the University of Michigan (PhD dissertation,
Okuhara Seiko (1837–1913): The life and arts of a Meiji Period literati artist [volumes I–III]).

（英文版）茶の湯：わび茶の心とかたちJapanese Tea Culture: The Heart and Form of Chanoyu
2023年３月31日
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