I have no
doubt that, within ten years,
the fundamental way of tea will die out.
When it dies
out, people in society will believe,
on the contrary, that it is flourishing.
The
miserable end—
when it becomes completely
a matter of worldly amusement —
is now
in sight.
How
lamentable it is! ...
It is out of
step with this latter age.
— Sen no Rikyu, 1589 [1]
Thus spoke
my tea ancestor, Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) two years before he obliged his über
patron and chanoyu student, the great warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, to commit seppuku. It
would appear that the progenitor of the XVI generations-long San Senke (Three
Sen Families) dynasty was aware that his modest, contemplative practice of chanoyu,
literally boiling water for matcha, might turn into an excuse and means by
which to acquire and promote one’s copious material possessions. Was he naive
enough to believe that his students would reach the heart of his wabi-infused
tea practice, to make do with a few essential utensils of subtle beauty at hand
and retire to tiny rustic huts deep in the woods?
It
is likely that he was considering both the intangible and material aspects of
the enterprise that became Cha-do, the Way of Tea. Compare the aesthetics of
his tiny, still extant Taian tearoom, dating from 1583,
at Daitokuji in Kyoto
and Hideyoshi’s long-gone portable Ogon Chashitsu (golden tearoom), created in
1585 and eventually destroyed in the Osaka Castle fire of 1615. Dare we infer
that Rikyu, a Zen monk, was attached to the idea of this “fundamental” chado,
not that Way of Tea? Perhaps, but his signature notions of wabi and sabi—well
worn, essential, imperfect, quiet, and impermanent objects—has reached us to
this day through 16 unbroken generations of Senke Chado practitioners.
Swords Into
Tea Scoops
While he
left no personally written records [2],
there is no doubt that Rikyu was a change agent, a catalyst who maintained his
signature philosophy of transmuting boiling water to make tea into a profound
experience of wa, kei, sei and jaku (harmony, respect, purity and tranquility)
throughout his life. He captivated the attention of the most notorious warlords
of the time and convinced them that mastery of chanoyu was the penultimate mark
of an action hero; carving tea scoops would be a better use of their swords.
His contemporary adherents were counted among the vanguard of the sukisha
(civic, economic, religious, cultural and military leaders) and also included
wealthy farmers and merchants, individuals described by Kamakura Isao as a
“force behind Civilization and Enlightenment policies.” Over time, the body of
practitioners has changed drastically with the economic and social ebb and
flow. By the end of the Edo period, “even” women and foreigners were counted
among practitioners and licensed as instructors.
Rikyu’s
legacy has reached us in the 21st century through the careful management of his
resources by three branches of the family established by his spiritual heir,
his grandson Gempaku Sōtan, the third generation grand master of the lineage.
It was he who established Rikyu’s aesthetic legacy for all time. He reclaimed
and consolidated his grandfather’s property and, upon his retirement, bequeathed
it in thirds to the next generation. This was the start of the San Senke, the
three families that directly can claim direct blood lineage from Rikyu:
Omotesenke, Urasenke and Mushanokojisenke (named after the front, back and a
nearby street of the original estate). Affectionately known as “Wabi Sōtan,”,
he also preserved Rikyu’s chadogu (tea utensils), including some made by his
ancestor’s own hand. Among various tasks, Sōtan evaluated newer utensils, putting
his stamp on the lids of their boxes, and gave gomei (poetic names) to items that
he deemed suitable for use in tea practice. He also regulated the teaching and
practice in the name of Rikyu.
The
San Senke have sustained themselves for nearly half a millennium by teaching temae
(tea-making procedures), overseeing the presentations of tea gatherings, being
the arbiters of all things of good taste by bestowing certification of gonomimono
(favored items) and other related intangible cultural exchanges and material
objects, from chashitsu (tea huts) to matcha itself. Currently the San Senke
grandmasters are Zabosai, Sen Sōshitsu XVI (Urasenke), Jimyosai, Sen Sōsa XIV
(Omotesenke), and Futassai, Sen Sōshu XIV (Mushanokojisenke). Each one has
sustained their progenitor’s practice in a fundamentally similar but slightly This
way, not That way!
The
history of chanoyu and its impact on Japan is long and anecdotes abound as a
result of practitioners’ keeping meticulous diaries of who came to tea, what dogu
were used, the meals served, etc. In 1757, the term iemoto [3] (grand master)
became fixed as a cultural norm for these families. Paul Varley notes, in Tea
in Japan: Essays on the History of
Chanoyu, two reasons that this system caught on formally. The first,
“... a swelling demand for the arts” largely from amateurs practicing chanoyu
“as an avocation or who wished to enrich themselves culturally”. Successive
generations of iemoto cultivated new, innovative ways to take advantage of
Japan’s social, cultural and economic shifts by adjusting the practice, for
example by creating procedures requiring formerly never-conceived dogu, such as
tables and chairs! Of course, students required more lessons to learn these new
ways.
A New Market
for Craftworks
As the
number of people engaging in the practice grew or declined with the
vicissitudes of Japanese socio-politico-economic life, so did the market for dogu.
While Rikyu was hard at work tempering the lust for power and prestige,
nonetheless tea gatherings became excuses for showing off one’s material
possessions. Some utensils were so coveted they were more valuable than a plot
of land when demanded by the victor of a battle. In 1587 Hideyoshi had the
chutzpah to host the Great Kitano (Tenmangu) Tea Gathering to which he brought
all of his omeibutsu (precious Chinese utensils) for all to inspect and
expected his approximately 1,000 guests to do the same.
Rikyu’s
minimalist aesthetic, however, favored a return to chanoyu's humble origins in
Zen Buddhist monasteries. His teaching promoted mitate, appropriating an object
for other than its original purpose, using a worn, weathered Korean rice bowl
that still had some life left in it and perhaps an interesting back-story. Artisans
working in wood, clay, bamboo, metal, silk, paper and lacquer, picked up on the
burgeoning market and began to fashion the vessels that would enable the host
to combine the five elements into a once-in-a-lifetime “ichi go, ichi e” for
the guest.
Rikyu
began to commission a number of local artisans to handcraft items to contain
the essential elements of chanoyu (fire, wind, water, earth). Among the many
workshops creating everyday essentials, those he worked with repeatedly were
able to make one-of-a-kind utensils that expressed his wabi tastes. These
artisans became known as shokka to tea practitioners. In addition to
transactional relationships, these family workshops established symbiotic
social relationships with their patrons, and each other, in a few cases even
intermarrying. Together, these multi-generation lineages of shokka and Senke
have risen and fallen in tandem like a double-stranded helix of Japan’s
cultural DNA.
THE 10
The shokka
group of craft families with the longest relationship to the San Senke include
Eiraku (ceramics), Hiki (lacquered paper), Raku (pottery), Kuroda (bamboo), and
Nakagawa (repousse and cast metalwork), all tracing their ancestry back to
Rikyu’s time. Later Senke generations embraced Onishi (cast metal), Komazawa
(wood joinery), Nakamura (laquerware), Tsuchida (textiles), and Okumura (paper)
family workshops. Other crafts workshops have been patronized but none so
consistently.
The
shokka each comprise one workshop and did not evolve into “schools” as did the
tea families. (See Morgan Pitelka's notes, below.) They preserve collections of their historic wares (several with
museums open to the public), and each generation generates new works through utsushi
(emulation of the previous), a developmental training method common to all
ranges of Japanese artist genres. Through the process of replicating the
techniques and style of a noted or established master, the craftsman as artist experiences
first-hand the technology, material requirements, and necessary aesthetic
understanding, to create a new “original” item. Utsushi promotes a dialogue
between the artist and the masters of the past, connecting past, present,
and future. This may also frame the teaching practices of successive
generations of tea masters.
Onko Chishin:
Warm to the Old. Know the New.
As in the
tea schools, the responsibility for carrying on the artisanal traditions have
been carefully passed down, usually from father to a son (though currently
three holders of lineage are women) chosen for his/her technical mastery of
skills, as well as his/her capacity to sustain the lineage by maintaining its
material resources. Producing and training an heir, a wakasosho (young master)
is essential. In addition to the land on which the workshop stands, the
inheritance includes in situ sources of raw materials and caches of those that
require long aging periods (e.g. clay, drying timber), proprietary patterns and
designs, and notebooks (including records of how and when objects were used),
fabrication tools, pattern books, models, molds and equipment (such as forges,
looms, etc). Above all, one inherits the relationships along the supply chain
and patronage, especially the tea masters themselves.
A
true disciple was thought to inherit the “‘complete’ knowledge and authority of
his master in entirety (kanzen soden).” Each of the craft houses has their own
form of transmission, much of it closely guarded oral and privately archived
resources. In the case of Raku tea bowls, Kakunyu (Kichizaemon XIV, 1918-1980)
admonished, “In a single line of transmission, what a father teaches to his
child is that he will not teach.” His son, the current head, Kichizaemon XV,
was challenged to figure out how to work with the materials, tools and
techniques at his disposal to achieve a representative but distinct outcome.
This skill and sensitivity is nurtured by examining past pieces and determining
the nuanced taste of the current iemotos of the three Sen tea families. The
work of Atsundo, the next in the family lineage, has been well regarded already.
Going Head
to Head
Each August,
the current heads of the shokka as a group undertake ochugen (a formal visit)
to the current head of each of the San Senke to learn of proposed activities
for the coming year. As esteemed members of the greater tea community /
extended “family” members, they will also attend such formal gatherings as memorial
anniversaries of Rikyu, Sōtan and other prominent Senke family members.
Occasionally, the craft houses produce unique objects to commemorate special
observances, such as Rikyu’s 400-year memorial.
At the
beginning of each month, they each visit each grand tea master more informally
to get feedback on new works and ascertain their patrons’ current needs. Many gonomimono
(favored pieces) that become part of the aesthetic legacies of the iemotos and
craft families. These may be identified at these casual conversations, and a gomei
(poetic name) granted by the tea master. Practitioners of a particular tea
school are encouraged to inculcate current or past iemotos' nuanced tastes and
may acquire similar items. These affinities are recorded and studied by tea
students, art historians, restoration experts and curators alike.
-->
In addition to other considerations for the toriawase
(selection of dogu for chanoyu), such as formality and seasonality, a deft host
must take into account the lineages of the ware used; the provenance of some
pieces is formally discussed (haiken) at appropriate
points during tea gatherings. When objects that display an acute sensibility of
the first genarational iteration and reinterpretation by a subsequent
generation are used together in the tea room, a new, sharper perspective is
cast upon the craft family’s oeuvre.
According to
Kristin Surak, in
Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice, “Aficionados take pains to ensure
that utensils made or signed by more recent oiemoto do not usurp those made by
one further back in the lineage.”
[4]
From Shokka
to Senke Jisshoku
Japanese
art, particularly the traditional forms, were hit particularly hard by bunmei
kaika, the all-out Westernization movement of the early Meiji period, and went
into a state of creative decline at the end of the 19th century. The new middle
class that was moving into cities was hungry for modern life and Western-style
art. At the same time, Westerners were mostly only showing interest in the
exotic exported Oriental Japonisme.
In
1919 a marketing campaign by Mitsukoshi Department Store [5] to generate business
at its Osaka branch gallery [6] featured the work of the above-mentioned 10 shokka; this
was the first time they were promoted as Senke Jisshoku, the “Ten Craftsmen
(houses) of the San Senke.” While they still received commissions from these
and other tea masters for one-of-a-kind wares, they found a new market in this
emerging strata of consumers hungry for prêt-à-porter examples from the masters.
Whether a buyer knew how to utilize these objects in their “proper” context for
tea or just enjoyed them for utilitarian or bragging rights was not a barrier
to consumption.
Ninety
years later, in 2009, Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) celebrated
the "Senke Jisshoku” with a major exhibition at which the current lineage
holders had the opportunity to speak about their traditions and, interestingly,
to nominate favored items from the museum’s global collection. The Japan Times also had a write up on the exhibition.
Post Scripts
A note about the Japanese term. I am using Jisshoku as did the Minpaku exhibition. I have also seen it written Jusshoku.
As
described by Morgan Pitelka in Japanese Tea Culture: Art History and Practice,
“From the late 16th century to the present day, representatives of these
traditions have been engaged in a constant process of writing and rewriting the
boundaries of their own histories, ruling over what is not authentic practice,
and editing the material and textual legacies that have formed the core body of
culture passed from one generation to the next.”
We
don’t know what Rikyu would have thought of the present-day form of chanoyu,
but it is likely that he would recognize an attempt to see its greater purpose as
embodying the heart of suki, or in Ito Junji’s description, “establishing one’s
own existence through one’s relationship with others.”
----------
This is an updated, corrected version of the article by the same name appearing for the first time in Kyoto Journal #89 (October 2017).
A longer, fully annotated version of this article
can be accessed on KJ’s website.
Nushi (lacquerer) 金物
The professional name inherited through the generations by carpenters, who are purveyors to the san-Senke, and who manufacture shelves, incense containers, and fireplace frames, among others. After the death of the 14th generation family head in 1977, the position has remained unfilled for a long time, and currently, Yoshida Hirozo, the son of the 14th generation master's nephew, is undergoing training to inherit the line.
Kanamonoshi (hardware maker) 金物師
The name used by ikkanbari saikushi through the generations. The founder of ikkanbari in Japan, one of the types of lacquering, it is a lacquering family that has supplied the Senke through the ages with utensils lacquered in the ikkanbari method, such as tea caddies and incense containers. The current generation is the 16th, and along with the 12th generation of Sotetsu Nakamura, is one of the rare examples of a female head of Senke jissoku.
