I have no
doubt that, within ten years,
the fundamental way of tea will die out.
the fundamental way of tea will die out.
When it dies
out, people in society will believe,
on the contrary, that it is flourishing.
on the contrary, that it is flourishing.
The
miserable end—
when it becomes completely
a matter of worldly amusement —
is now in sight.
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]
— 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.
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.
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.
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.
Post Scripts
A note about the Japanese term. I am using Jisshoku as did the Minpaku exhibition. I have also seen it written Jusshoku.
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.”
----------
[1] The Wind in the Pines: Chanoyu as a Buddhist
Practice. Hirota, Dennis, ed. P. 121
(sourced from Kyoto Journal #50, p. 72.)
[2] There continues to be discussion among scholars as to
exactly what written records Rikyu might have penned. Mindy Landeck notes in a
private conversation, commenting to a note from Elmar Schmeisser: “Scholars of
tea accept that with the exception of a few letters in Rikyu's own calligraphy,
much of what is attributed to Rikyu is not by him at all. Many can be traced to
the late 17th century, but precious little dates to Rikyu's own lifetime. Texts
like the Namporoku that were written 100 years later are often asserted to be
earlier accounts, but that is demonstrably untrue in almost every instance.
While this does not mean that some of these later things reflect thoughts on
Rikyu's teachings of their own times, those times are quite likely to be from
the 1650s onward, whereas Rikyu died in 1591.
Elmar Schmeisser notes, “One of the very few exceptions may be the Rikyu hyakkaiki (100 lines / phrases, typically dated to 1590) on which [Daniel] Burkus has been working and sharing at http://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/. The fact that Varley and others write about these sources in ways that obscures their historically problematic nature is something that I have grappled with in my own scholarship on tea history.”
[3] Outside the Raku Museum there is a stone tablet with "rakuyaki iemoto raku kichizaemon taku" (楽焼家元 楽吉左衛門宅) written on it. Also, Japanese government websites and the recent English language publication by Raku note "楽焼十四代家元、楽吉左衛門" (14th generation iemoto). Yet Morgan Pitelka notes in a private comment: The term “oiemoto” is reserved for the leaders of the large, pyramid shaped arts organizations that have ranks of teachers and pupils, masters and practitioners. "Wakasosho" means young teacher, but in the ten craft families, usually the art is preserved within the lineage, not disseminated through teaching. It's a different organizational model." He notes that "Raku of course avoids [the pyramid shaped system] by monopolizing the practice one generation at a time. ...The only naming conventions in the Raku family that I'm aware of are the title 'Kichizaemon', which is held by the current head of the household, and the retirement name that ends with 'ryu" (e.g. Ichinyu, Sonyu, Sanyu, etc." More about this in his Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons and Tea Practitioners in Japan. It would be interesting to further explore when the Raku family began to use the term “oiemoto” for the generation “head”. Thanks to Lucinda Cowing for prompting further research.
Elmar Schmeisser notes, “One of the very few exceptions may be the Rikyu hyakkaiki (100 lines / phrases, typically dated to 1590) on which [Daniel] Burkus has been working and sharing at http://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/. The fact that Varley and others write about these sources in ways that obscures their historically problematic nature is something that I have grappled with in my own scholarship on tea history.”
[3] Outside the Raku Museum there is a stone tablet with "rakuyaki iemoto raku kichizaemon taku" (楽焼家元 楽吉左衛門宅) written on it. Also, Japanese government websites and the recent English language publication by Raku note "楽焼十四代家元、楽吉左衛門" (14th generation iemoto). Yet Morgan Pitelka notes in a private comment: The term “oiemoto” is reserved for the leaders of the large, pyramid shaped arts organizations that have ranks of teachers and pupils, masters and practitioners. "Wakasosho" means young teacher, but in the ten craft families, usually the art is preserved within the lineage, not disseminated through teaching. It's a different organizational model." He notes that "Raku of course avoids [the pyramid shaped system] by monopolizing the practice one generation at a time. ...The only naming conventions in the Raku family that I'm aware of are the title 'Kichizaemon', which is held by the current head of the household, and the retirement name that ends with 'ryu" (e.g. Ichinyu, Sonyu, Sanyu, etc." More about this in his Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons and Tea Practitioners in Japan. It would be interesting to further explore when the Raku family began to use the term “oiemoto” for the generation “head”. Thanks to Lucinda Cowing for prompting further research.
[4] Surak, p. 123
[5] Mitsukoshi has been the leader in many modernization efforts to promote capitalism in Japan with a number of Japan's firsts: department store (1904), in-store restaurant (1907), escalator (1914), and fashion show (1927). The Osaka store was opened in 1691; it merged in 2008 with another company and the store closed 2014. "The decision to retreat from Osaka can be seen as Mitsukoshi's epilogue in its story of trying to regain its position as the top department store in Japan."
[6] Further research about Mitsukoshi and its gallery exhibitions of chadogu has pointed me to the Riseido Gallery which in 1918 - 1941 held "Oriental exhibitions every year at Mitsukoshi stores in Osaka and Tokyo." The Gallery was founded by Tamitsuchi Murakami, a green tea dealer in Hirano-macho, HIgashi-ku Osaka who operated under the trade name Shunchodo. The second generation owner, Tajijiro Murakami, married the daughter of the head clerk at the store and began an art trading company in that neighborhood.
[5] Mitsukoshi has been the leader in many modernization efforts to promote capitalism in Japan with a number of Japan's firsts: department store (1904), in-store restaurant (1907), escalator (1914), and fashion show (1927). The Osaka store was opened in 1691; it merged in 2008 with another company and the store closed 2014. "The decision to retreat from Osaka can be seen as Mitsukoshi's epilogue in its story of trying to regain its position as the top department store in Japan."
[6] Further research about Mitsukoshi and its gallery exhibitions of chadogu has pointed me to the Riseido Gallery which in 1918 - 1941 held "Oriental exhibitions every year at Mitsukoshi stores in Osaka and Tokyo." The Gallery was founded by Tamitsuchi Murakami, a green tea dealer in Hirano-macho, HIgashi-ku Osaka who operated under the trade name Shunchodo. The second generation owner, Tajijiro Murakami, married the daughter of the head clerk at the store and began an art trading company in that neighborhood.
