Murata Shukō was a Japanese tea ceremony

Japanese tea ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony, also called the Way of Tea, is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha, powdered green tea. In Japanese, it is called . The manner in which it is performed, or the art of its performance, is called...

 practicer of Muromachi period

Muromachi period

The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji, two years after the brief Kemmu restoration of imperial...

. He proposed the importance of the spirit and mind in the ceremony from studying Zen Buddhism.

Leaving a temple at a young age for unknown reasons, he came to meet Noami, an advisor to Shōgun

Shogun

A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...

 Ashikaga Yoshimasa

Ashikaga Yoshimasa

was the 8th shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate who reigned from 1449 to 1473 during the Muromachi period of Japan. Yoshimasa was the son of the sixth shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori....

, and a priest Ikkyu

Ikkyu

was an eccentric, iconoclastic Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet. He had a great impact on the infusion of Japanese art and literature with Zen attitudes and ideals.-Childhood:...

 from Daitoku temple

Daitoku-ji

is a Buddhist temple, one of fourteen autonomous branches of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen. It is located in Kita-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The "mountain name" , who is known by the title Daitō Kokushi, or "National Teacher of the Great Lamp," that he was given by Emperor Go-Daigo...

, who records show had knowledge of tea practices in Chinese tea classics

Tea Classics

Tea as a beverage was first consumed in China no later than the fifth century BCE. The earliest extant mention of tea in literature is in the Shih Ching or Book of Songs, written circa 550 BCE, although the ideogram used in these texts can also designate a variety of plants, such as sowthistle...

. Ikkyu hinted to Shukō the similarity between the spirit in Zen training and the mastery of tea and, for the rest of his life, Shukō sought to apply the principle of this similarity to the practice of tea ceremony

Tea ceremony

A tea ceremony is a ritualised form of making tea. The term generally refers to either chayi Chinese tea ceremony, chado Japanese tea ceremony, tarye Korean tea ceremony. The Japanese tea ceremony is more well known, and was influenced by the Chinese tea ceremony during ancient and medieval times....

, which was rapidly developing at that time. In particular, he first proposed the need of the host of the tea house to make tea for guests.

Shukō saw the tea ceremony as something more than just an entertainment or medicine and temple ceremony; his idea was that preparing and drinking tea allows for the expression of Zen values, as enlightenment must be found in everyday activities.