Schools of Japanese tea ceremony
Encyclopedia
"Schools of Japanese tea ceremony" refers to the various lines or "streams" of the Japan
ese Way of Tea
. The word "schools" here is an English rendering of the Japanese
term ryūha (流派).
which are dedicated to transmitting the Way of Tea that was developed by their mutual family founder, Sen no Rikyū. They are known collectively as the san-Senke (三千家), or "three Sen houses/families." These are the Omotesenke
, Urasenke
, and Mushakōjisenke. Another line, which was located in Sakai and therefore called the Sakaisenke (堺千家), was the original Senke (Sen house). Rikyū's natural son, Sen Dōan
, took over as head of the Sakaisenke after his father's death, but the Sakaisenke soon disappeared because Dōan had no offspring or successor. The school named Edosenke (江戸千家; lit., Edo Sen house/family) is not descended by blood from the Sen family; its founder, Kawakami Fuhaku (1716–1807), became a tea master under the 7th generation head of the Omotesenke line, and eventually set up a tea house in Edo (Tokyo), where he devoted himself to developing the Omotesenke style of the Way of Tea in Edo.
The san-Senke arose from the fact that three of the four sons of Genpaku Sōtan (Sen no Rikyū's grandson) inherited or built a tea house
, and assumed the duty of passing forward the tea ideals and tea methodology of their great-grandfather, Sen no Rikyū. Kōshin Sōsa inherited Fushin-an (不審菴) and became the head (iemoto
) of the Omotesenke line; Sensō Sōshitsu inherited Konnichi-an (今日庵) and became iemoto of the Urasenke line; and Ichiō Soshu
built Kankyū-an (官休庵) and became iemoto of the Mushakōjisenke line. The names of these three family lines came about from the locations of their estates, as symbolized by their tea houses: the family in the front (omote), the family in the rear (ura), and the family on Mushakōji Street.
The Way of Tea perfected by Sen no Rikyū and furthered by Sen Sōtan is known as wabi-cha
. The san-Senke have historically championed this manner of tea.
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese Way of Tea
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...
. The word "schools" here is an English rendering of the Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
term ryūha (流派).
san-Senke
There are three historical households (家) directly descended from the 16th-century tea master Sen no RikyūSen no Rikyu
, is considered the historical figure with the most profound influence on chanoyu, the Japanese "Way of Tea", particularly the tradition of wabi-cha...
which are dedicated to transmitting the Way of Tea that was developed by their mutual family founder, Sen no Rikyū. They are known collectively as the san-Senke (三千家), or "three Sen houses/families." These are the Omotesenke
Omotesenke
is the name of one of the three houses or families that count their family founder as Sen Rikyū and are dedicated to carrying forward the Way of Tea that he developed. The other two are Urasenke and Mushakōjisenke. The three are together referred to as the san-Senke...
, Urasenke
Urasenke
is the name of one of the main schools of Japanese tea ceremony. It is one of the san-Senke ; the other two are Omotesenke and Mushakōjisenke....
, and Mushakōjisenke. Another line, which was located in Sakai and therefore called the Sakaisenke (堺千家), was the original Senke (Sen house). Rikyū's natural son, Sen Dōan
Sen Doan
was a Japanese tea ceremony master. He was the eldest son, hence the blood descendant and natural heir, of Sen no Rikyū, born between Rikyū and Rikyū's first wife, known as Hōshin Myōju...
, took over as head of the Sakaisenke after his father's death, but the Sakaisenke soon disappeared because Dōan had no offspring or successor. The school named Edosenke (江戸千家; lit., Edo Sen house/family) is not descended by blood from the Sen family; its founder, Kawakami Fuhaku (1716–1807), became a tea master under the 7th generation head of the Omotesenke line, and eventually set up a tea house in Edo (Tokyo), where he devoted himself to developing the Omotesenke style of the Way of Tea in Edo.
The san-Senke arose from the fact that three of the four sons of Genpaku Sōtan (Sen no Rikyū's grandson) inherited or built a tea house
Chashitsu
In Japanese tradition, architectural spaces designed to be used for tea ceremony gatherings are known as chashitsu ....
, and assumed the duty of passing forward the tea ideals and tea methodology of their great-grandfather, Sen no Rikyū. Kōshin Sōsa inherited Fushin-an (不審菴) and became the head (iemoto
Iemoto
Iemoto is a Japanese term used to refer to the founder or current head master of a certain school of traditional Japanese art...
) of the Omotesenke line; Sensō Sōshitsu inherited Konnichi-an (今日庵) and became iemoto of the Urasenke line; and Ichiō Soshu
Sen Sōshu
Sen Sōshu is the hereditary name of the head of the Mushakōjisenke school of Japanese tea ceremony, whose founder was the 16th century tea master, Sen Rikyū....
built Kankyū-an (官休庵) and became iemoto of the Mushakōjisenke line. The names of these three family lines came about from the locations of their estates, as symbolized by their tea houses: the family in the front (omote), the family in the rear (ura), and the family on Mushakōji Street.
The Way of Tea perfected by Sen no Rikyū and furthered by Sen Sōtan is known as wabi-cha
Wabi-cha
Wabi-cha Wabi-cha Wabi-cha (わび茶、侘茶、侘び茶）, or wabi-tea, is a style of Japanese tea ceremony particularly associated with Sen Rikyū and Takeno Jōō before him. Wabi-cha emphasizes simplicity...
. The san-Senke have historically championed this manner of tea.
Other schools
The three lines of the Sen family which count their founder as Sen no Rikyū are simply known as the Omotesenke, Urasenke, and Mushakōjisenke. Schools that developed as branches or sub-schools of the san-Senke, or separately from them, are known as "~ryū" (from ryūha), which may be translated as "school" or "style." New schools often formed when factions split an existing school after several generations. There are many of these schools, most of them quite small.Current schools
- Anrakuan-ryū 安楽庵流 (founder: Anrakuan SakudenAnrakuan Sakudenwas an Edo period Japanese priest of the Jōdo sect of Buddhism; devotee of the tea ceremony; connoisseur of camellias; and dilettante poet. The name Anrakuan takes from the name of the tea house that he built and lived at after he retired at the age of seventy. He is famous as the author of the...
[1554-1642]) - Chinshin-ryū 鎮信流 (founder: Matsura Chinshin {1622-1703], who was magistrate of Hizen Hirado, present-day Hirado in Nagasaki Prefecture). The school takes after the "warrior-house style of tea" (buke-cha) that was promoted by the daimyōDaimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
Katagiri Sekishū. The school is also known as the Sekishū-ryū Chinshin-ha (Chinshin branch of the Sekishū school). - Edosenke-ryū 江戸千家流 (founder: Kawakami Fuhaku [1716-1807])
- Enshū-ryū 遠州流 (founder: Kobori MasakazuKobori Masakazu, better known as ', was a notable Japanese artist and aristocrat in the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu.In 1604, Kobori received as inheritance a 12,000-koku fief in Ōmi Province at Komuro. He excelled in the arts of painting, poetry, flower arrangement, and garden design...
a.k.a. Kobori Enshū) - Fujibayashi-ryū 藤林流 (a.k.a Sekishū-ryū Sōgen-ha; see Sekishū-ryū below)
- Fuhaku-ryū 不白流 (founder: Kawakami Fuhaku). This school, also called the Omotesenke Fuhaku-ryū, evolved after the death of Kawakami Fuhaku, when this faction split from the Edosenke school that he had founded.
- Fumai-ryū 不昧流
- Hayami-ryū 速水流 (founder: Hayami Sōtatsu [1727-1809], who learned tea under the 8th Urasenke iemoto, Yūgensai, and was allowed by him to found a school of his own in Okayama)
- Higo-koryū 肥後古流 (The word Higo refers to present-day Kumamoto Prefecture; koryū literally means "old school"). This is one of the schools of tea traditionally followed by members of the old Higo domain, and is considered to be faithful to Sen Rikyū's tea style; that is, it is tea of the "old school." The school has been led by three families, and therefore is divided into the following three branches:
- Furuichi-ryū 古市流
- Kobori-ryū 小堀流
- Kayano-ryū 萱野流
- Hisada-ryū 久田流
- Hosokawasansai-ryū 細川三斎流
- Horinouchi-ryū 堀内流
- Kogetsuenshū-ryū 壺月遠州流
- Matsuo-ryū 松尾流 (founder: Matsuo Sōji [1677-1752], great grandson of a close disciple of Sen SōtanSen Sotan, also known as Genpaku Sōtan 元伯宗旦, was the grandson of the famed figure in Japanese cultural history, Sen Rikyū. He is remembered as Rikyū's third-generation successor in Kyoto through whose efforts and by whose very being, as the blood-descendant of Rikyū, the ideals and style of Japanese tea...
who had the same name, Matsuo Sōji). The founder of the Matsuo school hailed from Kyoto and learned tea under the 6th Omotesenke iemoto, Kakukakusai. He later settled in Nagoya, where the Matsuo school is centered. A number of the successive Matsuo-ryū iemoto in history have apprenticed under the 'reigning' Omotesenke iemoto. - Mitani-ryū 三谷流
- Miyabi-ryū 雅流
- Nara-ryū 奈良流
- Oribe-ryū 織部流 (founder: Furuta ShigenariFuruta Shigenari, more familiarly known in Japanese cultural history as , was a warrior and celebrated master of the Japanese tea ceremony. He was originally a retainer of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. His teacher in the tea ceremony was Sen no Rikyū. He became the foremost tea master in the land after...
[a.k.a. Furuta Oribe]). According to the Japanese tea historian Tsutsui Hiroichi, after the death of Sen no Rikyū, his chadō follower Furuta Oribe succeeded him as the most influential tea master in the land. Oribe was chadō officer for the second Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa HidetadaTokugawa Hidetadawas the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, who ruled from 1605 until his abdication in 1623. He was the third son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate.-Early life :...
, and had a number of notable chadō disciples, foremost of whom was Kobori EnshūKobori Masakazu, better known as ', was a notable Japanese artist and aristocrat in the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu.In 1604, Kobori received as inheritance a 12,000-koku fief in Ōmi Province at Komuro. He excelled in the arts of painting, poetry, flower arrangement, and garden design...
. For political reasons, Oribe was ordered to commit seppukuSeppukuis a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies , or as a form of capital punishment...
(ritual suicide), and consequently his family did not become an official tea-teaching family. Through the succeeding generations, the family head held the position of karō (intendant) to the daimyōDaimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
headquartered at Oka Castle in present-day Oita PrefectureOita Prefectureis a prefecture of Japan on Kyūshū Island. The prefectural capital is the city of Ōita.- History :Around the 6th century Kyushu consisted of four regions: Tsukushi-no-kuni 筑紫国, Hi-no-kuni 肥国, and Toyo no kuni...
, Kyūshū. With the Meiji RestorationMeiji RestorationThe , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...
in the late 19th century, and the family's consequent loss of its hereditary position, the 14th-generation family head, Furuta Sōkan, went to the new capital, Tokyo, to attempt to reestablish the Oribe school of tea. Today, Kyūshū and especially Oita have the highest concentration of followers of this school. - Rikyū-ryū 利休流
- Sakai-ryū 堺流
- Sekishū-ryū 石州流 The school developed by the daimyōDaimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
Katagiri Sadamasa (a.k.a. Katagiri Sekishū]] (1605–73), nephew of Katagiri KatsumotoKatagiri Katsumotowas a Japanese war lord Daimyo of the Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period who in his youth was famed as one of the Seven Spears of Shizugatake. ....
. Sekishū was chanoyu teacher to the fourth Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa IetsunaTokugawa Ietsunawas the fourth shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty of Japan who was in office from 1651 to 1680. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Iemitsu, thus making him the grandson of Tokugawa Hidetada and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu.-Early Life :...
, and his chanoyu style therefore became popular among the feudal ruling class of Japan at the time. The Sekishū-ryū school of chanoyu was passed forward by his direct descendants, and also through his talented chanoyu followers who became known as the founders of branches （派, "-ha") of the Sekishū school.- Sekishū-ryū Chinshin-ha 石州流鎮信派 (see Chinshin-ryū above)
- Sekishū-ryū Ikei-ha 石州流怡渓派 (founder: the Rinzai Zen sect priest Ikei Sōetsu [1644-1714], founder of the Kōgen'in sub-temple at Tōkaiji temple in Tokyo). He studied chanoyu under Katagiri Sekishū. His chanoyu pupil, Isa Kōtaku (1684–1745), whose family was in charge of the Tokugawa government's tea houses, founded the Sekishū-ryū Isa-ha 石州流伊佐派. Furthermore, the Ikei-ha chanoyu style that spread among people in Tokyo was referred to as Edo Ikei, and that which spread among people in the Echigo (present-day Niigata Prefecture) region was referred to as Echigo Ikei.
- Sekishū-ryū Ōguchi-ha 石州流大口派
- Sekishū-ryū Shimizu-ha 石州流清水派
- Sekishū-ryū Sōgen-ha 石州流宗源派 (founder: Fujibayashi Sōgen 藤林宗源 [1606-95], chief retainer of the daimyōDaimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
Katagiri Sekishū). - Sekishū-ryū Nomura-ha 石州流野村派
- Sōhen-ryū 宗("hen" kanji unavailable)流 (founder: Yamada Sōhen [1627-1708], one of the four close disciples of Sen SōtanSen Sotan, also known as Genpaku Sōtan 元伯宗旦, was the grandson of the famed figure in Japanese cultural history, Sen Rikyū. He is remembered as Rikyū's third-generation successor in Kyoto through whose efforts and by whose very being, as the blood-descendant of Rikyū, the ideals and style of Japanese tea...
) - Sōwa-ryū 宗和流 (founder: Kanamori Sōwa [a.k.a. Kanamori Shigechika, 1584-1656])
- Uedasōko-ryū 上田宗箇流
- Uraku-ryū 有楽流 (founder: Oda NagamasuOda Nagamasuwas a Japanese daimyo who lived from the late Sengoku period through the early Edo period. Also known as Urakusai , he was a brother of Oda Nobunaga. Nagamasu converted to Christianity in 1588 and took the baptismal name of John....
[Urakusai]) - Yabunouchi-ryū 薮内流 (founder: Yabunouchi Kenchū Jōchi [1536-1627], who, like Sen Rikyū, learned chanoyu from Takeno JōōTakeno Joowas a master of the tea ceremony and a well-known merchant during the Sengoku period of the 16th century in Japan. His name has come down in Japanese cultural history because he followed Murata Jukō as an early proponent of wabi-cha, and was chanoyu teacher to Sen Rikyū.It is believed that the...
) - Yōken-ryū 庸軒流 (founder: Fujimura Yōken [1613-1733], one of the four close disciples of Sen SōtanSen Sotan, also known as Genpaku Sōtan 元伯宗旦, was the grandson of the famed figure in Japanese cultural history, Sen Rikyū. He is remembered as Rikyū's third-generation successor in Kyoto through whose efforts and by whose very being, as the blood-descendant of Rikyū, the ideals and style of Japanese tea...
)
External links
- Chinshin-ryū official website (Japanese)
- Edosenke official website (Japanese)
- Enshū-ryū official website
- Hayami-ryū official website (Japanese)
- Mushakōjisenke official website
- Omotesenke official website
- Sōhen-ryū official website
- Ueda Sôko-ryû official website
- Urasenke official website
- Yabunouchi official website (Japanese)