旦暮庁 TANBO-CHŌ

China, Northern and Southern Dynasties to T’ang Dynasty
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• Possibly the first written evidence of tea-drinking is a tale from the 6^th century BC of the Taoist sage Lao Tzu giving a copy of the Tao te-ching to a hermit in exchange for the hospitality of a bowl of tea.

• Tea is mentioned in a Chinese dictionary dating from 350.

• Lu Yü was an orphan raised in a Ch’an Buddhist monastery.  The Classic of Tea/Ch’a Ching (760) he wrote describes the preparation of brick tea (dancha) using a brazier decorated with Taoist motifs and a strong Confucian etiquette.  The Classic of Tea became extremely popular and led to Lu Yü’s deification as the god of tea.

• “The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.” – Lu Yü

• Buddhism: Tea has been associated with alertness during meditation at least since the Indian monk Bodhidharma established Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism in China around A.D. 526.  The legend goes that Bodhidharma was so frustrated with his sleepiness during meditation that he cut off his own eyelids and threw them to the ground, where they became tea plants.  By the time of Lu Yü, monks would share a single large bowl of tea before an image of Bodhidharma on a daily basis.  Guests of the monastery would be served with individual bowls of powdered tea which were then filled with hot water from a ewer and whisked.  In both types of ritual, an additional bowl would be offered to the Buddha.

• Taoism: Tea was valued as a likely component of the elixir of immortality and considered to have ‘cold’ properties.

• Confucianism: Emphasis on li (ritual etiquette) improving harmony in the mind, in society and in the universe led to tea becoming a strictly disciplined ritual among the elite.

Japan, Nara period

• A ceremony called Gyōcha was held in 792 during the reign of Emperor Shomu.  During Gyōcha, the Emperor would summon one hundred priests to chant the Great Wisdom Sutra (Daihannyakyō).  After the chanting, the weary priests would be served tea.

Heian period

• A Japanese monk named Eichū studied Buddhism in China for thirty years.  On his return to Japan, he served ball tea to Emperor Saga on the shores of Lake Biwa in A.D. 815.  The emperor established tea cultivation; Heian poetry refers to aristocrats (kuge) enjoying tea in pastoral settings, while religious tea ritual (charei) was observed by monks.  

• Emperor Uda discontinued the embassy to China on the recommendation of Sugawara no Michizane in 894.  This led to a decrease in Chinese influence and in the popularity of tea for about 300 years.  (Michizane was later exiled and disgraced.  Shortly after his death, the Imperial Palace was inundated with lightning and floods attributed to his angry ghost.  His honors were restored and a shrine built to appease him, and when misfortune continued, he was named the kami of scholarship, Tenjin-sama.)

Kamakura period

• Tea was re-popularized by a monk named Eisai, who studied in China and returned with powdered tea and tea seeds in 1193.  These seeds were planted at Kozan-ji temple in Toganoo and came to be known as honcha, the ‘true’ tea.

• Eisai gave powdered tea to Minamoto Sanetomo as a remedy for his frequent saké hangovers.  (Sanetomo had good reason to drink.  He was shōgun in name, but in reality was merely a pawn in a power struggle between his formidable mother, Hōjō Masako, and his grandfather Hōjō Tokimasa.  He was eventually assassinated by his nephew.)

• Eisai wrote the Treatise on Tea Drinking for Health/Kissa Yōjōki around 1215, the first Japanese treatise on tea.  It extolled the virtues of tea as medicine and recommended offering it to the gods and buddhas.

• Eisai’s Rinzai Zen Buddhism and its promise of enlightenment based on meditation, kōans, and mindful work appealed to the warrior class (buke) more than the well-established Lotus Sutrabased Tendai sect.  Zen and Tea spread rapidly among the newly-ascendant buke.

• Heian comparison games (mono awase) inspired the creation of tea-tasting competitions called cha awase, cha kabuki or tōcha among the kuge (nobility) and buke.

Muromachi period

• By the early Muromachi period, tea contests and gatherings could be unbelievably lavish.  The Taiheiki war chronicle describes one hosted by daimyō Sasaki Dōyo in which guests seated in chairs covered in leopard and tiger skins drank tea from imported Chinese cups and received gifts such as rolls of fabric, garments, bags of gold dust, or armor; the winners of the competition received further prizes, which were then re-gifted to the shirabyōshi dancers and other attendants to show the extravagant generosity of the nouveau-riche buke.

• Musō Soseki was a respected Zen priest who espoused the phrase, “Cha zen ichimi,” or “Tea and Zen have the same taste.”  He fought against the lavish tea contests, and convinced the Ashikaga shōgun to ban gambling during them in 1336, but this measure was ineffective.

• The Furuichi family hosted rinkan chanoyu (“summer bath tea gatherings”) where guests composed poetry, bathed, and enjoyed food, saké, and tea.  One such gathering in 1469 entertained 150 guests.

• Mid-Muromachi was characterized by war and poverty, but the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa financed a renaissance in Japanese art and culture, including the simple, Zen-based tea of Murata Shukō, a student of the eccentric monk Ikkyū Sōjun.  This wabicha (“chill, withered tea”) brought Chinese and Japanese aesthetics into harmony.

• Yoshimasa’s patronage caused such an upswing in the popularity of tea that tea vendors could soon be found on the streets and at temple gates crying out “Issen ippuku no cha!” (a cup of tea for a one-sen coin).

• Takeno Jōō was a leather merchant’s son who studied renga– and waka-style poetry, Zen, and chanoyu, further simplifying Shukō’s style and popularizing it among the wealthy merchants of the port city of Sakai.

Momoyama period

• The most famous figure in the history of Japanese tea is Sen no Rikyū.

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• Rikyū was born into a family of Sakai fish merchants and began learning chanoyu as a child, later studying under Jōō. He so excelled in every aspect of tea that when the conqueror Oda Nobunaga came to Sakai demanding tribute, he was selected to join Nobunaga’s staff as curator of the most valuable tea utensils.

• After Nobunaga’s assassination, Rikyū went on to serve his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi.  Hideyoshi had been born the son of a humble ashigaru, and upon his rise to power, reveled in ostentation exemplified by his portable gold-plated tea room.

• Because of the priority given to chanoyu by these great military leaders, the practice of chanoyu because de rigeur for members of the buke (warrior class).

• In 1591, after many years of close and loyal service, Hideyoshi ordered Rikyū to commit suicide for reasons which are still hotly debated.

• In an informal death poem, Rikyū compared himself to Michizane, consoling himself with the thought that dying in disgrace surely meant he would become a kami.

• Rikyū’s family had to hide in disgrace for years before they were permitted to return, but the three main schools of tea active today (Omotesenke, Urasenke, and Mushakōjisenke) are descended from Rikyū’s adopted son, Shōan.

References:

Tea in Japan, ed. Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao

An Introduction to Japanese Tea Ritual, Jennifer Lea Anderson

Urasenke Chadō Textbook, ed. Genshitsu Sen, Sōshitsu Sen

Wind in the Pines, ed. Dennis Hirota

Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion, Donald Keene

Oribe Tsukime, 2015

tsukime@nahks.com

1. Portrait of Lu Yü by Haruki Nanmei, 1841, Wikimedia Commons.
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2. Reconstructed Golden Tea Room in Fushimi Castle by Fg2, Wikimedia Commons. ↩︎