Hanasuki: The Aesthetic of Symbiosis
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A Recreation of Dobori Enshu's Yuishikian
Wabi Implies Both Splendor and Simplicity
The Splendor of Wabi
Yuishikian as an Example of Hanasuki
Bruno Taut's Simplistic Evaluation of the Katsura Detached Palace
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A Recreation of Dobori Enshu's Yuishikian
In my own home, I enjoy a life in which the most advanced technology exists in symbiosis with tradition. My apartment is perched on the eleventh floor. Next to my study, were my IBM 5560 sits, I have constructed a traditional Japanese tea room, which I have named Yuishikian -- the Hut of Consciousness Only. NOTE 1 This personal computer is a terminal linked with a communication network designed by a friend in California, Richard Farson, who is president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla. It is directly linked over the Venus P satellite network to some fifty men and women in the worlds of scholarship, politics, and finance. Yuishikian, on the other hand, is my place to retreat and think, as well as where I receive and entertain guests and friends from abroad and within Japan with hospitality of the tea ceremony.
My purpose in designing Yuishikian was to recreate a particular tea room that one existed but has disappeared, and in doing so to recreate a symbol that represents a formative, crucial, and yet forgotten model of Japanese aesthetics. This forgotten model is profoundly linked to what have long been considered the basic principles of the Japanese aesthetic, wabi and sabi. NOTE 2 But we will discuss this in greater detail further on; first let me describe the tea room that served as the model for my Yuishikian.
that was the tea room in Takimotobo, a residence of Buddhist monks, constructed at Iwashimizu Hashimangu shrine in Kyoto by the scholar-monk Shokado Shojo. NOTE 3 Shojo's tea room was, in turn, a reconstruction of an earlier tea room the Kan'unken. NOTE 4 Kan'unken was build in the first decades of the seventeenth century, but it was destroyed by fire in 1773. A plan of the tea house dated 1757, drawn by Matsudaira Rakuo, is extent, and it has been included in the fourth volume of Chashitsu Okoshiezu Shu (Foldout Plans of Tea Rooms), complied under the supervision of Horiguchi Suteme and published by Kuromizu Shobo. NOTE 5 Horiguchi identifies the plan as Shokado's tea room.
Actually, Shojo studied the tea ceremony under Kobori Enshu, and the Kan'unken built by Shojo is an exact duplicate of Enshu's Shosuitei, the tea room in his Fushimi residence. NOTE 6 This is attested to by a floor plan included in a work called Sukiyashiki (Sukiya Mansions) in Horiguchi's possession. NOTE 7 On the floor plan is the legend: "The Takimotobo in Hachimangu shrine is built from the same plan as Enshu's Fushimi tea room. Both consist of four mats and daime-sized mat. NOTE 8 Other plans -- "Plan of the Four and One Daime-sized Mat Tea Room at Kobori Enshu's Fushimi Residence" (copied from Matsuya Kaiki, dated 1741) and "Plan of Kobori Enshu's Fushimi Residence" (drawn in 1714 by Yoshida Dosaku) -- confirm this conclusion. NOTE 9 My Yuishikian, then, is a recreation of Kobori Enshu's most representative tea room, the Shosuitei at Kobori's Fushimi residence. I spent seventeen years reproducing this tea room. Why did it take so long?
Originally, tea rooms were constructed of materials that could be found easily and near at had. Rare and expensive materials were avoided. A log or branch from a nearby grove of trees, a stone by the roadside -- materials such as these were collected and incorporated into the final design. But of course the aesthetic perceptions of the tea masters were operating in the selection process. Their ability to discover the beauty of such commonplace objects was crucial. They were alert to the aesthetic interest of these trees and stones which, to the average person, were just like any other. And they possessed the skill to incorporate these objects into the design of a tea room. Though the tea rooms contemporary with Kan'unken and Shosuitei did not employ rare of luxurious materials, obviously many problems arise when one tries to faithfully reproduce the same tea room some three hundred years later.
Tea room plans provide a detailed account of the original structures. Not only are the materials and dimensions noted, but the way the natural timbers bend and twist, and the details of finishing the materials are all clearly recorded. Yet when one actually attempts an accurate reconstruction, one finds that crucial information is still missing. The challenge is to acquire that information in the process of the reconstruction.
To clarify the missing details in the plans I was working from, I studied diaries and accounts of tea ceremonies held in this tea room. In his Matsuya Kaiki, Matsuya Hisayoshi describes a tea ceremony that he attended at Enshu's Shosuitei. In addition to a detailed account of the tea utensils and the food and sweets served, he also describes the tea room. My first step was to analyze his remarks as a clue to clarifying certain details not provided by the extant plans of the tea room.
I knew from the plan that the tea room's ceiling was basketwork ceiling with a bamboo frame, but the plan did not identify the precise material from which the ceiling was woven. According to Matsuya Kaiki, it was made of reed. The plan told me that the tokonoma post was made of Kunogi. It took some time to identify this wood. Was it a sort of tree that no longer existed? Or did it still exist but was now known by a different name? Was kuno and orthographical mistake for kuri, or chestnut? I considered various possibilities, but in the end an acquaintance in Kyoto who is familiar with ancient manuscripts told me that kunogi was a dialect variation of kunugi -- a kind of oak.
According to the plan, the back and sides of the tokonoma were papered with antique paper, but there was no indication just what sort of paper it might have been. I looked for a model to the Joan tea room. NOTE 10 This was designed by Oda Uraku and its tokonoma was papered with the leaves of old almanacs. NOTE 11 Searching for almanacs from the early decades of the seventeenth century, I frequented rare book and antique shops. It took over ten years to acquire enough paper for my tokonoma walls. In one place in the tea room, a gently curving log is called for, and I had to pester my carpenter to go searching in the mountains for just the right one; it took more than ten years to find it.
The height at which flower container is hung from a decorative hook or nail in the tea room is quite important as well, but this was not indicated in the plan, and it was no mean feat to determine the authentic height. A plan called "Enshu's Four and One Daime-sized Mat Tea Room at Fushimi Roku Jizo," by certain Ensai (otherwise unknown), tell us that the hook should be three shaku two bu and five rin (about 91.7cm) from the floor. But when we tried hanging it at this height it seemed inappropriately low. In fact, it was so strange that I checked the source again and found that some regarded the note on this plan as an orthographic mistake for three shaku two sun and five bu (about 98.5cm). still even this height seemed far too low and so out of harmony with the tea room as a whole that on this particular detail I made an exception and followed the example of the Yuin tea house and set the decorative hook at three shaku seven sun (about 112.1cm). NOTE 12
Following this process of careful consideration of historical sources and inspection of available materials, and relying on the skills of the mere handful of tea room carpenters to be found in all Japan, it took me seventeen years to complete Yuishikian. And since there is no space in central Tokyo to build a tearoom, I constructed it as a rooftop garden to my apartment, harmonizing it with the rest of the garden area, so that when completed by Yuishikian was nested among the apartment buildings of the central city.
Why did I take so much trouble to recreate this particular tea room with such painstaking accuracy? As a symbol of the aesthetic vision I call hanasuki.
Wabi Implies Both Splendor and Simplicity
I offer the term hanasuki in place of wabisuki because I believe that wabi as a concept has come to be interpreted in too narrow and one-dimensional a fashion. Traditionally, wabi has been thought of as silence as opposed to loquacity; darkness as opposed to light; simplicity as opposed to complexity; spareness as opposed to decoration; monochrome as opposed to color; the grass hut, not the aristocrat's mansion. Even in school texts, wabi is defined as an aesthetic of nothingness.
But isn't the true and essential Japanese aesthetic one in which silence and loquacity, darkness and light, simplicity and complexity, spareness and decoration, monochrome and polychrome, the grass hut and the aristocrat's palace exist in symbiosis? In the aesthetic principle wabi a superbly decorative principle, a special splendor, is to be found -- like the undertaste in fine cuisine, that lingers and perfumes each subtle dish.
In Nambo Sokei's NOTE 13 secretly transmitted work, Nampo Roku, NOTE14 he says, The essence of Takeno Joo's NOTE 15 tea ceremony is to be found in Fujiwara no Teika's NOTE 16 poem in the Shin Kokin Shu NOTE 17 :
I gaze afar
And ask for neither cherry flowers
Nor crimson leaves;
The inlet with its grass-thatched huts
Clustered in the growing autumn dusk. NOTE 18
The blossoms of spring and the red leaves of autumn are a metaphor for the gorgeous daisu-style tea ceremony of the aristocrat's mansion. NOTE 19 When we gaze at them deeply, we arrive at a realm where not a single thin exists -- the rush-thatched cottage on the shore. Those who do not first know the blossoms and the leaves can never live in the thatched hut. Only because we gaze and gaze at the blossoms and leaves can we spy out the thatched hut. This is to be regarded as the essence of tea.
What Nambo is saing is that only one who knows the splendor and gorgeous beauty of the blossoms of spring and the red leaves of autumn can appreciate the wabi of the roughly thatched hut on the lonely beach. This is not an aesthetic of nothingness by any means. It is an aesthetic of double code, in which we are asked to gaze at the roughly thatched hut while recalling the gorgeous flowers and leaves. It is an ambiguous, symbiotic aesthetic, which simultaneously embraces splendor and simplicity.
We can even discover this symbiotic aesthetic consciousness in Murata Juko, who is known for his pursuit of the most severe state of Zen. NOTE 20 In Yamanoue Soji ki we find the remark: "Juko described his ideal as a splendid steed tethered to a grass hut." NOTE 21 Wabi is not simply a grass hut; it is the scene of a beautifully caparisoned, powerful horse tied to a humble, elegantly simple straw hut. The goal of this aesthetic is an ambiguous code in which two symbols simultaneously contradict and overlap.
The Splendor of Wabi
The novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichiro wrote in his essay In Praise of Shadows (In'ei Raisan):
Sometimes a superb piece of black lacquerware, decorated perhaps with flecks of silver and gold -- a box or a desk or a set of shelves -- will seem to me unsettlingly garish and altogether vulgar. But render pitch black the void in which they stand, and light them not with the rays of the sun or electricity but rather a single lantern or candle: suddenly those garish objects turn somber, refined, dignified. Artisans of old, when they finished their works in lacquer and decorated them in sparkling patterns, must surely have had in mind dark rooms and sought to turn to good effect what feeble light there was. There extravagant use of gold, too, I should imagine, came of understanding how it gleams forth from out of the darkness and reflects the lamplight. NOTE 22
We see here that Tanizaki is by no means simply praising shadows alone. His aesthetic, too, is a double code -- the absolute opposition of the gorgeous golden decoration and the shadows of the night. In his dramatic phrase, "the brocade of the night itself," we detect in lineage of an aesthetic of wabi that is very far indeed from a philosophy of nothingness.
The ambiguity of this aesthetic of wabi is even clearer when we arrive at the related term, sabi, as propounded by the haiku poet Matsuo Basho. NOTE 23 Mukai Kyorai, Basho's leading disciple in the art of poetry, described the master's verses as "unchanging flux." NOTE 24 "Flux" here refers to the impermanence and eternal changeableness of existence. "Unchanging" points to an existence that transcends the flow of time and achieves an eternal existence. The symbiosis of these two principles is "Unchanging flux," which lies at the core of Basho's idea of sabi.
Kyorai writes in the treatise known as the Kyorai Sho that "Sabi is the color of a verse; it does not mean a sad and lonely verse. It is like an aged warrior who arrays himself in his gorgeous armor and throws himself into battle. Though he dons brocade robes and serves at a banquet, he is still old. It is the combination of a flower-bearer and a white-haired crone." NOTE 25 In other words, the withered, sad state of old age is not sabi. On the contrary, sabi is the sight of the old man in his glorious armor, fighting bravely; or seated at a splendid banquet in his fine raiment. The aesthetic of sabi is produced in the contradiction of two symbiotically existing elements, the splendid brocades and the old man's quietly elegant appearance.
From these examples we can see that the interpretation of these two core principles of traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi and sabi, as spare, restrained, and antidecorative concepts is badly skewed. In order to restore the present vulgarized and corrupted version of wabi to its original meanings, I have invented a new term: hanasuki.
Zeami, who brought the art of the Noh theater to perfection, wrote in works such as Fushi Kaden and Kakyo that hana -- flowe -- was the life of Noh. NOTE 26 The aesthetic of hana is one of the symbiosis of heterogeneous elements, of disparate moods or feelings. In Fushi Kaden Zeami instructs the actor who portrays a demon to perform in an enjoyable way, combining the qualities of frightfulness and enjoyment. In the role of an old man, the actor should don the mask and costume of an old person and portray and old man while still possessing the Flower." NOTE 27 When one performs Noh during the day, he tells us, he must act with the dark energy of night inside himself. Zeami's aesthetic is a characteristically Japanese one of symbiosis that has much in common with the original meaning of wabi. I invented the term hanasuki because I am convinced that Zeami's aesthetic of the flower is identical with the true meaning of wabi.
Yuishikian as an Example of Hanasuki
Yuishikian, which I constructed as a symbol of the aesthetic of hanasuki, has twelve windows and is an extremely bright tea room. Kobori Enshu favored tea rooms with many windows. The eight-windowed tea room of Konjiin at Nanzenji was also a favorite of Enshu. The twelve windows of my tea room can be regarded as the stage lighting for the host's mat. By opening and closing different windows from season to season, the interior can be illuminated in a wide variety of ways. If I leave the door to the garden open, that view and all its light become part of the tea room interior as well.
In front of the daime-sized host's mat are lined up the four long mats in a row. This simple yet bold layout emphasizes the theatricality of the host's mat. The tokonoma is framed by a white juniper post on one side and the kunugi oak, with a bark resembling red pine, on the other. The juniper is roughly finished in a square shape by hand chiseling four corners, leaving the bark on its four sides. The bark has been left on the oak post, which disappears into the upper wall. The combination of materials with such a range of expression produces a great dynamism.
The roof and the placement of the windows adds variety to the design, making Yuishikian a highly decorative tea room. Still, this has not been achieved at the sacrifice of the simplicity and calm that are characteristic of tea room architecture. This is what makes Yuishikian a model of hanasuki.
Why has the idea of wabi become so perverted that we are forced to invent a new term, hanasuki, to convey its original meaning? I can offer two answers to this question. The first can be traced to the confrontation between the great tea master Sen no Rikyu and his master, the seudal warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98). NOTE 28
Hideyoshi has been described as the son of a farmer by some and identified as the son of a foot soldier by others. Whichever he may have been, he had no time to acquire learning and cultural polish in the years of his rise from such a humble station to the position of ruler of all Japan Even if he had been blessed with the time and the opportunity, in my opinion he lacked by nature a sensitivity to the arts and learning.
Sen no Rikyu served Hideyoshi as his master of tea, as an artist in residence. He was Hideyoshi's teacher in the art of the tea ceremony. In their relationship we can detect the conflict between authority and art, the ruler and the creator. Though Hideyoshi was the supreme ruler of all Japan and brooked no opposition from anyone, in the art of tea Rikyu was his superior. Given Hideyoshi's nature, it is quite likely that he resented this great man of the world of art, a realm even Hideyoshi could not rule. After hearing Rikyu speak on wabi tea, which placed great emphasis on simplicity and humility, Hideyoshi asked Rikyu to design a tea room entirely papered in gold leaf, as if to taunt his master. And in fact he actually held a tea ceremony in such a tea room.
I believe that Rikyu was forced to articulate an extreme form of wabi as an antidote to Hideyoshi's extreme tendency toward ostentation, that he pursued this radical wabi as rigorously as a Zen monk pursues the way of enlightenment in the special context of this struggle between the ruler and the artist. These particular circumstances are what let Rikyu to develop wabi into an aesthetic of nothingness, of death.
In this contest between political and artistic authority, Rikyu may at first seem the lower: Hideyoshi eventually forced him to commit ritual suicide. But in the struggle, Rikyu refined and distilled his aesthetic ideal until he arrived at the nearly inconceivable extreme of simplicity: a tea room of one and one-half mat.
Rikyu was a genius, the great formulator of the aesthetic of wabi tea. But if Rikyu is our only reference for the concept of wabi, we cannot avoid a distorted picture of the idea. And a more balanced concept of wabi, a wabi of hanasuki, can be detected in the tea practiced by Rikyu's disciples.
Rikyu's leading disciple was Furuta Oribe. NOTE 29 The simple addition of a single mat to Oribe's three-mat tea room, En'an, results in the four and one-half mat tea room by Enshu. NOTE 30 Furuta's tea room, then, is one of the sources of Yuishikian. The deep eaves over the earthen area by the corner entrance, the displaced external post construction, the abundance of windows, including a small floor-level latticework portal staggered with another higher portal and a flower-viewing window -- Furuta's design displays a wealth of detailing and testifies to a sensibility attuned to the symbiotic interplay of simplicity and grandeur, silence and eloquence. And drama: a skylight is cut through the roof of the entrance eaves to offer a view of nearby Mount Atago.
Another important follower of Rikyu was Oda Uraku. His Joan tea room is also a classic example of inventive and original hanasuki: a round window is boldly cut through the sleeve wall at the left end of the main facade, a triangular floorboard inset beside the tokonoma brings a fresh new touch to the three and one-half-mat plan, not to mention the decorativeness of the arched, cut-out wooden hearth partition, old calendar pages pasted around the base of the walls, and the bright atmosphere created by the row of waist-high windows.
Finally, when we consider Yuishikian's model, the Shosuitei tea room designed by Enshu -- who was Oribe's disciple -- we come to the unavoidable conclusion that Rikyu could not have taught only simplicity and spareness.
Bruno Taut's Simplistic Evaluation of the Katsura Detached Palace
The first reason that the traditional interpretation of wabi has been far too narrow and shallow can be found in Rikyu's articulation of the concept in an extreme form, as an antidote to Hideyoshi's likewise extreme ostentation. The second reason, I believe, can be traced to the encounter of Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius with the Katsura Detached Palace and their well-publicized response to it. NOTE 31
The attention of Japanese architects was first drawn to their own tradition by the remarks of these Europeans, who praised Katsura and the Grand Ise Shrine as models of Modern Architecture and then promptly returned home to the West. NOTE 32 Japanese architects meekly followed their lead. They accepted the judgment that their native aesthetic tradition was one of nothingness and silence and simplicity. But it is very important for us to note that the judgments Taut and Gropius passed on these works of Japanese architecture were made entirely from within the context of Modern Architecture.
The aesthetic of Modern Architecture was born from industrialization and mass production; its straight, spare, and nondecorative line is that of the mass product. Taut and Gropius read Katsura Detached Palace as an icon, an ideal image of Modern Architecture. But they overlooked several very important features of the palace. The decorative metalwork of the staggered shelves in the first room of the Chu Shoin; the dramatic checked pattern of the tokonoma of the first room in the Shokintei arbor; the side window of the tokonoma of the second room of the Shin Shoin; the round window in the transom of the Shoinken retainers' quarters and the velvet baseboard wall covering and elegant door pulls of those same quarters. These details are astonishing in their rich decoration, and they stand out even more sharply embedded as they within a space that is so pure and simple.
We can see then how one-dimensional was the appreciation of Katsura Detached palace by Taut and Gropius. Their rejection of the Toshogu shrine at Nikko as an example of the bad taste of the shoguns is further evidence of their failure to grasp the totality of the Japanese aesthetic tradition. NOTE 33 The shrine at Nikko must have seemed to these Modernists a terribly extreme text, nearly impossible to quote. But the Toshogu shrine and Katsura Detached Palace are contemporary work. Only when they are placed side by side can Japanese architecture of that age be appreciated in its wholeness. What understanding is there to be gained by totally rejecting one and interpreting the other in a highly selective and clearly self-serving way? Perhaps this is just another manifestation of the doctrine of expediency that is at the core of Modern Architecture.
As the sculptor Okamoto Taro has suggested, the Japanese tradition embraces two aesthetic currents that exist together in symbiosis. NOTE 34 One is an aesthetic of bold and dramatic beauty, the other a simple, nondecorative, and extremely refined beauty. He traces the first to the ancient Jomon period and the second to the subsequent Yayoi period. NOTE 35 There is nothing strange about the fact that both Toshogu shrine and the Katsura Detached Palace were build in the same Edo period, and there are no grounds for dismissing the former as an embarrassing lapse in taste by the Tokugawa shoguns. The vigorous, even violent decorativeness of Jomon culture finally flowered in the gorgeous castle architecture of the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568-1600), and this current has continued to flow through and nourish Japanese culture to the present day.
There may be those who believe they have discovered the source of Japan's aesthetic tradition when they visit the temples of Kyoto, with their unadorned, unfinished wood. But we must not forget that when Todaiji and Toshodaiji were first built, their pillars were painted crimson and their rafters glowed vermilion, gold, and green. NOTE 36 They were a rainbow of rich primary colors. Except for certain Zen monasteries, the temples of Japan were all originally as colorful as the Toshogu shrine is today. I regard the decision not to restore those colors as they faded naturally and to accept their new, quieter, but very different beauty as an indication of the great range of Japanese aesthetic sensitivity, and its profound interest. The reaffirmation of Japan's symbiotic aesthetic is not only of importance as a reinterpretation of traditional Japanese aesthetics, however. I believe, in fact, that this aesthetic of symbiosis, this sensitivity of symbiosis, is the new aesthetic that has replaced Modernism and will be the aesthetic of the twenty-first century.
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Footnotes:
1. A tea room in Japan, of course, is a unique architectural unit where the tea ceremony and related arts such as flower arrangement are practiced. It is also a place for quiet contemplation and the appreciation of works of calligraphy, painting, and ceramics. An means "hut" and is often used to describe a tea room or tea house.
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2. These key terms in Japanese aesthetics are notoriously difficult to define in English. Wabi suggests a highly austere and severe aesthetic of a sort of sacred poverty. Sabi carries additional connotations of sadness and loneliness, reflection and isolation. These highly emotional "sensibilities" -- for they are not rigorously defined concepts in any sense -- are mo re often associated with each other than accurately distinguished. They are applied to a wide range of visual, plastic, literary arts.
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3. Shokado Shojo (1584-1639) took up residence in Takimotobo when he was seventeen. Later he became the head monk of Takimotobo, but he is better known for his tea room and collection of tea utensils, paintings and work of calligraphy, now preserved at Iwashimizu Hachimangu. Shokado is also credited as the inventor of the traditional Japanese box lunch, the bento. This is a rectangular lacquer box divided into four compartments for rice and various foods. Shokado was a noted connoisseur and man of taste of his age.
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4. Kan'unken was built in the style favored by Kobori Enshu (see note 5). Though destroyed in 1773, it was reconstructed in almost identical fashion in 1922, and the tea room in Takimotobo today is that reconstruction. It is often confused with another tea house designed by Shojo, which stands on the property of the Atsuda family in Kyoto and is called the shokado. The latter tea house was built by shojo in his last years, after retiring from Takimotobo to take up residence at Isumibo.
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5. The plans for tea rooms were traditionally in a fold-out and fold-up format, the convention for depicting the tree-dimensional details of the work.
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6. Kobori Enshu (1579-1647) was a member of the samurai class, but best known as a master of the tea ceremony. He is the founder of one of the schools of tea, and he was also commissioned by the Tokugawa shogunate and the imperial house to design major works of architecture, such as the donjons of Edo Castle and Nagoya Castle, the central compound of Fushimi Castle, and the Sento Gosho palace, as well as many gardens and tea rooms. He introduced his personal aesthetic preference, which he called kirei sabi, or gorgeous sabi, into the tea ceremony.
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7. Sukiya is a style of architecture characterized by a sophisticated taste that blends the formal and informal, the heavy and the light. It was strongly influenced by the evolving aesthetic of the tea ceremony and is the dominant style of non-official architecture in the Edo period. Suki means "taste" or "style," and is used in compounds such as wabisuki and the author's neologism hahasuki.
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8. A daime-sized mat was slightly smaller than an ordinary tatami mat. It was usually the size of the space from the host's mat to the daisu tea-utensil stand.
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9. A kaiki is a detailed record (ki) of a tea gathering (kai). The Matsuya Kaiki is one of the most valuable of these records, as a rich historical source for the development of the aesthetic of the tea ceremony.
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10. Designed by Oda Uraku (see note 11), this tea room is a national treasure and survives in the Urakuen of Oyama castle town in Oyama City, Aichi Prefecture. It is said to be the sukiya-style portion of the retirement residence that Oda Uraku built in the Shoden'in at Kenninji in Kyoto. The name derives from Oda's Christian name, Joao, which he received upon his baptism in that faith. In 1908 the tea room was brought to the Mitsui residence, and in 1971 reconstructed at its present site.
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11. Oda Uraku (1547-1621) was the eleventh son of the warlord Oda Nobuhide and the younger brother of Oda Nobunaga, who ruled Japan in the mid sixteenth century. Born Oda Nagamasu, he adopted the name Uraku, by which he is usually known, after joining the Buddhist order. He survived the reigns of his brother and the two rulers who came after his in succession, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and he was made a feudal lord of a moderate-size domain. His line continued on through to the Meiji period. The names of the present Tokyo districts Yuraku-cho and Sukiyabashi derive from his mansion, which was located in those areas. He is also the founder of the Uraku school of the tea ceremony.
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12. Yuin is one of the tea rooms in the Kyoto compound of the Urasenke school of tea.
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13. Nambo Sokei was a master of the tea ceremony form the port of Sakai, near modern Osaka. He was active during the rules of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He describes himself as a Zen monk, the second-generation head priest of the Shuun'an at Nanshuji. He was the foremost disciple of Sen no Rikyu (see note 27) and regarded as his successor, but he disappeared after the third annual memorial observance of Rikyu's death. He was completely devoted to the aesthetic expression through the art of tea of his Zen ethic of "pure poverty."
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14. The Nampo roku is a secretly transmitted manual of Sen no Rikyu's school of tea, regarded as having been composed by Nambo Sokei (see note 13). The earliest copy we have to the work is in the hand of Tachibana Jitsuzan, a senior minister of the Kuroda clan in Fukuoka fief. Because of the strange "coincidence" that the work was discovered on the one-hundred-year anniversary of Rikyu's death, its authenticity is suspect. Nevertheless, it offers an accurate record of the world of tea, and based on this work Jitsuzan founded the Nambo school of tea. Though the Tachibana family line terminated eight generations later, the school has continued to be active in Kyoto and other areas as the Namboryu Meikyoan school.
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15. Takeno Joo (1502-55) was a wealthy merchant of the port city of Sakai who made a name for himself as a leader and patron of the art of tea. He was the teacher of the great tea masters of the age, including Imai Sokyu, Tsuda Sogyu, and Sen no Rikyu. With his wealth to support his innovations, he introduced the aesthetics of the linked-poetry (renga) gatherings which had been popular for many years and of Zen to the tea ceremony. He is the leading figure in the period of the evolution of the so-called wabi-style tea ceremony (wabi cha). His three followers mentioned above were also all from merchant families, and they eventually became tea masters for the samurai class and spread the art far and wide. The major masters and schools of tea are as follows: Murata Jouou (1422-1502); Oda Uraku (1547-1621); Furuta Oribe (1544-1615); Hosokawa Sansai (1563-1645) and Kobori Enshu (1579-1647). Fujiwara no Teika (or Sadaie; 1162-1241) was a distinguished poet and compiler of the Shin Kokin Shu. He is renowned for his critical writings. The full title of the anthology is the Shin Kokin Waka Shu, or New Anthology of Ancient and Modern Poetry. Compiled by Fujiwara no Teika in around 1205, it is one of the greatest of the twenty-one imperial poetry anthologies.
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16. Fujiwara no Teika (or Sadaie; 1162-1241) was a leader of the world of poetry in his age and is a leading figure of Japanese leader in all ages. He was the compiler of the Shin Kokin Waka Shu (see note 17) and is renowned for his critical writings as well.
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17. The full title of the anthology is the Shin Kokin Waka Shu, or New Anthology of Ancient and Modern Poetry. Compiled by Fujiwara no Teika (see note 16) in around 1205, it is one if the greatest of the twenty-one imperial poetry anthologies.
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18. Robert H. Bower and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971,P307)
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19. The daisu was a tea-utensil stand used in the elaborate and formal tea ceremony of the aristocrat's mansion (shoin), which was practiced before the spread of the much simpler tea of Murata Juko (see note 20). By the time of the wabi-style tea ceremony evolved, the daisu was usually was no longer set in the much smaller tea room.
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20. Murata Juko (1422-1502) is regarded as the founder of the tea ceremony. After becoming a monk at Shomyoji in Nara, he returned to lay status and began to practice the art of tea. He is not directly linked to Senno Rikyu or his followers and descendants, but he is the undisputed founder of the way of wabi-style tea. He was instructed in Zen by the famous monk Ikkyu Sojun, and he was also a curator of Chinese art and tea master to Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the shogun. He created a tea for the common people based on his deep knowledge of the tea ceremony as it was practiced among the elite.
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21. A record of Rikyu's life, compiled by Rikyu's first disciple, Yamanoue Soji (1544-90). Soji was also Toyotomi Hideyoshi's tea master, but he was of extremely unattractive appearance and had a sharp tongue, which eventually let to him being dismissed from Hideyoshi's service. He became the guest of the Hojo clan in Odawara (in modern Kanagawa Prefecture) and spread the Way of tea there. When Hideyoshi attacked the Hojo, Soji had his ears and nose cut off.
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22. Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows. Trans. By Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker. (Tokyo: Charles. E. Tuttle Co., P13-14)
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23. Matsuo Basho (1644-94) is the most famous haiku poet. He traveled throughout Japan composing haiku and poetical prose called haibun, and he also contributed significantly to the aeshetics of these genres.
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24. Mukai Kyorai (1651-1704) was Basho's (see note 23) disciple. Basho placed great faith in him and he was the editor of the collection of haiku called Sarumino (Monkey's Raincoat). Kyorai's greatest achievements, however, were in criticism and theory of the haiku. He was born in the samurai class, but gave up his status to become a yin-yang diviner, which remained his profession for the rest of his life.
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25. Kyorai Sho is Kyorai's masterwork, in which he identifies and discusses many of the distinctive properties of the haiku and haibun genres, including "unchanging flux."
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26. Zeami (1363?-1443) was Noh actor, theorist, director, and composer. Together with his father Kan'ami, he created the theatrical genre of Noh. Zeami made his first real debut as a performer at the age of twelve, when he and his father performed for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasu, who was much taken with Zeami. Yoshimasu showed such affection for and protection of Zeami that it was widely believed they were lovers. Zeami based his Noh on that of his father, which had a broad popular appeal, but he placed a tremendous emphasis on beauty and raised the art to great heights. After suffering persecution from Yoshimasa's successor, Zeami increased the intellectual content of Noh, formulating the art as we have it today. Fushi Kaden and Kakyo are two of Zeami's theoretical works on Noh, composed respectively from 1400 to 1404 and in 1424. Fushi Kaden is a systematization of the theories of Noh that Zeami had inherited from his father. It is a practical work, dividing the life of an actor into seven periods and prescribing the correct practice for each one. Zeami composed Kakyo when persecution by the new shogun threatened to destroy his theatrical troupe; it contains the marrow of Zeami's thoughts. The "flower" (ka) found in the titles of both works refers to the power to continue to be attractive on the Noh stage, and it is related to Zeami's key concept of the ideal of beauty: yugen, or dark mystery.
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27. J. Thomas Rimer and Masakazu Yamazaki, trans. On the Art of the No Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, P12)
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28. Sen no Rikyu (1522-91) was born in a merchant's family in Sakai, the port city near Osaka. He studied tea under Takeno Joo. When Oda Nobunaga demanded payment of a huge indemnity from Sakai, Rikyu, together with Imai Sogyu, was sent as member of a party to negotiate a settlement. After Nobunaga's death, Rikyu became the tea master of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Rikyu is known as the great formulator of the art of tea; we owe the transmission of the art of tea down to the present not only to his aesthetic vision but also to his success in promoting tea among high-ranking samurai. His seven disciples, most of them of samurai origin, are called the Seven Sages of Rikyu, and he also taught tea to such well-known feudal lords as Date Masamune. Rikyu's increasing political influence may have played a part in Hideyoshi's decision to sentence him to death by seppuku, or self-disembowelement.
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29. Furuta Oribe (1544-1615) was of samurai birth, and he served under both Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, rising to a fairly high rank in the feudal hierarchy. Oribe studied under Rikyu, but he adapted Rikyu's style of tea, which was essentially quietist, finding beauty in stillness, to a more dynamic style that would please members of his class. He is said to have purposely broken tea utensils and had them repaired with gold. His disciples included Kobori Enshu (see note 6) and Hon'ami Koetsu, and a type of ceramics has been named after him. He was tea master to the second Tokugawa shogun, Hidetada, but when his involvement in plans for a coup d'etat in Osaka was discovered he was condemned to commit suicide, at age seventy-two.
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30. En'an, or Swallow Hut, was designed by Furuta Oribe and survives, designated as an important cultural property. It is located in Kyoto, on the grounds of one of the subjects of the Yabunouchi school of tea. It was destroyed by fire in 1864 and rebuilt three years later. The "crawl-in entrance" (nijiriguchi) is at the southeast corner, under eaves over an earthen floor. A three-mat guest area is bracketed by the host's mat an area for retainers. This area for retainers, separated from the guest area by two sliding doors, is a unique feature of this tea room and represents a layout favored by the samurai class.
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31. Bruno Taut (1880-1938) was a German expressionist architect. He moved to Japan in 1933, and extolled what he called "emperor art," by which he meant Katsura Detached Palace and Ise Shrine, as opposed to "shogun art," referring to the Toshogu shrine at Nikko. His writings include the book Nippon. Taut left Japan in 1936 to teach in Istanbul. Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was a German architect. He began with industrial architecture based on the techniques of modern industry, and while advocating progressive and rational architecture, sought a unification of the hand crafts and the industrial arts. While director of the Bauhaus, he assembled many creative personalities, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Laszlo Moholy-Negy, and sought to create a unified design for modern architectural space. He and his writings form one of the bases of the Modern Architecture movement. The Katsura Detached Palace was originally a seventeenth-century country villa of the Hachijo no Miya family. There are four sections to the main house, and four pavilions, several belvederes, and Buddhist chapel arranged throughout the gardens. A combination of shoin (palatial) and sukiya styles, it is regarded by many as the finest example of residential architecture in Japan.
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32. The Grand Ise Shrine is located at Ise in Mie Prefecture and is one of the two or three most important shrines in Japan. It is associated with the imperial deity, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Made of unpainted Japanese cypress wood, it has a bold and simple design suggestive of South Pacific architecture. Ise Shrine is dismantled and rebuilt every twenty-one years, always following the same special Shinto architectural style, though some changes have crept in over the centuries.
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33. The Toshogu Shrine at Nikko serves as the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan from 1600 to 1868. It was completed in 1636, and the shrine buildings and gateways are highly decorative and ornate.
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34. Okamoto Taro (b. 1911) is a painter, sculptor, and designer of monuments. Born into an artistic family, he spent his youth in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne. After his return to Japan he fought in the second world war in China, and when the war was over became active not only in the art world but in politics and as writer and critic. His sculptures include the Tower of the Sun at the Osaka Expo and the sculptures decorating the Children's Castle in Aoyama, Tokyo. His writings include Nihon Saihakken (Rediscovering Japan) and Wasurareta Nihon: Okinawa Bunka Ron (Forgotten Japan: A theory of Okinawan Culture).
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35. The Jomon period, from about 10,000 B.C. to 300 B.C., or Japan's neolithic period, is characterized by the dynamic and dramatic clay figurines and pottery that have been discovered dating from that time. "Jomon" means rope patterns, which are one of the commonly found decorative techniques on Jomon pottery. The following Yayoi period, from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 300, was when rice production was first introduced to Japan. It's pottery is much simple and more austere and delicate.
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36. Toshodaiji was founded in 759 in the western sector of Nara by the Chinese monk Jianzhen, and Todaiji was built between 720 and 784 in the eastern sector of the same city by Emperor Shomu.
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