Free Tea by Laura Martín Page A

practice is Oda Nobunaga ( 1534 – 1582 ), who was one of Japan’s most powerful rulers. He used the opportunities presented by the tea ceremony, just as government officials today use a state banquet, as a means of solidifying friendships with wealthy merchants and engendering political favors. Indeed, he was so famous for his use of the tea ceremony that his government was sometimes called the ochanoyu goseido or the cha-no-yu (the “hot water for tea” or “tea ceremony”) government.

    Nobunaga was well versed in the way of tea, and letters and papers written during his rule tell us that he often served tea himself. Because the tea ceremony was such an important political tool, however, it was customary for rulers to enlist the help of a tea master. His choice for official government tea master was Sen Rikyu, considered the “father of the modern tea ceremony.”
    After Nobunaga’s death, his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ( 1536 – 1598 ), also chose Rikyu to serve as tea master, a position that held great power and prestige. Hideyoshi continued the governmental use of the tea ceremony to secure political allies. These tea events were large affairs, to which all the important families and wealthy merchants were invited.
    Hideyoshi loved the grand exuberance of a large tea gathering. At his opulent and beautiful castle in Osaka, he built a “golden tea room,” a portable room that was actually taken to Kyoto for a special tea ceremony honoring the Emperor Ogimachi, a gathering for which Rikyu served as tea master, consequently gaining much attention and further power.
    In addition to the large and ornate, Hideyoshi also appreciated the small, simple tea ceremonies, for which he had a two-mat hut built that he called “Mountain Village,” Yamazato , where he led the tea ceremony himself.
    During the late sixteenth century, many of the samurai joined Hideyoshi in the practice of serving tea in modest, ritualistic spaces, and the philosophy of wabi became popular. Wabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and discovering a sense of the profound in all things in nature. The word “wabi” comes from the root word wa , which refers to harmony, peace, tranquility, and balance. This concept became quite important in its influence on Japanese culture and on the development of the tea ceremony.
    One of the phrases often used to describe wabi is “the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe.” Those who embraced the idea of wabi participated in the tea ceremony in a simple room, with primitive utensils, in a way that allowed attention to each moment of the ceremony.
    The tea master of this time, Sen Rikyu, embraced the idea of wabi and based his tea gatherings on this philosophy. It was his genius that finally molded the serving of the tea into a ceremony so steeped in ritual and so important symbolically that it is still being practiced today in essentially the same way. Rikyu had unparalleled influence on tea and the development of the tea ceremony.
    SEN RIKYU AND THE SEVEN RULES OF TEA
    Sen Rikyu was by far the most famous of all Japanese tea masters. He was born in 1522 in Sakai and became a pupil of Takeno Joo. Even more than his master, however, Rikyu believed in the spiritual aspects of tea and was a strict adherent of the practice of wabi.
    Like his predecessor Shuko, Rikyu preferred utensils and bowls made in Japan to those from China or Korea. His own preference was for dark, somber gray and black ceramics and rough raku bowls (described in Chapter 6 ). Under his influence, the ceramics industry in Japan changed and grew dramatically. In all things associated with the tea ceremony, Rikyu strove for artistic simplicity. Rather than place elaborate vases and pieces of art in the tearoom, Rikyu chose to use simple artifacts found in almost any home and to arrange them artistically.
    Rikyu’s seven rules of tea, written in the