The Japanese tea ceremony is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha (抹茶), powdered green tea, the procedure of which is called temae (点前). While in the West it is known as "tea ceremony", it is seldom ceremonial in practice. Most often tea is served to family, friends, and associates; religious and ceremonial connotations are overstated in western spaces. The English term "Teaism" was coined by Okakura Kakuzō to describe the unique worldview associated with Japanese tea ceremony, as opposed to focusing just on the ceremonial aspect, a perspective that many practitioners frown upon.
An East Asian tea ceremony, or Chádào, Chadō or Dado, is a ceremonially ritualized form of making tea practiced in East Asia by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. The tea ceremony, literally translated as either "way of tea", "etiquette for tea or tea rite", or "art of tea" in any of the three East Asian languages, is a cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of tea. The Japanese tea ceremony and Korean tea ceremony were influenced by the Chinese tea culture during ancient and medieval times, starting in the 9th century when tea was first introduced to Japan and Korea from China. One can also refer to the whole set of rituals, tools, gestures, etc. used in such ceremonies as tea culture. All of these tea ceremonies and rituals contain "an adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday life", as well as refinement, an inner spiritual content, humility, restraint and simplicity "as all arts that partake the extraordinary, an artistic artificiality, abstractness, symbolism and formalism" to one degree or another.
Sen no Rikyū, also known simply as Rikyū, is considered the historical figure with the most profound influence on chanoyu, the Japanese "Way of Tea", particularly the tradition of wabi-cha. He was also the first to emphasize several key aspects of the ceremony, including rustic simplicity, directness of approach and honesty of self. Originating from the Sengoku period and the Azuchi–Momoyama period, these aspects of the tea ceremony persist. Rikyū is known by many names; for consistency, he will be referred to as Rikyū in this article.
Chashitsu in Japanese tradition is an architectural space designed to be used for tea ceremony (chanoyu) gatherings.
Urasenke (裏千家) is one of the main schools of Japanese tea ceremony. Along with Omotesenke and Mushakōjisenke, it is one of the three lines of the Sen family descending from Sen no Rikyū, which together are known as the san-Senke or the "three Sen houses/families" (三千家).
The Higashiyama culture is a segment of Japanese culture that includes innovations in architecture, the visual arts and theatre during the late Muromachi period. It originated and was promoted in the 15th century by the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, after he retired to his villa in the eastern hills of the capital city Kyoto.
The history of tea in Japan began as early as the 8th century, when the first known references were made in Japanese records. Tea became a drink of the religious classes in Japan when Japanese priests and envoys sent to China to learn about its culture brought tea to Japan. The Buddhist monks Kūkai and Saichō may have been the first to bring tea seeds to Japan. The first form of tea brought from China was probably brick tea. Tea became a drink of the royal classes when Emperor Saga encouraged the growth of tea plants. Seeds were imported from China, and cultivation in Japan began.
Mizuya is the term for the preparation area in a Japanese tea house or attached to any venue used for the Japanese tea ceremony. For instance, the area used for preparation during outdoor tea ceremonies is also called the mizuya. The term mizuya can also refer to purificatory fonts at shrines and temples, as well as to storage cupboards for use in kitchens. This article, however, focuses on the tea ceremony mizuya.
Tea utensils are the tools and utensils used in chadō, the art of Japanese tea.
Shin'ichi Hisamatsu was a philosopher, Zen Buddhist scholar, and Japanese tea ceremony master. He was a professor at Kyoto University and received an honorary doctoral degree from Harvard University.
"Schools of Japanese tea" refers to the various lines or "streams" of Japanese tea ceremony. The word "schools" here is an English rendering of the Japanese term 'ryūha' (流派).
Iemoto is a Japanese term used to refer to the founder or current Grand Master of a certain school of traditional Japanese art. It is used synonymously with the term sōke (宗家) when it refers to the family or house that the iemoto is head of and represents.
Takeno Jōō was 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 no Rikyū.
Chabana is a generic term for the arrangement of flowers put together for display at a Japanese tea ceremony, and also for the wide variety of plants conventionally considered as appropriate material for such use, as witnessed by the existence of such encyclopedic publications as the Genshoku Chabana Daijiten [All-color encyclopedia of chabana]. The method of arranging the flowers is according to the nageire, or thrown in, style of flower arranging. In turn, nageire is recognized as a certain stylistic category of Kadō, the Japanese "Way of Flowers". These all developed from ikebana, which had its origin in early Buddhist flower offerings (kuge). Chabana, however, refers specifically to the flower display in the room or space for chadō, and though it fundamentally is a form of ikebana, it comprises a genre unto its own.
Sen no Sōtan (千宗旦) (1578–1658), also known as Genpaku Sōtan 元伯宗旦, was the grandson of the famed figure in Japanese cultural history, Sen no 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 ceremony proposed by Rikyū were able to be passed forward by the family.
Sensō Sōshitsu, also known as Sen Sōshitsu IV (四代目千宗室), is the 4th in the hereditary series of Japanese tea masters who have been head of the Urasenke family. Although he was the first person in the Sen family to use the name "Sōshitsu" which has been the exclusive hereditary professional name of the head of the Urasenke line of the family ever since, he is counted as Sōshitsu IV to distinguish him as the 4th generation in this line, which, as do the other three lines of the Sen family, counts its founder as Sen no Rikyū.
Japan House is a learning facility founded in 1976 by Shozo Sato. It is part of the College of Fine and Applied Arts, at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The facility includes three tea rooms, or Chashitsu, a tea garden (Roji) and Japanese rock garden. It currently conducts classes in Japanese tea ceremony, Japanese Aesthetics and Ikebana for university students and members of the community. An annual event at the house welcomes international students. In 2019 an expansion effort was under way.
Sen Sōshitsu XV is the 15th-generation Grand Master (iemoto) of Urasenke, which is one of the most widely known schools of Japanese tea, and served in official capacity from 1964 to 2002. In 1949, he received the Zen title Hōunsai (鵬雲斎). Following his retirement, he adopted the name Sen Genshitsu (玄室), with the honorary title Daisosho, in order to distinguish him from his son and successor, Sen Sōshitsu XVI. For over seven decades, Dr. Sen Genshitsu has traveled across the world in order to promote the ethos of "Peacefulness through a Bowl of Tea".
Kaiseki (懐石) or kaiseki-ryōri is a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner. The term also refers to the collection of skills and techniques that allow the preparation of such meals and is analogous to Western haute cuisine.
The Grand Kitano Tea Ceremony, also known in English as the Grand Kitano Tea Gathering, was a large Japanese tea ceremony event that was hosted by the regent and chancellor Toyotomi Hideyoshi at Kitano Tenmangū shrine in Kyoto on the first day of the tenth month in the year Tenshō 15 (1587). Japanese cultural historians view it as a major cultural event of the Momoyama period. Louise Cort points out these three reasons: The event was "a key move in Hideyoshi's strategy to prove his cultural legitimacy; a turning point in the development of chanoyu style and theory; and a crisis in the personal relationship between its chief designers, two of the most influential figures of the Momoyama period, Hideyoshi and Sen no Rikyū".
