NIPPON Kichi - 日本吉

2006/12/15

千利休 Sen-no-rikyuu Sen no Rikyuu

Jp En


Sen no Rikyuu was a master of the tea ceremony in Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573-1603). He was born in 1522, the son of a merchant in Sakai, Oosaka. His given name was Yoshirou. He studied the tea ceremony in his youth and age seventeen was apprenticed to Takeno Jouou, who developed and refined Wabi-cha. When Oda Nobunaga, who was the ruler in Japan at the time, took Sakai city under his direct rule, Sen no Rikyuu was hired as the head of the tea ceremony, and later, served Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s successor. When Sen no Rikyuu was invited to host a tea ceremony at the Imperial Palace in 1585, in order to be allowed to enter the Palace, he had to be given a Buddhism rank of Koji, which is an honorary title given to a lay person who has lived as a pious Buddhist, and he was named Rikyuu. The biggest accomplishment of Rikyuu, who was also referred as a “tea saint”, was the perfection of Wabi-cha.



Tea practice, originally imported from China, was until this time mainly a leisure activity among wealthy society in Japan. Sen no Rikyuu elevated the ceremony to a higher level of artistic subtlety, expressing exquisitely the Japanese aesthetic



His simple and minimal use of space and atmosphere that eliminated anything superfluous, the sense of esthetic that embodied the beauty of nature, and his view on life that was expressed in his famous saying; “treasure every meeting, for it will never recur” allowed weary warriors facing life and death everyday to get back in touch with their trembling souls again. In 1591, at the height of his reputation as the greatest tea master, he infuriated Hideyoshi and was ordered to commit ritual suicide or hara-kiri. He was 70 at the time.

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