Chiritsu was the master of the 16th-century Japanese tea ceremony, and he served toyotomi Hideyoshi, a famous warlord of the Warring States who unified Japan, for ten years, but was later inexplicably stabbed to death for the following crimes. The real reason for The assassination of Senritsu is a matter of opinion, but the contradictions brought about by the conflict between The Tea Ceremony and its artistic standards, as well as the admirers of the tea ceremony, Senritsu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, cannot be ignored.
In fact, it is precisely because of the two people's different understandings of the spirit of the tea ceremony that the two have been feuding for a long time, and it is also the direct reason for The criticism and accusation of Hideyoshi by Senritsu. Rather, behind the two men's different understandings of the tea ceremony, it reflects the violent collision between different economic and political ideas of 16th-century Japanese society. In this article, I will discuss the Japanese society behind them on the basis of the dispute between the two people's tea art.
Senritsu's tea ceremony is passed down from his master, Takeno Shoo, who was once a large leather merchant and, like Senritsu, was born into a class of merchants who had arisen in the midst of chaos. He inherited the tea ceremony tradition pioneered by Murata Zhuguang, the ancestor of the Japanese tea ceremony, and distilled the process of making tea, drinking tea, and appreciating tea into an art. By combining tea art with Buddhism, especially with Zen Buddhism, he saw tea art as a way to pursue a higher spiritual realm, rising to the level of "Tao".
The tea ceremony of Qianlixiu, first of all, emphasizes the simplicity and authenticity of the tea ceremony activities, and uses "The Dharma is in the tea soup" to express the pursuit of spiritual realm rather than materialism, which is the original face of the tea ceremony. He believes that excessive entanglement in tea ordering techniques is "degenerating into worldly human feelings" and losing the most fundamental meaning of the tea ceremony. What he attaches importance to is the host-guest relationship between the tea brewer and the tea taster involved in the tea ceremony activities, as well as the relationship between the French style and the creation of aesthetic scenes in the tea ceremony.
The authentic style and spiritual freedom of the Senritsu Tea Ceremony were achieved through the intricate regulations of the French style of the Tea Ceremony. On the one hand, he believes that continuing to deepen along the specific and subtle regulations such as the proportion of tea sets, the light of the tea room, and the order of placement emphasized by Takeno will lead to the tea ceremony entering the empty shell of formalism, thus losing the most fundamental purpose of pursuing spiritual freedom.
On the other hand, he also believes that the tea ceremony should be strictly regulated in style, the purpose of which is to create a certain mood or express the inner spiritual world in ambient language. So he went out of his way to express the style that should be followed in his cognition, the world of tea ceremony.
Later, he further reduced the size of the tea room and discarded the gorgeous tea bowls from the Chinese mainland in favor of the Goryeo tea bowls used by the Korean common people. This bowl is made of soft pottery, with an irregular shape and extremely simple shape. Later, he specially designed the Le Kiln Tea Bowl, a soft pottery tea bowl made by hand, with an irregular shape, and a black patternless pattern.
In his tea room, the bucket of water and the flower utensils used for flower arrangement are from the most ordinary labor tools, the bucket is a civilian wooden barrel, and the flower vessel is a bamboo basket for fishing. The courtyard landscape outside the tea room is also based on the appearance of nature, and the pursuit of idle artistic conception is actually the pursuit of the harmonious unity of man and nature.
His tea ceremony, with the help of Zen education, expressed the pursuit of spiritual freedom. This kind of tea ceremony appeared in Japan in the 16th century, and its idealization of the relationship between the host and the guest of the tea ceremony, the specification of the meticulous laws in the tea ceremony, and the aesthetic taste of simplicity and authenticity are hidden behind the emerging classes produced by the free city, trying to break the strict, fixed hierarchical restrictions, restrictions, and demands for individual dialogue in equality.
Oda Nobunaga's army conquered Sakai, Japan's largest free city, not only to dominate an important commercial center, but also because of the Buddhist "Ichijō Sect" on which he had long relied. The Ichijo sect has a very special form in Japanese Buddhism, relying on ordinary people as believers, and is a common religion.
Simple ideals from the bottom, mixed with fanatical religious beliefs in the increasingly developed environment of the commodity economy, form a powerful force. Their frequent armed rebellions were an obstacle to the unification of Japan by Oda Nobunaga and later Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
In this case, Senritsu encounters Toyotomi Hideyoshi and becomes his vassal. As Hideyoshi's power grew, his position in feudal authority was consolidated, and his tea ceremony was carried out on a large scale at this time. While using authoritative means to treat wealthy merchants in Sakai, he reused several well-known tea artists in Sakai, including Senritsu.
These people are known as tea heads, who specialize in taking care of tea ceremony affairs for him, which has the meaning of decorating the home with the famous family way tea. In his eyes, these once free tea ceremonists may be his personal wealth.
The reuse of these tea masters is one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's important tea ceremony activities, but it is also a popular move in exchange for the reputation of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was born as a samurai. Shortly after becoming Sekibai, he held a tea party at the Imperial Palace to thank the Emperor and personally ordered tea for the Emperor. Chiritsu assisted Toyotomi Hideyoshi as an advisor, and was appreciated by the Emperor and gave him the name Rishiki.
However, it should be pointed out that Hideyoshi Toyoda's behavior in this tea party, in order to show respect for the emperor, but also to show off his wealth, he deliberately used a new expensive tea set. Not only that, in order to show his economic strength, he displayed all the precious tea sets in his collection at the tea party, and this vulgar behavior destroyed the simple authenticity pursued by Qian Lixiu to the extreme.
In 1587, he held a large-scale tea party for the people in Kitano, Kyoto, and his extravagant and vulgar tea style was expressed to the extreme in the Kitano Grand Tea Party. He even built himself a tea room with gold leaf on the inside, and all the tea sets in it were made of real gold. As a result, Senritsu could not continue to tolerate his tea ceremony, and the two men had frequent tea ceremony conflicts in the following years, and finally became irreconcilable. In 1591, Senritsu was killed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi for the following crimes.
Behind the extravagance of the Toyotomi Hideyoshi tea ceremony is the background of the great development of Japan's commodity economy in the 16th century. The daimyo who had acquired power and economic status at that time had a consistent aesthetic tendency, they were the beneficiaries of the prosperity of the commodity economy in the chaotic world, and they were also authoritarians in the ruling ideology, so the situation dominated by this aesthetic orientation was created.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's main purpose was to enhance his prestige, and the main function of his tea ceremony was to show off and boast of his status and authority through extravagant material things. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was not born and had a shallow cultural attainment, was not as good as a well-known artist who was able to elevate this vulgar style into an art with excellent skills, but completely turned it into a vulgarity, thus becoming closer to the true face of the artistic style of this era.
Authoritative rulers benefit both from the development of the commodity economy and as an obstacle to the development of the commodity economy. They cannot tolerate the development of a new class brought about by the embryonic of capitalism, and the action and freedom of this class itself. At the same time, a large amount of wealth accumulated by the early development of the commodity economy appeared in the form of money and could only be hoarded, which in turn led to a large splurge of wealth. It is on this basis that the tea ceremony of the two embarked on the opposite path in aesthetic pursuit and spiritual realm.
A month after Chiritsu's death, Hideyoshi Toyoda launched the Mitatsu War, which ended in a complete military defeat. The year after Senritsu committed suicide, his son was recalled by Hideyoshi Toyoda, but his grandson succeeded him in the tea ceremony and devoted himself to the tea ceremony and did not participate in any political activities. The spirit of freedom pursued by Qianlixiu has survived tenaciously in cramped tea rooms and bitter tea soups for a long time after that, until now.
bibliography:
1. Introduction to Japanese Tea Ceremony Culture, Teng Jun, Oriental Publishing House
2. "History of Japan", Wu Tingxuan, Nankai University Press