Where did the Japanese tea ceremony come from? A short history
By Mio.KShare
The Japanese tea ceremony grew out of a Chinese way of drinking tea that Zen monks brought to Japan in the late twelfth century. Over the next four hundred years it was turned into something distinctly Japanese, and in the sixteenth century Sen no Rikyū gave it the form that is still practiced today.
The short answer: powdered tea whisked in a bowl came to Japan from Song-dynasty China around the end of the 1100s, carried by the Zen monk Eisai. The tea ceremony itself, the quiet, pared-back practice called wabi-cha, took shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through three men, Murata Jukō, Takeno Jōō and Sen no Rikyū. Rikyū's way of tea is carried on today by the three Sen family schools, Omotesenke, Urasenke and Mushakōjisenke.
I study tea in Tokyo, in the Urasenke school, which is one of those three. Here is the story in order, as the tea schools themselves tell it.
Tea arrives as medicine
Tea was known in Japan earlier, but the kind that leads to matcha arrived with Eisai, a monk of the Rinzai school of Zen. Studying in China, he learned the new Song-dynasty way of making tea: green tea ground to a powder and whisked in hot water, which is very close to what we drink now.
At first tea was valued as medicine. In 1214, the story goes, Eisai offered tea to the shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo, who was suffering from a hangover, and presented him with a book on the virtues of tea. That book is thought to be Kissa Yōjōki, "Drinking Tea for Health," the first book on tea written in Japan. From there, the habit of drinking tea spread.
From lavish parties to a small, quiet room
By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tea had become a pastime of the powerful: lively gatherings where expensive utensils imported from China were displayed and admired. Against that, in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a different kind of tea appeared. It used simple Japanese wares alongside the Chinese pieces and looked for beauty in what is plain, incomplete and understated. This is wabi-cha, and it is what we now call the tea ceremony. (Where the word wabi comes from is in what is wabi sabi.)
| Who | When | What he added |
|---|---|---|
| Murata Jukō | Born in Nara, 1422 or 1423 | The starting point of wabi-cha. His short "Letter of the Heart" was the first to treat tea as a matter of the heart, not only of objects |
| Takeno Jōō | Early 1500s | A merchant of the port city of Sakai who had studied poetry. He brought the "cold and withered" beauty of linked verse into tea |
| Sen no Rikyū | 1522–1591 | Jōō's student, also from Sakai. He stripped away the play, put the meeting between host and guest at the center, and created new utensils, among them the Raku bowls made by Chōjirō. He is said to have perfected wabi-cha |
Rikyū
Rikyū served the two most powerful men of his age, Oda Nobunaga and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi, as their adviser on tea. The relationship with Hideyoshi ended badly. In 1591 Rikyū was ordered to take his own life, and he died in Kyoto at the age of seventy. The real reason is still debated. A note written later by his great-grandson suggests that, underneath it all, the two men disagreed about what tea should be: a room Rikyū made was too small and too austere for Hideyoshi's taste.
What Rikyū left behind is the shape of tea that people still learn: the small room, the plain utensils, the bowl turned before drinking, and above all the idea that the point of the gathering is the meeting itself.
The three Sen schools
Rikyū's line was restored by his son and grandson. In 1646 his grandson Sōtan retired and passed the family house to one son, which became Omotesenke. Another son set up Urasenke on the land behind it, and a third founded Mushakōjisenke. These three schools, the san-Senke, still hand down Rikyū's tea today. There are other schools too, each with its own manners, but these three are the best known.
Is it still practiced today?
Yes, and not only as a performance for visitors. People in Japan go to weekly lessons for years, tea gatherings are held through the year, and the schools teach abroad as well. Most practitioners are ordinary people who go to lessons once a week or so. The name has changed less than the practice: it began as chanoyu, "hot water for tea," and the words sadō and chadō came later. I explain the names in what the Japanese tea ceremony is called.
Questions I get asked
Where did the Japanese tea ceremony originate?
In Japan, from a way of drinking powdered tea that came from Song-dynasty China in the late twelfth century. The ceremony itself took shape in Japan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Who invented the Japanese tea ceremony?
No single person. Murata Jukō began the quiet style called wabi-cha, Takeno Jōō deepened it, and Sen no Rikyū perfected it in the sixteenth century.
When was the tea ceremony invented?
Wabi-cha formed between the late 1400s and the late 1500s. Rikyū, who gave it its lasting form, died in 1591.
Is the Japanese tea ceremony still practiced today?
Yes. The three Sen family schools, Omotesenke, Urasenke and Mushakōjisenke, still teach it, and many people in Japan and abroad take weekly lessons.
What does Zen have to do with the tea ceremony?
Powdered tea came to Japan with Zen monks, and many of the early teachers of tea studied Zen. But the tea ceremony is not a religious rite. I go into this in is the tea ceremony religious.
Where this fits
The tea Eisai brought home is the same thing you can make in your own kitchen: green tea ground fine, whisked in a bowl. If the history makes you want to try, how to make matcha starts from the beginning, and the starter set has the whisk, bowl and scoop you need. If you would like to see it in person, is a tea ceremony in Japan worth it compares the options for visitors.
Written by Mio.K, who chooses everything in this shop by hand in Japan.