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Expressing the Essence of the Way of Tea: Tanka Poems used by Tea Masters

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Zalewska A.

Analecta Nipponica

2015

issue 5

43-56

The Way of Tea, called chadō or chanoyu in Japanese, is a comprehensive art and philosophy, uniting a rich material culture with a spiritual tradition. Some of the teachings of chadō masters can be found in treatises like Nampōroku, or The Southern Records (17th century, ascribed to Nambō Sōkei, supposedly – a disciple of Sen no Rikyū) or in anecdote collections, like Chawa shigetsushū, or The Collection of Tea Stories Pointing to the Moon (1683). Most of the chadō masters did not leave their respective collected writings or teachings put into treatises, but many of them made the effort to express the essence of the Way of Tea in the much shorter form of tanka poems. First of all, Rikyū hyakushu, or One hundred verses of Rikyū (called also Rikyū dōka – Rikyū’s poems of the way) must be mentioned. This is a collection of one hundred tanka poems, traditionally ascribed to Rikyū himself, although most of them were known since before Rikyū’s times and attributed to Takeno Jōō. The final collection of Rikyū hyakushu, as we know it now, was assembled probably by the eleventh head of the Urasenke school of tea, Gengensai (1810–1877). Among the poems we can find some very detailed instructions on how to use tea utensils or how to understand some parts of the tea making procedures, but there are also poems endeavouring to express the very essence of the Way of Tea philosphy. Apart from poems created especially to show the understanding of tea art, many tea masters used pre-existing poems, written originally without any connection to chanoyu. One of the most famous examples is a short exchange of poems recorded in Nampōroku: to illustrate the essence of the Way of Tea Takeno Jōō used a poem by famous poet, Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241), to which Rikyū answered with a poem by Fujiwara Ietaka (1158–1237). Later, the alleged author of Nampōroku, Nambō Sōkei, continued this poetic dialogue with a tanka of his own. The aim of this article is to introduce the poems used by the tea masters and to analyse the ways of expressing the essence of the way.

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1 Analecta Nipponica

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1 2015

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Expressing the Essence of the Way of Tea: Tanka Poems used by Tea Masters