Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period 9781350014015, 9781350014046, 9781350014008

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: gathering for tea in Japanese history
1. The social life of tea utensils: chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration
2. Chanoyu as a sideshow
3. Gathering for tea in Tokyo, c. 1870–1880
4. Gathering for tea in Tokyo, c. 1880–1900
5. Performing chanoyu in Kyoto, c. 1880–1900
6. Consuming tea in Chicago and London
7. Teaching chanoyu in modern Japan: the case of the Urasenke School
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan Series Editor: Christopher Gerteis, SOAS, University of London (UK) Series Editorial Board: Steve Dodd, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Andrew Gerstle, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Janet Hunter, London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom) Helen Macnaughtan, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Timon Screech, SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom) Naoko Shimazu, Yale-NUS College (Singapore) Published in association with the Japan Research Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan features scholarly books on modern and contemporary Japan, showcasing new research monographs as well as translations of scholarship not previously available in English. Its goal is to ensure that current, high quality research on Japan, its history, politics and culture, is made available to an English speaking audience. Published: Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan, Jan Bardsley Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan, Emily Anderson The China Problem in Postwar Japan, Robert Hoppens Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th Century Japan, The Asahi Shimbun Company (translated by Barak Kushner) Contemporary Sino–Japanese Relations on Screen, Griseldis Kirsch Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan, edited by Patrick W. Galbraith, Thiam Huat Kam and Björn-Ole Kamm Politics and Power in 20th-Century Japan, Mikuriya Takashi and Nakamura Takafusa (translated by Timothy S. George) Japanese Taiwan, edited by Andrew Morris Japan’s Postwar Military and Civil Society, Tomoyuki Sasaki The History of Japanese Psychology, Brian J. McVeigh Postwar Emigration to South America from Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, Pedro Iacobelli The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan, Sari Kawana Post-Fascist Japan, Laura Hein Mass Media, Consumerism and National Identity in Postwar Japan, Martyn David Smith Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War, Ethan Mark Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan, Taka Oshikiri Forthcoming: Kenkoku University and the Experience of Pan-Asianism, Yuka Hiruma Kishida Engineering Asia, Hiromi Mizuno, Aaron S. Moore and John DiMoia

Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period Taka Oshikiri

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 This paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © Taka Oshikiri, 2018 Taka Oshikiri has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Shokunin Zukushi Utaawase by Kano Seisen, Kano Shosen © Tokyo National Museum Image Archives All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-1401-5 PB: 978-1-3501-4378-4 ePDF: 978-1-3500-1400-8 eBook: 978-1-3500-1403-9 Series: SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

Acknowledgements

vi

Introduction: gathering for tea in Japanese history

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The social life of tea utensils: chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration Chanoyu as a sideshow Gathering for tea in Tokyo, c. 1870–1880 Gathering for tea in Tokyo, c. 1880–1900 Performing chanoyu in Kyoto, c. 1880–1900 Consuming tea in Chicago and London Teaching chanoyu in modern Japan: the case of the Urasenke School

19 35 45 57 73 93 109

Conclusion

121

Notes Bibliography Index

125 151 159

Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without tremendous support from many sources over the course of its production. I am grateful for the vibrant intellectual community at SOAS during my years there and for the support enabled by this community. I am indebted to my PhD advisors, Angus Lockyer and John Breen, for their support during my years at SOAS. I am also grateful to my colleagues at SOAS for their valuable comments and suggestions and their moral support at different stages of my PhD project. These include Lalita Hingkanonta Hanwong, Florence Hodous, Hung-bin Hsu, Chialin Huang, Alena Kulinich, Yi Li, Peying Lin, Jonathan Saha and Eriko Tomizawa-Kay. I especially acknowledge Keya Anjaria for her invaluable assistance with my earlier drafts. I owe a great deal to the colleagues and friends who commented on earlier versions of the manuscript and pushed me to reconsider, reformulate and refine my ideas. I am indebted to Christine Guth for her insightful comments on many of my papers in their post-dissertation form. I also thank anonymous reviewers at Japan Forum for their comments and suggestions to Chapter 4.1 I extend my gratitude to Professor Peter Pantzer and Nana Miyata for their assistance and suggestions for my research in Vienna. I benefitted tremendously from their comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to my colleagues and students at the University of the West Indies, Mona, for their critical comments on the history of Japan, which made me rethink my topic from a different angle. Thanks to Christopher Gerteis and Timon Screech for their encouragement and support through the process leading to publication. I extend my appreciation as well to Emma Goode at Bloomsbury Publishing for her patience and assistance during the publication process. Special thanks are due to Fujiko Kobayashi at the SOAS Library for her generous support throughout the project. I also thank Kuga Takashi at Matsura Shiryō Hakubutsukan, Johannes Wieninger at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Arts and the staff at the Austrian Image

Acknowledgements

vii

Archives, the Austrian National Library, the British Library, Kyoto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan, Kon’nichi-an Bunko, the National Diet Library, the Waseda University Library, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Library and the University of Tokyo Library for their kind guidance and assistance. I am grateful for Kikuchi Naoko and Usaki Yuki at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies for their kind assistance during my stay at TUFS. Part of my research was funded by the Meiji Jingū Studentship, administered by the Meiji Jingū and the Japan Research Centre at SOAS, in 2008–9. Further funding for language training was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2008. In 2010, the John Crump Studentship from the British Association for Japanese Studies provided generous writing support for the completion of my PhD thesis. The Visiting Professorship in TUFS Program for Japan Studies in Global Context, supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies made it possible for me to complete my revisions in 2017. In closing, I can never thank my mother, Hitomi Oshikiri, enough for her continuous support and patience, without which I could not have accomplished my project.

Introduction: gathering for tea in Japanese history

The subject of this book is chanoyu (茶湯), a highly formalized sociocultural activity elaborated from the consumption of powdered green tea (matcha). The most common translation for ‘chanoyu’ is the ‘tea ceremony’, or the ‘Japanese tea ceremony’. However, the term ‘tea ceremony’ as a referent to ‘chanoyu’ does not convey the entire meaning of the term as it puts too much emphasis on the ceremonial and ritual aspect, indicating its ‘close connection with the powerful tea schools that dominate Japanese tea discourse today’,1 and undermines the significance of ‘chanoyu’ as a gathering, a space where people come together and socialize. Although the literal translation for chanoyu is ‘hot water for tea’, the term chanoyu refers to ‘a gathering for tea’, as practised in early modern Japan. According to Genkai, one of the earliest dictionaries of the modern period, published in 1889, the word ‘chanoyu’ is used synonymously with the word ‘chanoe’ (茶会) and defined as:2 特に客を會して饗應し、濃茶、薄茶を點てて供すること。特に其作 法ありて、技芸の一とす Gather the guests and treat them with meals and drinks. Then make and serve thick tea (koicha) and thin tea (usucha). [Cha-no-yu has] a specific way of conducting procedure and is counted as one of the artistic skills.

That is to say, the term ‘chanoyu’ itself refers to the whole set of customs related to drinking powdered green tea: organizing the space in which to socialize, as well as to wine, dine and drink tea. It includes the formalized manners necessary to conduct the procedure and the rigid aesthetic code vital to coordinate various forms of tea gatherings. The spatial aspect of chanoyu is crucial in examining its history. Therefore, in this book, chanoyu is referred to

2

Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

as a set of sociocultural spaces related to matcha-drinking practices. Lastly, in this book ‘tea’ refers to powdered/ground green tea (matcha) unless otherwise noted.3

The state of the field: the history of the historiography of tea There are a great many works written on chanoyu.4 The early effort of modern scholarship was to conceptualize the practice of chanoyu and to provide the historical and philosophical grounds of it so that the study of chanoyu might be considered an academic discipline.5 This attempt was also supported by tea institutions, as demonstrated by the publication of Chadō zenshū, fifteen volumes compiled by Sen Sōshitsu of the Urasenke School and Sen Sōshu of the Mushanokōjisenke School published between 1936 and 1937.6 Since then, there have been various studies on chanoyu by both Japanese and non-Japanese scholars.7 The early works focus on artistic elements of the tea-drinking custom and try to theorize and historicize the practice. Thus, substantial emphasis is given to the earlier period when the formality of tea gatherings and the aesthetic code for the tea utensil ornamentation were first developed. As a consequence, the earlier studies explore tea utensils and the intellectual writings, focusing on particular styles formulated by famous masters.8 In addition, there are many great works focusing on sociological and anthropological aspects of chanoyu in contemporary Japan.9 Although these studies briefly review the modern history of chanoyu, most of their works concentrate on the postwar period and female practitioners. In these works, the section concerning the history of chanoyu between the Meiji and the early Showa periods heavily relies on Kumakura Isao’s work, which is discussed in detail in the next section. In other words, there are very few historical studies referring to the period immediately after the Meiji Restoration.10 The most prominent work on this period is Kumakura Isao’s Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū (The Study in the Modern History of Chanoyu). In this book, Kumakura examines modern chanoyu practice from various aspects, pointing out that chanoyu became an old-fashioned custom during the early Meiji period, as the people who had patronized chanoyu masters before the Meiji Restoration lost their status and were no longer able to support them.

Introduction

3

Moreover, Kumakura argues, chanoyu was rejected in the early Meiji period as it was to a large extent useless for ‘modern’ nation building. Conventional aristocratic activities such as tea gatherings and flower arrangements were irrelevant when the new regime was trying to replace the old political system with a new one. However, as Kumakura goes on to point out, the practice revived and came into vogue once again around the mid-Meiji period. Kumakura concludes that chanoyu was able to make its way into the modern world by being acknowledged as tradition (dentō). He also states that the modernization of chanoyu practice involved a transformation from a playful sociocultural activity (yūgei) to a rigid ceremonial tradition, which supported the state’s interest in making the modern nation.

The Meiji culture Much of the literature referring to chanoyu practice – or Japanese culture in general – in the modern period roams over the Meiji, Taisho and Showa periods, including Kumakura’s work, rather than focusing specifically on the Meiji period. The majority of work on the history of modern Japanese culture associates the advent of Japan’s modern culture with emerging new classes (the modern industrialist elite, the new middle class, and mass society), as well as with institutions (the gendered state school system, modern academic disciplines), the mass media, and popular publications. As a consequence, earlier studies on the culture of modern Japan – or rather, ‘modan’ culture – tend to devote much attention to the 1920s and 1930s when the above features had fully developed subsequent to the onset of industrialization. However, the cultural development during the Meiji period deserves a full attention because the Meiji period was a transitional period when the organs of the Tokugawa state disintegrated before they were gradually replaced by modern institutions.11 Generally speaking, earlier works on Meiji culture identify the early Meiji as a period in which the government embraced the massive influx of Western institutions, intellectual works and material culture to the relegation of their traditional Japanese counterparts. Such earlier academic works also use the model of a hegemonic state oppressing the Japanese people (and imposing westernization), with the people opposing the state (which eventually gave

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Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

in).12 However, recent scholarship – explicitly or implicitly – challenges the notion that there was a clear break between pre-modern (conventional and traditional) and modern (Western and progressive) cultures. For example, new studies that focus on the political culture of the Meiji period, and reconsider the significance of the Meiji Constitution or the Popular Rights (minken) Movement, suggest that the ‘enlightened and progressive’ elite and the elite of more conventional and traditional thinking had multifaceted and overlapping roles in the making of modern Japan.13 A growing number of studies that examine the developments of modern (and Western) institutions – such as universities, museums, and exhibitions – have pointed out the significance of the Tokugawa legacies for the post1868 transformation and their linkage with Western academic disciplines/ institutions, the Meiji state and the making of the modern Japanese nation.14 Therefore, even though the above ‘modan’ features had not been fully developed, studying culture in the Meiji period is critical to understanding both how and why a cultural practice which predated the modern era was able to turn itself into something suitable for modern society and whom this benefitted. The history of tea in the Meiji period also needs to be re-examined, in order to fully understand the historical development of chanoyu practices (and Japanese culture in general) in modern times. As Carol Gluck has demonstrated in the case of ideology in the late Meiji period, the formation of such cultural phenomena is a historical process reflecting a variety of interests on the part of various agents.15 This book shares Gluck’s premise that multiple agents are involved in the creation of cultural phenomena, and examines and identifies the actors who were involved in this process. It diverges from Gluck, however, in looking primarily at the realm outside the formation of ideology. This is not to say that the ideological dimensions of chanoyu – and the role of intellectuals in framing the significance of the pre-modern practice into modern society – were irrelevant, as is clear from the work of Kumakura, Surak, and others, but the ideology of chanoyu needs to be situated alongside the development of politics, economics and society, as well as in conjunction with the people who actually practised chanoyu. Indeed, in the Meiji period, it is the political, economic and social conditions that were primary in producing the environment within which chanoyu could be rediscovered.

Introduction

5

Much of the early historiography referring to modern-day chanoyu practices states that the chanoyu revival developed in parallel with the process of the building of the modern nation, due to the need to assert continuity with the past in order to unify the state.16 However, this book argues that the significance of reshaping ‘traditions’ cannot be reduced to their role in the making of a modern nation or stabilizing modern capitalist society, as suggested by Kumakura’s work and Vlastos’ Mirror of Modernity.17 Rather, the reshaping of chanoyu and the canonization of the practice as Japanese art has broader reasoning and effects. In short, this book highlights that although chanoyu was canonized as one of the emblems of Japanese tradition, this was not done solely as an ideological means with which to serve the state’s modern nation-building project and to stabilize a rapidly changing society. Rather, the process of traditionalization and canonization of chanoyu in modern Japan involved many other factors and effects.

Methodology This book explores how different actors in various places have employed chanoyu to serve their individual interests. The most significant difference between chanoyu in pre-modern society and in the post-Meiji Restoration period is its link with political authority. In pre-modern Japan, the authority, namely, the Shogunate, institutionally patronized the practice of chanoyu and the custom of drinking matcha, or powdered green tea. The Tokugawa authority used public displays of tea-related objects and rituals, such as the annual procession of the tea-picking envoys to Uji in the early summer, to promote its power and reinforce its legitimacy. The official use of chanoyu and its material culture by the Shogunate and the domains ensured the continual consumption of matcha, fostered the tea and pottery industries, and developed a body of professional chanoyu officers. By the mid-Tokugawa period, these professionally trained tea officers (sukiyagashira and sukiyabōzu) handled chanoyu-related matters – from transmission of knowledge to management of tea assets and the daily routine of tea making and serving – on behalf of their lords.18 The continuity of chanoyu culture was assured by the political authority’s institutional patronage.

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Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

However, the ceremonial role of chanoyu in official settings faded with the fall of the Shogunate. Chanoyu lost the source of its legitimacy and the foundation of its material production. The practice of chanoyu was no longer a crucial skill for men (and women) to take part in public life. What institution or person, then, would ensure the continuity of chanoyu culture and the industries – tea producers and tea utensil makers – that provided the material reality of this practice? This book thus explores how chanoyu culture and its industries survived this critical moment. It intends to capture chanoyu from a variety of perspectives, considering how diverse groups in various social spaces experienced it differently. Following Miriam Silverberg, various social groups and sites are juxtaposed to provide insights into the complex transformation of tea during the Meiji period. Silverberg embraces montage as a way of exploring mass culture ‘seen as fragmented in time and space’.19 Modern media and mass consumption were not fully developed in the Meiji era, but nonetheless, it was a time of fragmentation, particularly concerning tea. Although the pre-modern practice of chanoyu was by no means homogenous, the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate broke up the material life of chanoyu practice – its production, consumption and knowledge transmission. Chanoyu, as a legitimate culture whose continuity and material foundation were ensured by institutional patronage from the warrior aristocracy, came to the verge of extinction with the disappearance of the Tokugawa authority. In the Meiji period, chanoyu lacked any single source providing legitimacy and continuity. It is not too much to claim that the culture of chanoyu in the Meiji period can be seen as fragmented in time and space – especially in terms of production and consumption – as was the modan culture of interwar and wartime Japan.

Women and chanoyu Early scholarship on the history of chanoyu emphasizes the role of women in its modern development even though tea gatherings were originally a socio-political space for warrior elites.20 In contemporary Japan, however, the majority of chanoyu practitioners are indeed female. Even though, as

Introduction

7

described below, women rarely received formal recognition or became publicly involved in chanoyu/tea gatherings in the Tokugawa period, many of the late Meiji discourses describe chanoyu as a female accomplishment.21 Kumakura explains that this was because chanoyu lessons were introduced into girls’ secondary education and women became the ones who transmitted the traditions of chanoyu in modern Japan. According to Kumakura, through state education, which became compulsory through the reforms carried out by the Meiji government, girls from a wide range of social backgrounds were able to learn chanoyu practice, leading to an increase in the number of female practitioners. Additionally, as Kumakura also suggests, chanoyu practice satisfied the needs of the educators and Meiji bureaucrats who were searching for a new role for women in the new regime.22 New gender ideals were first implemented in school education.23 The ideology known as ryōsai kenbo (good wives and wise mothers) was a guiding principle for secondary school education for girls, which was consolidated in the late Meiji period.24 Chanoyu was thought to be representative of traditional values and hence representing an ideal feminine virtue.25 For this reason, Kumakura suggests, chanoyu lessons were introduced into the school education and then were widely accepted by women.26 Kumakura goes on further to argue that because chanoyu was introduced into state education, it was widely accepted by society and hence became one of the accomplishments that should be obtained before a good marriage (hanayome shugyō). In other words, the incorporation of chanoyu into a feminine virtue in the modern period was a state-promoted one.27 In short, Kumakura’s argument is that the increase in the number of female practitioners was due to chanoyu representing an ideal feminine virtue and that it was therefore in the nation’s interest to use chanoyu as a tool to manufacture a gendered nation which gave a new role to women. As a consequence, the practice of chanoyu was feminized, Kumakura seems to suggest, and this process was promoted by the state. However, there are problems with this argument. First, the number of girls who attended schools during the Meiji era was very limited.28 Secondary school education during the Meiji era was primarily for girls with an elite background.29 In addition, in the 1920s, while 33 per cent of the girls had chanoyu lessons in the Kinki region of Tokyo, only 15.4 per cent of the female students learned chanoyu between their graduation and the marriage.30

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Thus, one can argue that chanoyu could be ingrained into the everyday lives of middle-class women in the Kinki region in particular. The relationships amongst chanoyu, female students and hanayome shugyō (cultural attainments for good marriage) were not a nationally uniform phenomenon, but might rather have exhibited regional variations.31 Moreover, the state’s educational policy regarding tea lessons and other accomplishments can be exemplified by the promulgation of an official notice in 1903. On 24 December 1903, the Ministry of Education sent an official notice to each prefectural office stating that: 高等女学校に於て土地の情況に依り必要なる場合に限り正課時間外 に便宜茶儀生花筝曲等を教授するは差し支えなし.32 Girls’ secondary schools (kōtō jogakkō) can facilitate an extracurricular class for chanoyu etiquettes, flower arrangements, koto music etc., only if it is necessary in view of the local circumstances.

Kumakura refers to this official notice as support for his argument that chanoyu was incorporated into girls’ school education and was promoted by the state as a modern feminine virtue. However, Kobayashi Yoshiho disagrees with Kumakura’s reading, and suggests that the notice shows that the state was trying to exclude tea lessons from the main curriculum.33 It was social pressure, Kobayashi stresses, presumably from parents, which induced schools to incorporate tea lessons into the curriculum, rather than the state, as Kumakura suggests. Thus, the integration of chanoyu into the modern idea of feminine virtue was not led by the state; rather, it appears that social pressure drove the schools to include chanoyu lessons. This book agrees with Kobayashi’s reading. First, the notice shows that the state was defining chanoyu and other conventional attainments as extracurricular subjects. Second, it suggests that there was regional diversity in the demands for the integration of such conventional practices into school curricula. This book suggests that the notice was sent in order to meet demands from regional authorities, who wanted their daughters to acquire the conventional aristocratic practices. Moreover, considering the limited number of female students who received primary and secondary education prior to the late Meiji period, secondary-level education was still limited to a privileged few in the early days of the Meiji era. In other words, in pre-modern Japan, the girls

Introduction

9

who were able to receive chanoyu lessons at school in the Meiji period were those who would have learned such aristocratic practices at home anyway.34 Thus, it is problematic to argue that the number of female practitioners had risen in the Meiji era, because female practitioners were, if not invisible in Tokugawa society, certainly severely under-acknowledged in it.35 Building on Kobayashi’s statement that the integration of chanoyu lessons into the curriculum is a consequence of pressure from society rather than from the state, this book explores why local authorities chose chanoyu as an accomplishment suitable for young women. This question will be examined in Chapters 2 and 5 by looking at circumstances in Kyoto throughout the Meiji era as an example to suggest how and why such social pressure might have been formulated and enforced.

Tea art, tea tradition and tea professionals Earlier works on the modern history of chanoyu see the group of people who monopolized authority over the transmission of knowledge and skill relating to chanoyu as a promising set of actors in the story of the survival of chanoyu. Such figures are the iemoto (literally, ‘the family head’), ryūso (‘the founder’) and other successors of various tea traditions that today comprise the various tea schools.36 Iemoto is a title used widely among the practitioners of various arts, and it is hereditary – whether via blood or adoption: the title was not necessarily inherited within the biological family, even though the house art in question was the basis of the familial institution.37 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were hundreds of iemoto for various arts ranging from religious practices to artistic skills.38 It is often argued that this strong institutionalized iemoto system was the reason why the tradition of chanoyu was maintained for a long time.39 However, as will be discussed in the following chapters, iemoto and iemoto organizations played a relatively insignificant role in society until the end of the Meiji period. In pre-modern Japan, there were also other carriers of chanoyu traditions and cultures. They were a body of professionals trained in chanoyu serving the Shogunate and domain administrations as tea officers (sukiyagashira). The development and preservation of aesthetic codes governing the conduct of chanoyu practice

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Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

were not exclusive to iemoto organizations in the pre-Meiji period. This book takes a close look at the experience of the professionals from the various tea traditions, including iemoto, and examines how they contributed to the transformation of chanoyu after the Meiji Restoration.

Sources The aim of this book is therefore to capture this fragmentation and dynamism of a cultural practice that predates modernity in an emerging modern time and space. This book uses a variety of sources in order to introduce various key individuals, representing the diverse social groups involved in chanoyu, and to examine a number of institutions that were central to the transformation of tea. The mixture of figures and sources may seem somewhat random, but this shows the fact that chanoyu in the Meiji period was itself going through temporal and spatial fragmentation. This book addresses the problem of fragmentation by embracing it, juxtaposing a range of different people and spaces to demonstrate the changes and diversity of the period. First, this book focuses on the spatial element of chanoyu. The initial and foremost significance of chanoyu is its social aspect: facilitating communion and socialization through the act of tea drinking. In other words, the practice of tea always creates a certain space whenever it is performed. The sources for this book therefore refer to the sites where tea and its objects have been performed, practised and displayed. The sites examined in the book vary geographically (Tokyo, Kyoto, Vienna, Chicago, and London). They also vary in kind: from regional, national and international arenas to political fora, social spaces and commercial sites (regional festivals and other public displays, commercial banqueting facilities, and domestic and international exhibitions). The book also looks at public, commercial, and private spaces (tea gatherings in private residences, private clubs, and at modern institutions, such as museums). Second, this book explores the practice of chanoyu by a number of social groups, including tea professionals, the old and new aristocracy, the modern capitalist and other domestic elite, as well as the non-Japanese elite. In this way, the lens of chanoyu is used to consider the complexity of the changing social structure in Meiji Japan. This book therefore also focuses on a number

Introduction

11

of specific individuals, institutions and organizations, discussed below. By doing so, this book tries to clarify the views and attitudes of multiple actors, exploring their various motives and interests in pursuing a practice that was closely associated with the pre-modern class and status system, which was fracturing with the emergence of the new Meiji regime. Moreover, by contextualizing the activities of various social groups within a variety of events and sites where tea was displayed, practised and performed, this book aims to shed light on how people’s relationships with chanoyu (and vice versa) varied according to site. The source material used in this book varies, in an attempt to provide a montage of the various spaces of chanoyu during the Meiji era. Evidence is drawn from government documents, diaries, biographies, newspapers and journals, as well as tourist guides, maps, official reports and catalogues for the international exhibitions. Most of the sources were published officially, commercially or privately. Some are given more attention than others. The following are the main figures considered, and the sources that have been used to trace their activities and significance. The first individual to appear in the book is Ninagawa Noritane, in Chapter 1. He represents the middle-class intellectual who emerged from the Tokugawa scholarly tradition. Ninagawa is also important as he contributed to the establishment of modern institutions such as museums. In other words, his view on and attitude toward material objects inspired the institutionalization of modern academic disciplines in Japan. He is not particularly renowned as a tea practitioner. Ninagawa’s experience with chanoyu, therefore – mostly with the material aspects of the practice – suggests the general interests and relationships between middle-class intellectuals of the late Tokugawa period and chanoyu at the beginning of the Meiji era. In order to explore Ninagawa’s view, this book relies on his journal, which seems not originally to have been intended for publication. It was kept during a national survey of material culture carried out in the summer of 1872. Ninagawa kept a detailed record of objects he examined during a tour of Kyoto and Nara. The diary is extremely valuable as it bears witness to a moment when the place of material culture and objects in Japanese scholarship began to change. The diary, therefore, provides insight into the place of tea-related objects through the eyes of an antiquarian. Through a close textual reading

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Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

of the records on tea artefacts in the diary, the book explores the ambiguous place of tea objects in the mind of officials in the new government in the early Meiji era. Second, this book explores the place of tea in the lives of the elite. Chapter 3 takes three individuals, Matsura Akira, Higashikuze Michitomi and Yasuda Zenjirō, as representative of the way in which the Meiji elite came together in and around the practice of tea. By the end of the Meiji era, these three were members of the same cultural circle and shared the same sociocultural space, even though they came from different social backgrounds; Matsura was a member of the former warrior aristocracy and Higashikuze of the court aristocracy, while Yasuda was a merchant who originally came from a lowranking half-farmer, half-samurai family. In other words, at the end of the Meiji era these three belonged to the same social class, despite the difference in their social backgrounds at the beginning of the period. Exploring their social lives in the early Meiji era will show how social class was reshaped through the practice of tea gathering during the Meiji period. For Higashikuze and for Yasuda the book uses their diaries, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki and Shōō chakaiki, to explore their practice of and attitudes toward tea.40,41 The version of Higashikuze’s diary used is a three-volume transcribed edition of an original manuscript, covering the period 1854–82 and recording Higashikuze’s public and private activities, as well as daily domestic matters. The diary provides much information about Higashikuze’s relationships with the imperial institution and the new government, as well as the daily life of newly established upper class. This book examines and analyzes Higashikuze’s tea-related activities as recorded in the diary in order to shed light on how the social network in the early Meiji period in Tokyo was formed through chanoyu. Yasuda’s diary is focused entirely on chanoyu. It is a record of tea gatherings in which Yasuda participated from the early 1880s until he passed away in 1921, extracted from Yasuda’s original diary, which is not extant, or at least not publically accessible. Shōō chakaiki provides only the list of guests, tea utensils displayed and meals served at the tea gatherings; the context of these tea gatherings is not indicated. Thus, this book tries to provide such context for some of the tea gatherings recorded in the diary by analyzing them through the list of guests, and the way in which gatherings were facilitated. Moreover,

Introduction

13

it explores the social network in which Yasuda was involved through tea gatherings in the early Meiji era. No diary survives for Matsura Akira, so instead the book relies mainly on the only written source that provides a comprehensive account of his life, a biography, which was privately published by the Matsura family and edited by the historian Yamamoto Nobuki (1873–1944), who at the time was working at the Historiographical Institution (Shiryōhensanjo) at the Imperial University of Tokyo.42 It is clear that the intended readership for the biography was Matsura’s family and acquaintances, and the evidence used by Nobuki to produce the biography is no longer extant.43 Nevertheless, the biography makes extensive reference to Matsura’s social and cultural activities, including his role as the master of his family’s tea tradition, demonstrating how significant this part of his life was for him. This book uses the biography not so much to detail Matsura as an individual but by combining it with other sources to trace his evolving relationship with chanoyu and thereby also the social network that he fabricated in Meiji-era Tokyo. The biography is therefore invaluable in allowing one to explore the connection of individual and society through the culture of tea. Third, this book explores the new institutions that emerged from their increasing interest in chanoyu. Chapter 4 deals in part with the Wakei-kai, a tea connoisseur’s circle, to which the three above mentioned individuals belonged. The Wakei-kai was established in Tokyo at the end of the Meiji era. During this period, there were a growing number of so-called modern tea connoisseurs (Kindai sukisha), and tea gatherings became a common site for social exchange among the elite, not only in Tokyo but elsewhere in Japan.44 The Wakei-kai was one such circle, which demonstrates the role of connoisseurship and the place of tea, tea utensils and elite tea practitioners in Tokyo. Tokyo at the time not only saw private tea circles, but also commercial banqueting venues, which frequently incorporated tea facilities, as well as an elaborate personal, institutional and commercial infrastructure that enabled the elaboration of the culture of tea. By placing the Wakei-kai in this context, it becomes possible to explore the way in which tea had made itself at home in Tokyo by the turn of the twentieth century. To do so, the book relies largely on newspapers, notably the Asahi and Yomiuri shimbun, which are accessible through database, and Shimbun shūsei meiji hennenshi. Tea-related keyword searches produce

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a wealth of articles, through which it becomes possible to trace the social network formed through chanoyu in the latter half of the Meiji era.45 The emerging demand for tea also provided a new business model for the tea professionals, who had served mainly warrior patrons in the Tokugawa period, but who were forced to find new ways of carrying out their trade. Chapters 2 to 5 refer to the afterlives of some of the former tea officers (sukiyagashira). In Chapter 8, the focus narrows to a case study of one individual, En’nōsai of the Urasenke House, who was innovative in the way he reformed his business practice and so can suggest how tea institutions were transformed in the modern era. There were other tea masters who successfully adapted to the modern world by exploiting their skills and knowledge in innovative ways, but their innovations were limited and do not seem to have influenced tea professionals more widely. En’nō-sai’s reforms, on the other hand, changed not only his own practice, but the way in which his house operated. In other words, his changes were not simply individual but organizational, revealing the way in which tea institutions had to evolve to survive the social transformations of the Meiji period. To examine these, the chapter relies heavily on En’nō-sai’s writing in a monthly periodical produced by the Urasenke organization, which was itself one of the ways in which he sought to adapt to the changing world. Finally, this book spends some time exploring the place of tea at exhibitions, both domestic and international. Exhibitions are valuable as a site through which to explore the changing practice and significance of tea, since they demand the mobilization of all sorts of resources, which include not only political, economic and social assets but also human and cultural resources. Exhibitions thus reveal the place of chanoyu in society, as well as how tea was exploited to benefit different entities, including the state. Regional exhibitions were particularly important for Kyoto during the Meiji period: it was struggling to survive the loss of its status as the imperial capital, and tea became increasingly significant as a means of identifying the cultural heritage that the city sought to embody. Chapters 2 and 5 focus on Kyoto, looking at exhibitions and other events, paying particular attention to what were known as ‘the Kyoto exhibitions’. The evidence here is drawn in large part from Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, a historical account on the Kyoto exhibitions produced by the organization responsible for the exhibitions, the Kyotohakurankaisha (Kyoto Exhibition Association), made up of merchants

Introduction

15

and manufacturers in Kyoto, to showcase their achievement at the Fifth National Domestic Exhibition of 1903 in Osaka.46 This source claims to be based on official records produced by the Kyoto local government and on oral testimony by the members of the association who witnessed the exhibitions.47 Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi is therefore the organization’s view on the Kyoto exhibitions and therefore has a strongly institutional character. Aside from catalogues, however, which were also published by the association, this is almost the only source of information for the earliest Kyoto exhibitions, which are the topic of Chapter 2.48 Moreover, it does detail how the practice of tea was exhibited at the exhibitions and, inasmuch as the views of potential patrons and practitioners, such as merchants and manufacturers, are of interest for the book, this source is valuable in suggesting both how tea was placed at the exhibitions and how it was understood by this group. Read critically, therefore, and supplemented where possible by other sources, it is useful source. Chapter 5 extensively explores a local Kyoto newspaper, Hinode shimbun. Although it has now changed its name to Kyoto shimbun, this was originally published as an illustrated local popular newspaper in 1885 and merged with Chūgai denpō, another title produced by the same publisher, in 1892. There were several newspapers published in Kyoto during the mid-Meiji period, but Hinode shimbun and Chūgai denpō are the only ones that appear to have survived the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and so Hinode shimbun is the only newspaper published after 1892.49 Hinode shimbun is rich in detail regarding public as well as social events, including tea-practice related events, which took place in Kyoto during the Meiji era. This may be because the early Hinode shimbun was targeting the general public in Kyoto and its aim may have been to satisfy their interest in everyday life.50 Although it may look as if the book is overly reliant on Hinode shimbun, during the period this was the only accessible newspaper published in Kyoto and it does provide much detail about chanoyu and events in Kyoto. This book more or less begins and ends with international exhibitions. Chapter 1 examines Vienna in 1873 while Chapter 6 explores Chicago in 1893 and London in 1910. These three expositions were significant both for the government and country in general and for what they reveal about the place of chanoyu. The Viennese and London exhibitions were the first and the last official events in which the Meiji government took part, while the

16

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World’s Exposition in Chicago was the first exposition in which a private commercial organization, namely a tea producer’s association, participated and ran a commercial teahouse. By contrasting the ways in which tea, as commodity, material culture and practice, was represented at these three international events, this book suggests how tea functioned internationally and how its international reputation paralleled its fate at home. These chapters build on the extensive existing scholarship on these events, relying on official reports produced by the governments and organizers, and supplementing them with guidebooks, newspapers and other accounts by observers of these events. By exploring the above spaces, organizations and individuals and examining their various experiences of chanoyu, the book traces the evolving relationships amongst the state, industrial society and the culture of chanoyu. Rather than focusing on legendary tea masters or famous intellectuals, it hopes to provide insight into how chanoyu was practised by non-professional practitioners, which have been largely overlooked in the existing literature, in the Meiji period. This approach also captures the fragmentary nature of cultural practice during a time of rapid social change, following the abolition of status distinctions and more general upheaval during the Meiji Restoration. By doing so, it hopes to shed light on why and how chanoyu was able to survive the changing environment of modern Japan as a dynamic social and cultural practice.

Chapter outline Chapter 1 explores the official consequences for chanoyu by exploring the use of the material culture of chanoyu in official settings, and examining the policy of the Meiji government in dealing with old artefacts and the legacy of the Tokugawa intellectuals. The cultural administrators, such as Machida Hisanari and Ninagawa Noritane, incorporated their scholarly – and dilettante – interests in chanoyu into the cultural policies of the early Meiji government. Yet, the material components of chanoyu did not interest the mainstream bureaucrats whose interest was in the promotion of industry and commerce. Chanoyu did not have a place in the modern production of industrial goods. Tea had its place secured, but it was leaf tea rather than powdered green tea.

Introduction

17

Chanoyu was, at its best, a heritage that was in danger of disappearing in the eyes of early Meiji government officials. Chapter 2 explores the regional industrial exhibitions organized by the Kyoto merchants’ association, the Kyoto Exhibition Association (Kyoto Hakurankaisha). Through a close reading of the historical narrative by the Kyoto Exhibition Association and supplementing it with other official documents from the National Archives of Japan, this chapter explores the city’s early attempts to improve its financial situation by attracting visitors to commercial exhibitions, which became an annual event from 1872. By utilizing its cultural assets, from chanoyu to girls from the pleasure quarters, Kyoto merchants made an effort to revive its privileged position. It turned out that although chanoyu as a socializing space had little place in this process, the practice and material components of chanoyu were marginal in the early Meiji period. Moreover, the exhibitions did little to resolve the financial challenges faced by the hereditary elite tea families in the new era. Most of the house heads saw a decline in their socio-economic status. Chapter 3 explores the social lives of the old and new elite in Tokyo, focusing on three individuals: an old warrior aristocrat, Matsura Akira; an ex-courtier, Higashikuze Michitomi; and a member of the modern capitalist elite, Yasuda Zenjirō. As a social activity, chanoyu maintained a certain value, especially amongst the elite in Tokyo. This chapter seeks to capture their social lives during the early Meiji era, examining how chanoyu played an essential role for the former aristocracies in forming an elite social circle. Chapters 4 and 5 explore the subsequent history of chanoyu in Kyoto and Tokyo respectively. Chapter 4 explores the constant reception and increasing value of tea gatherings among elites in Tokyo, including the non-Japanese elite. By the end of the period, tea had made its way into the commercial sphere, but also become an object of concern for private clubs. By the turn of the century, chanoyu was finding a new place in elite society in Tokyo. Chapter 5 explores a variety of public events where chanoyu was performed and its material components displayed, including both the annual commercial exhibitions and religious festivals, in order to examine the place of chanoyu in Kyoto in the latter half of the Meiji era. As Kyoto itself began to be recognized as a source of authenticity and legitimacy for the modern nation state, so chanoyu gained its significance in Kyoto both as a materialized history that

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could be displayed at various historical sites, and as a practice that could represent the authenticity of the nation’s aesthetics and cultural production. In the international arena, chanoyu was displayed differently, although its representation interacted with the domestic situation. Chapter 6 focuses on the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910. The former, held just before the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War (1894–95), saw tea producers organizing a trade association and displaying tea in order to promote their own exports. The latter was the final international event of the Meiji era, following two major wars with Japan’s neighbouring empires. This chapter examines how chanoyu was exhibited in order to draw the attention of the audience. The relationships amongst Japan, its history, and chanoyu were evident throughout these two exhibitions. Nevertheless, different exhibitors exploited chanoyu in different ways at the two sites. By the end of the Meiji era, chanoyu was definitely practised as high culture. The elite’s renewed interest in chanoyu enabled certain tea professionals to set up and reshape their organizational relationships with practitioners. In other words, the hereditary tea elite had finally found its place in modernized Japan. The final chapter examines how a tea institution coped with the changes in the social landscape of chanoyu in order to sum up the relationships between chanoyu and the practitioners. Some tea traditions were more successful than others in institutionalizing themselves. This chapter focuses on the Urasenke tea tradition, which as noted above stands out in making an institutional effort to deal with the rapidly changing world by reforming both its teaching system and the iemoto–practitioner relationships. Having suffered a loss of patronage, it was thereby able to replace the patronage of the aristocracy with the demand for their expertise from the non-elite, general public.

1

The social life of tea utensils: chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

Material life of chanoyu before the Meiji Restoration Following the outbreak of the Boshin War, Itō Keisuke (1803–1901) – a physician who had been serving the domainal clinic of Owari since 18461 – left his home on the twenty-first day of the first month in the fourth year of Keiō (13 February 1868) with his lord, Tokugawa Yoshinori (1858–75), of the Owari Domain. He resigned from his position as a physician of the domainal clinic because of his ill health and left the capital on the third day of the eighth month, in the same year of Keiō (18 September 1868). The city was a vortex of political tension and in the midst of a civil war, and Itō was suffering from health issues. Even so, he seemed to enjoy cultural life during his short stay in Kyoto. He often went for a stroll through the Teramachi area between and after his duties, browsing through the bookshops and antique shops. Itō frequently visited such antique shops and sometimes bought chawan (tea bowls for matcha drinking). His other purchases included fans, writing brushes, playing cards, yatate (ink and brush box), a mirror and silk textiles, to name but a few.2 When Itō received his first stipend in Kyoto, he purchased a chasen (a whisk made of bamboo used to prepare powdered green tea) from Kūyadō, a Tendai sect temple known for its annual offering of tea whisks to the imperial court.3 The Kūyadō tea whisk was a prized memento. He also repeatedly borrowed books containing commentary on ceramics from a publisher friend.4 From his diary, his professional concerns were clearly focused on medicine. However, the items he purchased during his stay also indicate his connoisseurial interest in tea utensils.5 His consumption patterns show us – to some extent – how chanoyu-related material culture was embedded in the everyday lives

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Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

of middle-class samurai intellectuals at the end of the Tokugawa period. As mentioned in the Introduction, the association of chanoyu with Tokugawa authority and power, in general, was one of the characteristics of chanoyu practice during the early modern period.

Chanoyu and the Meiji Restoration With the fall of the Tokugawa regime and the ‘restoration’ of imperial rule, the material life surrounding the practice of chanoyu drastically changed. First, the importance of the practice of chanoyu as a ritual, which perpetuated Tokugawa authority and legitimacy, disappeared. Second, with the dissolution of the Tokugawa administration, tea officers, such as sukiyagashira and sukiyabōzu, were no longer employed by the government. Also, domains were formally abolished and replaced by prefectures in 1871, after which domain lords and courtiers were relocated to the new capital, Tokyo, so tea officers lost prominence at the regional level. Third, tea providers and ceramic manufacturers, who had already been exposed to the changing economic system following the opening of the ports, also could no longer rely on former patrons. Professionals and others involved in the industry that had provided a material foundation for the culture of chanoyu now had to look for new clientele. For tea growers and distributors, the outlook was promising – green tea was a major export item for Japan during the early Meiji period – but the future for masters of chanoyu did not look as bright. There were some fortunate cases where ex-sukiyagashira were hired by their former lord (for example, in the Hirado Domain) and continued serving these lords as chanoyu experts.6 However, in most cases, the shogunal and domainal officers who were trained in chanoyu lost their status and had to look for new ways to make a living. Some elite tea professionals gave up the practice because they saw no point in continuing the tradition. For example, the Nomura family, which had practised the Sekishū tea tradition and had been appointed as sukiyagashira for the Shogunate for many generations, do not appear to have been engaged in any tea-related businesses in the Meiji period. Others did become tea instructors and turned to new clientele. For example, teaching dining manners in girls’ educational institutions was another prime destination of former sukiyagashira.7 Some were successful in

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

21

targeting the emerging social elite or other modern institutions as their new patron.8 Nevertheless, the knowledge and skills of chanoyu were unnecessary for men to obtain because chanoyu was no longer a part of the government’s ritual. Hence, the Meiji Restoration not only replaced political power, but also drastically transformed Japan’s economic system, social arrangements, and cultural landscapes. Like tea professionals, the function and meaning of tea utensils must have been affected by the fall of the Tokugawa regime, after which chanoyu lost its significance as an official event. Tea and tea-related utensils were considered to be prestigious gifts in the pre-modern era, but their place in the early Meiji is less clear. What role did they come to play in the Meiji period? This chapter aims to highlight the social life of tea utensils. In other words, this chapter discusses tea utensils as ‘socially and politically situated objects whose function and meaning changed over time’.9 In order to do so, this chapter explores two iconic and related moments in the history of material culture in the early Meiji period. The first is the Jinshin Survey of 1872, the first thorough investigation and survey by the new government of the treasures owned by temples and shrines in the Kinki region. The second moment is die Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 (the Viennese World Exhibition of 1873) where the new regime for the first time placed itself on show at an international exposition.

Material culture from the past and the Meiji administration Both the Jinshin Survey and Japan’s participation in the Viennese World Exhibition began with an informal invitation from the Austro-Hungarian government in the summer of the third year of Meiji for the government to take part in the latter.10 The request came while the new government was working on a number of reforms and had already invested a huge amount in the Iwakura Mission to the United States and Europe to investigate the Western world. The Meiji leaders were not sure whether it would be worth participating as they could hardly afford the expenditure that would be required to assemble and send a satisfactory exhibit to Vienna. Nevertheless, a number of government officials understood the significance of such events for

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learning about foreign advanced technologies and showcasing local products, because some of them had been in Paris for the previous international exposition in 1867. The possibility that participation might contribute to the development of new, improved and commercially viable craft technologies was clear enough. Thus, the government decided to participate in the Viennese Exposition and established the Bureau of Exhibition (Hakurankaijimukyoku) under the Central Office of the Great Council of State (Dajōkan Seiin), appointing Ōkuma Shigenobu, Inoue Kaoru, and Terashima Munenori as the members of the Japanese Imperial Commission to the Viennese Exhibition on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month of the fourth year of Meiji (23 January 1872).11 The government transferred Machida Hisanari (1838–97) to the Bureau of Exhibition (Hakurankai goyōgakari) in the first month of the fifth year of Meiji in order to take charge of practical matters, such as the selection and collection of the exhibits.12 Machida had been working at the Bureau of Products (Bussankyoku) in the Institution of Education (Daigaku Nankō) since the ninth month of the third year of Meiji in preparation for domestic industrial exhibitions.13 The aims of the Bureau of Products were twofold: to support the government’s policy of the promotion of industry and commerce by identifying and collecting potential items to display at domestic industrial exhibitions; and to establish an institution to study artefacts – a space known in the West as a ‘museum’.14 According to Seki, the latter was the reason why Machida accepted his appointment at the Institution of Education. In order to manifest his plan, Machida needed to assemble items to study and a space to house and display the collection. But there were two concerns. First, pursuing a scholarly interest in material objects was not a priority for the state and thus the government would not allocate sufficient financial resources.15 Second, the potential materials themselves were endangered. Temples had started to sell or throw away artefacts such as Buddhist statues and even to use ancient Buddhist scriptures as kindling as they struggled to cope with the financial crisis triggered by the new official policy separating Shintō and Buddhism – and privileging the former.16 As a consequence, many Buddhist priests returned to secular life and left their temples, and thus many temples and their treasuries were deserted, some ruined.17 The elimination of warrior privileges, and the abolition of the domains and the introduction of the

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

23

prefecture system caused the relocation of the former domainal lords that led to the evacuation of their mansions and gardens.18 Some former domain lords auctioned their household goods, including chanoyu utensils, in order to make ends meet.19 The implementation of the new policies had devalued and endangered material cultures that had been treasured and kept in storehouses in the previous periods. The study of material objects had only been an amateur pursuit under the Tokugawa scholarly tradition. Thus, there were very few official records or academic works that thoroughly investigated the valuable items in temples and shrines, and none at all that documented the cultural possessions of the local elites.20 Machida was troubled by the trend. He thus submitted a proposal to the Great Council of State to issue a regulation ordering the preservation of such artefacts and to construct a building in which to keep and display them.21 Following Machida’s proposal, on the twenty-third day, fifth month of the fourth year of Meiji (10 July 1871), the Great Council of State proclaimed the Decree to Conserve Aged Artefacts and Old Objects (Koki kyūbutsu hozonkata) in order to identify such antiquities.22 The decree states: 古器旧物ノ類ハ、古今時勢ノ変遷、制度、風俗ノ沿革ヲ考証シ候為 メ、ソノ裨益不少候処、自然厭旧競新候流弊ヨリ、追々遺失毀壊ニ 及候テハ、実ニ可愛惜事ニ候条、各地方ニ於テ歴世蔵貯致居候古器 旧物類、別紙品目之通細大ヲ不論、厚ク保全可致事。 Old artefacts are valuable for studying the changes from ancient to modern times and the development of institutions and customs. However, naturally they gradually will be at risk of being lost and damaged by the bad habit of abusing the old and striving for the new. The situation is very regrettable indeed. Therefore, regional governments shall preserve old artefacts that have been stored for generations, whether large or small, following the list given on the attached sheet.

According to the decree, the aim was to protect old artefacts from the threat of destruction and abandonment, as these aged goods – whether small or large – were valuable for studying the changes of society from ancient to modern times and the development of institutions and customs.23 The owners of such artefacts had to submit records to the local authorities stating the name of the object and the owner.

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The decree included an attachment and a list of various classes of artefacts. The appendix noted that the decree applied to artefacts made in Japan or abroad, at any time between ‘the beginning of the time and before the present day’, namely from the mythical era of Jimmu to the fall of the Shogunate.24 The decree therefore cast its net wide, asserting that the government’s interest was in every aspect of material culture and its components. The list comprised 31 categories: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Implements used in rites and rituals (祭器) Jewels and precious stones from antiquity (古玉寶石) Stone implements from the Stone Age (石弩雷斧) Mirrors and bells from antiquity (古鏡古鈴) Copperware (銅器) Roof tiles from antiquity (古瓦) Arms (武器) Paintings and calligraphic works from antiquity (古書畫) Books and sutras from antiquity (古書籍竝古経文) Picture frames (扁額) Musical instruments (楽器) Inscriptions on temple bells, epitaphs and copybooks of calligraphy (鐘 鈷碑銘墨本) Seals and stamps (印章) Stationery (文房諸具) Farming tools from antiquity (農具) Handicraft instruments (工匠器械) Vehicles (車與) Interior goods (屋内諸具) Textiles (布帛) Clothes and decorations (衣服装飾) Leather goods (皮革) Coins (貨幣) Various metal products (諸金製造器) Ceramics and porcelains (陶磁器) Lacquer wares (漆器) Measuring instruments (度量標衡)

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

25

27. Tea utensils, incense-burning utensils and utensils for flower arrangements (茶器香具花器) 28. Tools for games (遊戯具) 29. Dolls, flags and other toys (雛幟等偶人竝兒玩) 30. Buddhist statues and Buddhist instruments from antiquity (古佛像竝佛 具) 31. Fossils (化石) Although there was a category for ceramics and porcelains, chawan (tea bowls), chaire (tea caddies) or other chanoyu-related items made from ceramic materials were not included in the ceramics and porcelains section. Instead, they would be grouped under the criteria of ‘utensils for chanoyu, incense-burning and flower arrangement’. Chanoyu utensils, whether made of iron, copper, or ceramics, were bundled together. The material from which they were made did not matter. Utensils for tea were grouped with other items pertaining to cultural practices common to the elite class, such as incense burning and flower arrangements. Here, chanoyu utensils were categorized as objects that were endangered but important for the understanding of the society’s transformation, and therefore which the government needed to salvage and conserve.

The Jinshin Survey of 1872 With the decree in place and the list in hand, the next stage was to actually go to the houses and treasuries and assess the objects. Given their significance as the centres of Japanese cultural production, the government was especially interested in the Kyoto and Nara prefectures, and so the Ministry of Education (Monbushō) arranged a trip to the Kinki region in order to carry out what became known as the Jinshin Survey in 1872. The government ordered Machida Hisanari and Uchida Masao (1839–1922) of the Ministry of Education to carry out the survey.25 Seko Nobuyo (1824–76) of the Ministry of the Imperial Household was also appointed as an officer to carry the permission to open the imperial seals.26 Ninagawa Noritane from the Ministry of Education and Kishi Kōkei (1839–1922) from the Ministry of the Imperial Household (Kunaishō)

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also joined the mission.27 The Bureau of Exhibition (Hakurankaijimukyoku) assigned Yokoyama Matsusaburō, a photographer, and Kasakura Tetsunosuke, an expert in birds and fish, to assist in the survey.28 A painter, Takahashi Yuichi, attended the mission so that he could paint pictures of the findings, which would be displayed at the Viennese Exposition.29 Kashiwagi Masanori was privately hired by Machida, Uchida and Ninagawa in order to keep records of the properties.30 Their arrival was preceded by an official notice sent to the local authorities in each region, who would then notify the temples and shrines under their jurisdiction of the forthcoming visit of the team and the purpose of their trip.31 The following section explores the experience and views of Ninagawa Noritane – an antiquarian and a staff member of the Museum Bureau (Hakubutsukyoku) in the Ministry of Education32 – on his trip to the Kinki region for the Jinshin Survey in the summer of 1872. He was already famous for his expertise in antiques, with some renown for having introduced Japanese antiquities to Western visitors to Japan, such as Edward Morse during the early Meiji period, helping them form collections of Japanese objects.33 He therefore holds an important place in the formulation of what would come to be understood as Japan’s national treasure and cultural heritage. In addition, while the Ministry of Education issued the code of conduct for the Jinshin Survey, the guiding principle for the choice of ‘treasures’ was not identified by the government.34 Thus, Ninagawa’s expertise must have played a substantial role when carrying out the investigation: he was the only antiquarian on the team. By analyzing Ninagawa’s journal, the following section aims to observe the place of material components of chanoyu – the survey did in fact find numerous artefacts related to chanoyu, which were itemized and valued – in the mentality of an intellectual who worked for the new government, exploiting his expertise as an antiquarian.35

The journey to the Kinki region On twentieth-seventh day, fifth month of the fifth year of Meiji (2 July 1872), Uchida, Machida, Yokoyama, Kasakura and Ninagawa left Machida’s place in Tokyo at seven in the morning. As an amateur antiquarian, the trip was

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

27

a particular delight for Ninagawa.36 First, the government had allocated a sufficient budget since the investigation was tied to the Viennese Exposition, the first international event to which the government was officially invited. In addition, the government’s backing would in theory have made it easier to get access to various items and to collect them for the museum. Last, and most importantly, they were able to enter and examine the holdings of the Shōsōin, the treasure house of Tōdaiji, the doors of which could not be opened without written permission from the emperor.37 Because there was no official guideline that clearly identified what would be considered ‘treasures’, the selection criteria may have been based on the members’ personal interests. However, this survey appears to have been guided by – at least – two aims. First, it investigated the material evidence that supported the legitimacy of the ‘restored’ imperial institution. For example, en route to Kyoto, the team stopped at Atsuta Shrine in Owari Province and Ise Shrine in Ise Province. Both places enshrined deities related to the origins of the emperor’s ancestry: Atsuta Shrine held the sword of Ama no murakumo, one of the three Sacred Treasures of the imperial institution, and Ise was the shrine for the tutelary deity of the imperial family. The fact that the material evidence of the origins of the imperial family was also a target of this inspection indicates the priorities of the team as a whole. The second objective – which was more obvious from the things that Ninagawa showed interest in during the trip – was to identify and collect items suitable for display in their future museum. While the party was investigating Atsuta Shrine, Ninagawa found ‘an interesting item’ – a special wooden bucket for a Shintō ritual – in a neighbouring village, which he purchased for the museum.38 Ninagawa also listed in his journal rocks that were connected to local folklore and giant Japanese cedars. These items may show that Ninagawa’s interest was not limited to evidence of elite culture. He seems to have shown interest in old objects in general, linked not only to the lives of the privileged but also to villagers and commoners. Three weeks after their departure, on twenty-fourth day, sixth month (29 July), the party arrived in Kyoto. There, they inspected more than forty locations, including the Imperial Palace and the storehouse of the Konoe family, one of the five regent houses and a prestigious courtier family. The fact that the team visited the Konoe residence five times may show their interest

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in the family’s assets. The Konoe family seems to have possessed numerous objects because Konoe was the only courtier family that the group visited more than once. However, the number of items from the Konoe storehouse that Ninagawa listed in his journal was not large compared to other temples and shrines, suggesting that he recorded only some of the items in his journal. In other words, Ninagawa’s list may show what he understood as the government’s priority. The following section examines in detail Ninagawa and his colleagues’ visit to the Konoe residence. On the twenty-sixth day of seventh month, the party visited the Konoe family’s residence for the first time. The first objects they examined at Konoe’s treasure house were ink stones and antique ink sticks from the Ming period, as well as calligraphy scrolls and Buddhist scriptures by calligraphers of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods such as Ono no Tōfū (894–966), Fujiwara no Yukinari (972–1027), and Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241). Their second visit was on the twenty-eighth day of the same month. It was then that the team examined Konoe’s tea utensils. Ninagawa began his list for the day with a number of tea bowls (chawan) and tea caddies (chaire). Following the tea utensils, he listed copybooks for calligraphy, although not all that were present, and then a number of swords. On the third visit, they looked at lacquerwares, which again Ninagawa did not list individually.39 On the fourth visit, he looked at scrolls by emperors, and during the final visit, letters and other writing by priests.40 It seems that for an antiquarian, calligraphy scrolls by notable calligraphers and tea ceramics were more important than letters and manuscripts by the emperors and members of the imperial families. Moreover, tea bowls and caddies appear to have been very near the top of his list of priorities. The entire investigation took nearly four months. Towards the end of the journey, Ninagawa and Seko took stock of their findings.41 The objects thought to be outstanding and singled out for individual mention included a large number of wooden statues of emperors, antique paintings, drawing and calligraphy scrolls, ancient mirrors and swords, letters and manuscripts by prominent historical figures including the members of the imperial ancestry, and numerous ceramics, most of which were tea-related objects. Ninagawa’s catalogue of tea utensils included: a sunkoroku42 tea bowl and tenmoku tea bowl of the highest rank from Myōhōin, one of the three Tendai sect Buddhist

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

29

temples of imperial lineage; a yōhen sunkoroku tea bowl from Daitokuji, the headquarters of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, which had produced a number of tea masters and Zen priests; and a celadon porcelain tea bowl from Daiunin, the temple established to commemorate Oda Nobunaga and his son Nobutada.43 All of these ‘significant objects’ were foreign imports from China and beyond and had been possessed by institutions with long and distinguished histories. Tea utensils appeared in the lists made by Ninagawa and colleagues, but their citations suggest that their value was determined not by the object alone, its use in a particular cultural practice or their makers, but rather from its ownership by a particular institution or its association with a particular historical figure or period. This tendency is also clear from his choice of other tea utensils. Aside from the above ‘distinguished items’, Ninagawa also listed in his diary 49 tea bowls (chawan), 29 tea caddies (chaire), 12 iron teakettles (chagama), 7 waste water containers (kensui), 7 water jars (mizusashi), 5 tea jars (chatsubo), 3 bamboo tea scoops (chashaku) and 2 tea containers (natsume), adding up to 112 chanoyurelated utensils in total. According to Ninagawa, many of these were from the eras of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Some of the pieces were from the temples related to these historical figures. Additionally, there were further tea utensils that Ninagawa had found during this inspection that he did not think worth listing individually. For example, Daiunin and Chishakuin, the headquarter temples of a sect of Esoteric Buddhism, possessed ‘many’ tea utensils. Myōhōin also had a number of outstanding tea utensils that were, as Ninagawa pointed out, from Hideyoshi’s era.44 Clearly, Ninagawa’s focus was not on their artistic values or the creators of these objects but more on their ownership: whether or not these tea utensils had a connection with significant historical figures.45 At the end of their journey, Ninagawa and his colleagues wrote down the official list of the ‘important items’.46 Ninagawa listed numerous wooden sculptures that portrayed the emperors, in which he had not appeared to show much interest when cataloguing them from the treasure houses of the Konoe family. The way Ninagawa concluded his journal crystallizes one of the aims of this survey, which was to bring the information regarding material evidence to support the imperial institution under the control of the central government. It is also worth emphasizing that tea utensils received prominent attention in

30

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Ninagawa’s ‘official list’. This centrality of tea artefacts in the world of material culture was a typical way of seeing artefacts for the Tokugawa middle-class intellectual. However, as illustrated in the next section, this attitude did not hold an important place at the Viennese Exposition of 1873.

Die Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 Following the Jinshin Survey, Machida and Ninagawa organized an exhibition to showcase the outcome of the investigation as well as the items that were to be sent to the Vienna Exposition of 1873. The selection of the exhibits, however, was not left entirely to Ninagawa or the Museum Bureau, but overseen by Sano Tsunetami (1822–1902), the vice president of the Viennese Exposition Bureau (Wīn bankokuhakurankai jimu). Sano’s concerns were focused on the question of industrial promotion and international reputation,47 and since it was the first time the Meiji government would participate in an international event, the government asked for advice from two foreign advisors, Gottfried von Wagner and Alexander von Siebold.48 The Meiji government’s aims for the Viennese Exposition were fourfold: to introduce the Empire of Japan (Nihon teikoku) to the world by displaying Japanese products and artefacts; to promote home industries and foreign trades by absorbing information and learning new technologies from the other countries’ exhibits; to foster the establishment of museums and expositions by studying the exposition; and to check out the foreign market prices.49 In order to achieve the first goal, Vice President Sano, according to Kuni, emphasized the importance of export crafts, above all ceramics, as a medium through which to appeal to European audiences, while von Siebold suggested that it was also important to present gigantic ornaments to catch their attention.50 ‘From the European point of view’, von Siebold advised the government, ‘oriental customs are marvellous, and [Europeans] will surely pay attention to our exhibitions. It will be better to bring some huge objects’.51 Following von Siebold’s advice, the Meiji officials decided to send gigantic items such as a sculpture of the golden Shachihoko, an imaginary sea animal with the head of a tiger and the body of a fish, which had previously resided on top of Nagoya Castle, the residence of one of three branches of the Tokugawa clan. In addition to this mythical figure, a set of giant paper

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

31

lanterns and an immense statue of the Buddha made out of wood and paper were sent to Vienna as objects that aimed to introduce and represent the Empire of Japan – a newly established country making its debut in international society. Neither the practical business of export craft nor the spectacular production of huge objects had much to do with any aspect of the chanoyu practice. This did not mean, however, that the material culture of chanoyu was entirely absent in Vienna. The loans to the government for the exposition came from aristocrats, including Matsudaira Yoritoshi, the former Lord of Takamatsu Domain, who provided a gold tea kettle (chagama), as well as a portable silver brazier and kettle, together with a complete set of silver chanoyu utensils that consisted of a water container, a ladle holder, a lid holder, a tea container, a tea bowl, and a waste water container.52 This indicates that Lord Matsudaira contributed a complete set of chanoyu utensils (kaigu) with which one could stage daisu, the most prestigious setting for chanoyu. Despite the eminence of the objects and the lender, however, the way they were displayed in Vienna itself suggests the difficulty that the practice of chanoyu faced in getting seen. First, it is unclear where in the display the silver daisu tea set was exhibited, if at all. From the letter of compensation and the existing photo album, it is certain that Lord Matsudaira provided his family’s prestigious tea collection for the exposition and the Imperial Commission brought them to Vienna.53 However, Matsudaira’s kaigu set was not listed in the official catalogue. The Imperial Commission did display Matsudaira’s gold tea kettle in Group 7, the metal industry section, but the kettle was separated from other pieces in the tea set and served merely as an example of metalwork at Vienna, despite the high esteem they commanded in the world of chanoyu as a collective.54 Second, aside from Matsudaira’s prestigious tea set, the exhibitors also displayed chanoyu-related objects in Group 4, the agricultural-products section. It is difficult to tell how they were actually displayed at the site, but it is clear that they did not receive much attention. According to the official catalogue, chanoyu utensils were simply described as ‘Theegeraethe’ (tea equipment).55 The official catalogue of the Empire of Japan, which was written by von Wagner, was slightly more precise: tea utensils were listed individually as, ‘Wasserkessel von Eisen’ (an iron water vase), ‘Kohleherd von Kupfer’ (a copper coal stove), ‘Wasserkanne von Kupfer’ (a copper water pot), and ‘Theeloeffel von Bambus’ (a bamboo tea spoon).56 For the government officials

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and exhibitors, chanoyu utensils represented neither Japan’s history nor its culture. Rather, they were displayed simply as equipment that was necessary for making tea – a valuable commercial item for the nation. The government’s primary concern at the Vienna Exposition was the promotion of foreign trade and, particularly, the production of exports that could compete in overseas markets. Given these priorities, high-status tea utensils had no meaning or use, or at least government officials could not see them as a resource with which to promote industry and commerce. The ceramic industry had great potential, but not in producing tea bowls for matcha, but rather cups and saucers for black tea or coffee. Chanoyu had no meaning as such in the world in which it found itself in Vienna. Even high-status tea utensils only had significance as individual examples of a particular craft.

After Vienna In the subsequent expositions, the practice of chanoyu and the chanoyurelated objects remained marginal, if not invisible. The Meiji government’s interest in participating in the expositions was economic. The exhibition of cultural practices was thus irrelevant to its goal. As examined above, highstatus chanoyu utensils were classified according to their material and function at the Viennese Exposition of 1873. At the next exposition – the Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 – chanoyu was explained in the agricultural-products section in the Beikoku hakurankai hōkokusho (the Report of the Exposition in the US) about which the Exhibition Bureau wrote: 近年ニ及ンテ茗會ヤウヤク衰ヘタリト雖モ全ク廢絶ニ至ラス所謂宗 匠ナル者アリ以テ子弟ヲ教導ス其儀禮最モ繁縟（ワズラワシク）ニ シテ細密ノ節目タリト雖モ亦定規アリテ遵守セサルヘカラスト云フ In recent times, tea gatherings seem to have been declining. Yet, they are not totally diminished. There are tea instructors who give instructions to their disciples. Its manners are extremely complicated and troublesome. They say one must follow the prescribed rules, which look very minute and detailed.57

The practice of chanoyu deserved attention only with reference to tea – an important export item of Japan in the early Meiji period – and as a ‘troublesome

Chanoyu and the early Meiji cultural administration

33

practice’, by then almost entirely diminished. At the Philadelphia Exposition, exhibitors in the ceramic section displayed ceramic tea bowls. Two exhibitors seemed to have provided a tea service at their stalls.58 For the Paris Exposition of 1879, the Mitsui Corporation had built a tea-hut and the adjunct garden, but its interior was not on show. Thus, it is clear that exhibitors at a number of international expositions displayed tea-related products and objects, and set up spaces in which to serve tea to visitors. Customs and material culture related to chanoyu, however, were not considered relevant, and do not appear to have received much attention from the government until the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The significance of chanoyu at the Chicago Exposition is discussed in Chapter 6.

Conclusion Tea artefacts did not appear to appeal either to Meiji government officials or to Western advisors such as Wagener and von Siebold selecting items for the Viennese World Exhibition. Not only had chanoyu lost its significance in an official context, with the disappearing of the old system, but tea utensils were also unable to serve as an object of Japanese material culture in the official interest. Ancient artefacts, including tea objects, certainly circulated in foreign markets during the early Meiji period.59 Moreover, some tea utensils were of interest for art collectors such as the Meiji statesmen, Inoue Kaoru and Kido Takayoshi, and Masuda Takashi, a modern industrialist.60 Nevertheless, once chanoyu lost its significance as an official event and the political status of the owners fell, the social and market value of tea utensils seems also to have fallen. Some officials did have an interest in tea utensils as one of the cultural heritages that was in danger of vanishing (and hence needed to be salvaged), such as Machida Hisanari, who wished to establish a museum. For mainstream officers in the new Meiji government, tea utensils had very limited significance. The practice of chanoyu might have maintained its status and use in the social life of the elite, as discussed in Chapter 3, but the government generally did not consider the material components of chanoyu to be of any imperial, commercial or cultural value in respect of forging the country’s future.

2

Chanoyu as a sideshow

At the beginning of the Meiji period, it seemed that the future of the former sukiyagashira (head administrators for chanoyu-related matters), and that of the city of Kyoto itself, looked rather uncertain. They both confronted the question of how they were to sustain their finance and identity. The city of Kyoto was clearly suffering from the damage caused by the Meiji Restoration. Kyoto was the centre of the political upheaval and a number of battles, which led to a decline in population at the end of the Tokugawa period that persisted into the early years of Meiji.1 In terms of its economy, Kyoto’s monopoly over the production of luxury goods, such as silk, tea ceramics, and tea had already eroded towards the end of the Tokugawa period with the rise of manufacturers and producers in other regions.2 The final blow was the relocation of the emperor and his household to Tokyo to take up residence in the new imperial capital. It was clear to the merchant elite of Kyoto that something had to be done to revive the city’s finances and outlook, as well as to figure out its new identity. In order to reinvigorate the city economically and culturally, the merchant elite of Kyoto came up with the idea of organizing hakurankai – a public display in a modern form. While the city of Kyoto was trying to overcome the post-Restoration shock, ex-sukiyagashira were also suffering from the loss of the financial and social privileges that had come with their patronage by the warrior elite. One might assume that the hereditary tea elite families, such as the three Senke houses in Kyoto (the Omotesenke House, the Urasenke House and the Mushanokōjisenke House), would have evaded this tragedy because the family heads of these houses were also the iemoto of their respective tea traditions, and hence the succession of the house art directly meant the continuation of the lineage and their identities.3 Moreover, according to Nishiyama, the family heads of the

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three Senke houses had received support from the privileged townspeople of Kyoto.4 However, it seems that such was not the case, as discussed below. The iemoto of various tea traditions also confronted the necessity of establishing a new way of making a living and finding a renewed meaning for chanoyu in the modern period. The first two decades of the Meiji era were marked by a series of attempts by the hereditary tea elite to find a different direction for the house arts. The hereditary tea elite’s attempt to survive coincided with the effort made by the local elite to find a new path for the city. On some occasions, the tea elite and the local authorities collaborated to revive the city’s economy and identity. Sometimes, however, their interests clashed. This chapter explores how chanoyu was exploited at the first few Kyoto exhibitions. The organizers of the Kyoto Exhibition mobilized many resources in order to keep the event attractive for the visitors. Their possible resources included chanoyu and its related material culture. Thus, the relationship between chanoyu and the Kyoto exhibitions clarifies the place of chanoyu in the mind of the Kyoto elite merchants and its society. By tracing the activities and displays related chanoyu at the Kyoto exhibitions, this chapter outlines the place of chanoyu and the hereditary tea elite in the social and cultural life of the old capital during the first one and a half decades of the Meiji period.

Hakurankai: a public display of the modern world When the merchant elite of Kyoto thought about revitalizing the city’s mood and its industry, one of the solutions was to organize an exhibition. It was initially an attempt to recover the city’s economy and reputation from the damage caused by a number of political clashes at the end of the Tokugawa regime and the relocation of the imperial institution at the onset of the new government. The heads of three prominent Kyoto merchant elite families, Ono Zensuke, Mitsui Hachirōemon and Kumagai Naotaka, took the initiative in organizing what turned out to be the first event to be called a ‘hakurankai’ (exhibition), which became an annual event after 1871 and continued until 1928. The event was carried out under the term ‘hakurankai (exhibition)’, the term that became widely known by Fukuzawa Yukichi’s bestseller essay, Seiyō

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37

jijō (Conditions in the West, 1866).5 The first Kyoto hakurankai ran from the tenth day of the tenth month to the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the fourth year of Meiji (22 November to 22 December 1871) at Nishi Honganji, the temple of the Jōdo-shinshū sect founded in 1602 by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The exhibition was divided into three divisions: China, Japan, and the West. A total of 336 items were on display at the first Kyoto Exhibition: 116 items from Japan, 131 from China, and 39 from the Western countries. Hakurankai was intended to inform the visitors of the modern world, as well as to display up-to-date technologies. An interest in showing new technologies was clear from the section for Western artefacts, where guns, photographs, and an egg-hatching machine, among other objects, could be found.6 The section included military goods such as swords from France and Germany, a military uniform from France, guns, coins from Russia and Portugal, and miscellaneous other artefacts such as a mirror with an ivory handle, a lamp, photographs and a musical box. Mechanical devices were also on display – for instance an ice making machine, a spinning machine, an egg-hatching machine, a barometer, a coffee-making machine – as well as natural objects such as ostrich eggs and coconuts from India.7 However, the focus of the Japan and the China sections was antiques, ranging from pieces of equipment for rites and rituals, bronzeware, Buddhist statues, paintings, calligraphy scrolls and a number of tea utensils. Most of the exhibits were loans from Kyoto merchants. The hereditary tea elite also provided a number of tea artefacts.8 For example, the house head of the Urasenke tea tradition loaned a copper tea kettle and tea brazier (karakane furokama); the house head of the Yabunouchi tea tradition, one of the branches of the Senke tea tradition which had flourished in Kyoto among non-aristocratic urbanites during the Edo period, loaned an antique copper water jar (kodō mizusashi) and a tea bowl; and the house head of the Omotesenke tea tradition supplied a silver brazier. Meanwhile, Horinouchi Sōfu, the seventh house head of the Horinouchi family and the former head tea officer (sukiyagashira) for Takatsuki Domain, provided a tea bowl. There were thirteen tea-related artefacts (seven tea bowls, a tea caddy and four tea jars) presented in the Japan section of the exhibition.9 At the ‘hakurankai’ site, the house head of the Yabunouchi tea tradition had organized a place for tea service along with other merchant tea connoisseurs. A bowl of tea was served to provide the visitors refreshments.

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The elite tea families loaned a number of tea-related artefacts to the exhibition (of the exhibition’s 116 items, thirteen were tea-related) and provided tea services at the site, suggesting the inclusion of the practice of chanoyu as a part of the project of reviving the city of Kyoto in 1871. The first Kyoto Exhibition was the first attempt to organize a public display carrying the notion of the modern term – hakurankai. The Western artefact section did display modern devices and curios from around the world, thus informing the audience of the advanced technologies and the world outside Japan. However, the way in which the organizer displayed items in the Japan and China sections was more likely an extension, or a mixture, of various Tokugawa style public displays, such as bussankai, kaichō, shogakai, and misemono.10 Although it involved some elements of modern hakurankai, the content of the exhibition was by and large an extension of Tokugawa conventions.11 Nevertheless, the exhibition of 1871 was sufficiently novel to attract a large number of visitors. The numbers suggest that the exhibition was a success, with 11,211 visitors in total, admissions receipts of 731 ryō and 3 shu, and a profit of 266 ryō, 2 bu and 1 shu. The success of the event convinced its promoters of the value of the enterprise, with Mitsui Motonosuke (on behalf of Mitsui Hachirōemon), Ono Zensuke, Kumagaya Hisaemon and Sen Sōshitsu submitting to the local authority, about two weeks after the closing date of the first one, an application for another exhibition to be held the following spring.12 The second exhibition was a joint public–private effort. The city’s governor, Nagatani Nobuatsu, sent out an official notice to the residents of Kyoto announcing the importance of the exhibition and encouraging their participation and cooperation.13 The Kyoto office also sent a note to the central government for permission for the foreign visitors’ entrance into the city.14 An office was set up in the local government to assist the exhibition and was granted financial support.15 Fifteen local government officials and 34 citizens staffed the office.16 The Kyoto Exhibition Association (Kyoto Hakurankaisha) was founded to handle the administration of subsequent exhibitions, which was repeated annually throughout the Meiji and Taisho periods, and continued well into the early Showa period. The members of the association asserted, according to ‘Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi’, that the exhibition of 1872 should be officially acknowledged as

Chanoyu as a sideshow

39

the first Kyoto Exhibition (Kyoto Hakurankai), because the exhibition of 1871 was not truly a modern exhibition, as it focused on curios and antiques rather than industrial and manufactured goods.17 The event was held from the tenth of March, the fifth year of Meiji (10 April 1872) for 50 days. 18 The number of exhibition sites was increased from one to three. In addition to Nishi Hongan-ji, the association chose two historic temples in the Higashiyama area, Ken’nin-ji, the historic Zen sect temple founded by Eisai (1141–1215), and Chion-in, the Jōdo sect temple founded by Hōnen (1133–1212), as their exhibition sites.19 Interestingly enough, an additional two exhibition sites were located next to Gion – one of the pleasure quarters of Kyoto. It was clear from the suggestion made by the Vice Governor of Kyoto, Makimura Masanao (1834–96), that an emphasis was to be placed on creating entertainment value to attract visitors.20 The choice of the sites indicates that the association had integrated Makimura’s suggestion by linking the exhibition with one of the city’s biggest industries, the entertainments of the pleasure quarters. Additionally, two entertainments were staged during the exhibition. One was the Miyako Odori (literally, ‘the Dance of the Imperial Capital’) Festival, the now famous festival that was first invented and held alongside the exhibition in 1872. The other was a tea service at Jo-an, an Uraku style tea-hut attached to one of the temples in Ken’ninji, located next to the Gion pleasure quarter. For the tea service, the house heads of the three Senke houses and Yabunouchi House were mobilized and the table-and-chair tea-making procedure (ryūrei) was introduced in order to attract Western visitors.21 The Kyoto Exhibition of 1872 attracted a total of 38,614 Japanese visitors, as well as 770 foreigners, almost five times as many as the previous one.22 The exhibition was considered a success and tea became an established part of the Kyoto Exhibition Association’s offerings. From the Fourth Kyoto Exhibition in 1875 on, a beverage service with the ryūrei style tea procedure became a staple performance by female entertainers at the Gion district during the Miyako Odori Festival.23 Chanoyu and Miyako Odori performances became two stereotypical entertainments at the Kyoto exhibitions, but the hereditary tea elite were no longer needed for the tea performing businesses. Towards the end of the first decade of the Meiji era, the place of chanoyu practice in Kyoto was visible but associated with entertainment and pleasure quarters.

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Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan

Tea and the mid-Meiji exhibitions From 1875, the Sentō Imperial Palace and the Ōmiya Imperial Palace were used as the sites for the Kyoto exhibitions. The heads of the three Senke houses and the Yabunouchi House again provided their services at the Kyoto exhibitions from 1876 at the Seika-tei teahouse in the garden of the Sentō Imperial Palace. However, the tea service at the exhibition site was not exclusive to the hereditary tea elite families when the Meiji period entered its second decade. At the Tenth Kyoto Exhibition in 1881, tea services were provided by five different groups at the Seika-tei teahouse: students from girls’ vocational training schools in the pleasure quarters of Gion, Ponto-chō, and Shimabara (11–18 March); the head of the Omotesenke House (1 April); the head of the Urasenke House (2 April); the members of the Tea Utensil Dealers Association (from 20 April, on the fifth and tenth of the month); and the head of the Yabunouchi House (29 April).24 The following year, at the Eleventh Kyoto Exhibition, bowls of tea were sold at the Seika-tei teahouse by students from a girls’ vocational training school in the Gion district.25 During the Twelfth Kyoto Exhibition in 1883, the iemoto of the Omotesenke tea tradition organized a tea gathering at the Seika-tei teahouse on 10 March. But the exhibition itself had already moved elsewhere, occupying a corner of the imperial garden outside the Imperial Palace from 1882. Times had moved on, and chanoyu was absent from the exhibition for the next few years. The need for tea service at the exhibition was so obvious that almost everyone who was involved with chanoyu was mobilized. But drinking matcha at the exhibitions meant beverage consumption and the drink was served by young girls. Chanoyu’s aristocratic associations appear to have faded at the exhibition site by the beginning of the 1880s. The elite tea professionals resurface again at the exhibition site with chanoyu carrying a different nuance in 1887. Chanoyu, Kyoto and public events in the latter half of the Meiji period are discussed in Chapter 5.

The three Senke houses and the Yabunouchi House in the early Meiji period The early efforts by the Kyoto elite merchants and government officials to revive the city’s identity and financial condition do not seem to have benefitted

Chanoyu as a sideshow

41

the reputation of chanoyu as a prestigious cultural practice or the prominence of iemoto in the society. Chanoyu was not only incorporated in the early Kyoto exhibitions as entertainment. The status of chanoyu masters seemed to have changed, which was not at all a welcome development for the hereditary tea elite professionals. Until 1868, the hereditary tea elite appreciated their association with the upper echelons of society. Wealthy townsmen and religious authorities in Kyoto practised chanoyu, and patronized and hired tea masters as their sukiyagashira. The practice of tea gatherings was critical in the elite’s social life as they socialized within and outside their own social circle through tea gatherings, as in other cities and castle towns.26 Hereditary elite tea professionals in Kyoto, such as the family heads of the Senke houses, had close relationships with the elite townsmen and religious institutions. For example, the Omotesenke House had been patronized by the Mitsui family, one of the most successful merchant families of the Tokugawa period.27 One of the prominent merchant families in Osaka, the Hirase family, was the guardian of the Mushanokōjisenke tea tradition,28 and the Yabunouchi House had been sukiyagashira of Nishi Hongan-ji from the time of the second house head. The Yabunouchi House is based in the Shimogyō area, the lower part of the city, and its style of tea was therefore commonly known as ‘the tea of the lower stream’ (shimoryū no cha), whereas the three Senke houses were located in the upper part of the city, in the Kamigyō area close to the Nijō Castle and the Imperial Palace, and their traditions were therefore known collectively as ‘the tea of the upper stream’ (kamiryū no cha).29 Tsutsui suggests that these names also suggest the way the Yabunouchi House was identified with commoners, while the others identified themselves with the aristocracy, including the warrior elite.30 However, with the implementation of the new systems by the Meiji government, it became clear that these elite tea masters had lost their privileges. In the early Meiji period, the government of Kyoto categorized chanoyu professionals as entertainers (yūgei kaseginin) in the regulations regarding tax and business licenses.31 The Senke families were outraged and Gengen-sai (1810–77), the eleventh head of the Urasenke tea tradition, appealed to the prefecture on their collective behalf.32 Only a few years before, the houses had been serving the domain lords, which accorded them a considerable degree of power and influence in both society and politics (and they were still shizoku – families with warrior antecedents – that was still placed above the commoner

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class under the new social structure implemented by the Meiji government). In addition, Gengen-sai was the third son of the lord of Mikawa-Okudono domain and had been adopted into the Urasenke House. It is easy to imagine that being given a status equivalent to that of entertainers such as the dancers and musicians of the pleasure quarter would be disgraceful to him, and that he would therefore protest the classification made by the local authority as a misjudgement of the importance of chanoyu practices. Tsutsui suggests that after Gengen-sai’s appeal, the local authority reconsidered the place of tea instructors in the classification system and hereditary tea elites were classified differently.33 Tsutsui does not make it clear how the hereditary tea elites were categorized after the local authority ‘reconsidered’ the matter, but any change in classification must have been minor because, according to a local tax law issued in 1880, tea masters were still categorized as ‘entertainment instructor[s]’.34 It was clear that the former sukiyagashira had to adapt to the new environment. The Mushanokōjisenke House had a wealthy merchant, Hirase Rokō of Osaka, as its patron and was therefore able to survive the transition without too much trouble. Similarly, the Yabunouchi House could rely on its existing patrons, the temple and the commoners in Kyoto allowing them to weather the storm. However, Gengen-sai’s Urasenke House and the Omotesenke House appear to have faced an immediate financial crisis, given the loss of their patrons and stipends, despite the Omotesenke House being able to receive some support from the Mitsui family. Thus, in 1875, the family heads of both the Omotesenke and Urasenke houses started travelling extensively, seemingly with the intention of looking for new patrons. Rokuroku-sai, the head of the Omotesenke House, had worked for the lord of Kii Domain, one of the most powerful houses of the Tokugawa clan. He visited the Kumagai, an influential but commoner family in Yamaguchi Prefecture, staying with them for 100 days from spring until autumn seeking their patronage.35 At the same time, Gengen-sai was touring Kanazawa, the former Kaga Domain where the head of the Urasenke House had served as sukiyagashira for generations. Gengen-sai visited a number of wealthy families in the region and organized numerous tea gatherings.36 He was also invited to twenty-eight tea gatherings, including one organized by Rokuroku-sai, in just three months.37

Chanoyu as a sideshow

43

In any case, all the effort appears to have been unsuccessful. The old way of getting financial support from the privileged few did not work out. Therefore, three years later, in 1878, Rokuroku-sai appears to have turned from private patrons to the public sector, by becoming a part-time tutor for a publicly funded girls’ secondary school (jogakkō) and girls’ vocational training school (jokōba).38 His role was to teach dining etiquette to young female students from diverse backgrounds, including girls from elite commoner families and girls working in pleasure quarters. As his title ‘tutor of dining manners’ suggests, Rokurokusai could not rely exclusively on chanoyu for employment.39 For someone who had been used to teaching advanced lessons in refined environments to the social elite, his new vocation – serving tea at exhibitions, looking for new patrons on the road, and teaching dining manners to commoners’ daughters (even if some of them were from privileged families) – must have provided a clear sense of chanoyu’s reduced status in the new era.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined the place of chanoyu and hereditary tea elite professionals in Kyoto, noting how they were adapting themselves to the new social order. Chanoyu’s association with the aristocracy appears to have faded in Kyoto by the mid-Meiji period. While chanoyu performances were on show at the Kyoto exhibitions (and the Miyako Odori festivals), tea professionals were becoming inconspicuous. Neither the performance nor the drink were any longer exclusive to the aristocratic by the early 1880s. Chanoyu was performed by female entertainers as a sideshow for the main exhibition and tea was a refreshment served by non-elite tea practitioners. Both the performance and the drink could be consumed by anyone who had come to see the exhibition and the festival. Moreover, chanoyu masters were categorized as entertainers by the local government and Rokuroku-sai of the Omotesenke tea tradition was teaching table manners at a girls’ vocational school. It was not only the elite tea professionals who were having trouble, however. The Kyoto Exhibition Association had never been able to repeat the success of its first outing at the Imperial Palace in 1873, when 706,057 visitors (406,457 visitors to the main exhibition site at the Imperial Palace, 298,991 visitors

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to the garden of the Imperial Palace and 1,609 student visitors) had come to the grounds.40 Although the number of industrial products, including manufactured goods and handicrafts, gradually increased, the quality of the products displayed at exhibitions became poorer and the number of visitors declined, falling below 200,000 at the end of the decade and dropping even further from 188,584 in 1881 to 135,723 in 1882 when the exhibition moved to the new site.41 Generally speaking, the national economy was in a slump as a result of the deflationary policies and fiscal restraint introduced by Matsukata Masayoshi in the early 1880s. Kyoto was no exception.42 Following a further collapse in visitor numbers in the early 1880s, the association decided to reduce the number of members as well as its capital.43 In 1886, it did not even plan an exhibition, leaving the stage to a trade fair focused on the textile industry organized by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce.44 It was only in 1887 that both the city of Kyoto and chanoyu re-emerged at a new kind of exhibition, paving the way for its ascendancy in the late Meiji period and its identification with Kyoto as the source of Japanese aesthetics and as an icon of the nation’s tradition. That story will be examined in Chapter 5. Before moving on to the story of chanoyu in Kyoto during the late Meiji period, however, the next two chapters explore how the practice of chanoyu was surviving in the new capital, Tokyo, during the Meiji period.

3

Gathering for tea in Tokyo, c. 1870–1880

In Kyoto during the 1870s and the early 1880s, as discussed in Chapter 2, the wining-and-dining aspect of chanoyu was highlighted at events that were open to the public. At the Kyoto exhibitions and the Miyako Odori festivals, the chanoyu show and matcha drinking were clearly not exclusive to the ruling elite. However, in Tokyo, chanoyu followed a slightly different path as it developed into modernity. This chapter sketches the way in which chanoyu was taken up by both old and new elites in Tokyo by exploring three different social and cultural lives in the first decade and a half of the Meiji era: two aristocrats, of warrior and courtier origins respectively, Matsura Akira and Higashikuze Michitomi, and an entrepreneur, Yasuda Zenjirō. These three individuals are well-known tea connoisseurs of the Meiji period. They were also founding members of the Wakei-kai – an exclusive tea connoisseur society established around 1898 in Tokyo.1

The domain lord: Matsura Akira and the succession of family legacy Former domain lords and courtiers were under threat with the structural economic and social changes: the replacement of domains by prefectures and the abolition of the rank system. Aristocrats of both warrior and courtier origins, who had occupied different social spaces and possessed separate cultural identities for many centuries, were merged into one social group and labelled the kazoku (literally, ‘the flower lineage’). These nobilities – the shogun, domain lords and courtiers of the Five Regent houses and other houses – were deprived of their political roles. Most of them had very little to do with

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political affairs in the new era, which were in the hands of former middle-class samurai and courtiers.2 A number of aristocrats therefore turned to cultural practices as a way of sustaining and elaborating their networks and affirming their status. Chanoyu was one of the cultural practices that functioned as a means of consolidating the social networks of the old elite and creating new ones for newcomers by bringing together individuals who would have been unlikely to meet in the previous regime. Matsura Akira, the last lord of Hirado, was one of the domain lords who were merged into the kazoku class. Although the Matsura clan had governed Hirado Domain since the thirteenth century, with the abolition of the domains and the establishment of prefectures, Matsura Akira and his family were relocated to Tokyo in the ninth month of the fourth year of Meiji. From 1871, being deprived of the privileges of a lord, therefore, Matsura Akira, as well as the other kazoku, had little to do with government affairs. After their relocation, Chancellor of State (Daijō Daijin) Sanjō Sanetomi continuously summoned the members of the kazoku, including Matsura.3 The only official duties of the new aristocracy were to visit the Imperial Palace, to listen to imperial ordinances, to offer their congratulations to the Meiji emperor on occasions such as his birthday, or simply to visit the palace for social functions. Many of these courtesy visits later became a part of regular court functions. Although his public life was quiet, Matsura appears to have been very active in sociocultural exchanges. Like the ‘sophisticated’ elite in the Tokugawa period, Matsura’s sociocultural life in the first years of Meiji took the form of patronizing artists, inviting them to social gatherings and seeing them perform their arts; literati painters doing impromptu paintings, noh and kyōgen performers dancing, and musicians playing Japanese and Chinese classical music. Most of his cultural activities in 1871 were typical Tokugawa warrior elite’s cultured pursuits.4 Matsura and his friends also composed Chinese poetry (kanshi) and the dinner he served was often shippoku dishes (Japanised Chinese food, a local cuisine from the Nagasaki region near Matsura’s domain).5 Surprisingly, although matcha practice was one of the cultured activities, in 1871, there was no sign of chanoyu in Matsura’s social life. Chanoyu had been a routinized ritual and may have been too formal and anachronistic to perform in private settings, not to mention the fact that it was strongly associated with the Tokugawa Shogunate, which no longer existed.

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Instead, Matsura’s social life was strongly influenced by Chinese artistic and literary traditions. In 1872, however, Matsura started to learn Chinshin-style chanoyu, developed by his ancestor, from Toyoda Tadasumi, the former head tea officer (sukiyagashira), whose family had preserved the secrets of the art of the Chinshin tea tradition on behalf of the Matsura family since the seventeenth century.6 There is no explicit indication as to why Matsura Akira decided to take up his responsibility as the head of the Chinshin tea tradition and took chanoyu lessons, even though the official use of chanoyu seems to have disappeared with the fall of the old regime. It may be because no one but he could be responsible for keeping the family’s cultural heritage. With the abolition of the shogunal institution and the dissolution of the lord–vassal relationship, there were no longer any vassal tea officers, who had formerly been in charge of passing down the secrets of the tradition. It may simply be because he was underemployed, had plenty of time on his hands and had nothing else to do except to practise tea. Whatever the case may be, Matsura soon found a use for chanoyu in the new capital. In 1876, he employed Kuge Ryōsuke, a former sukiyagashira for Hirado Domain and now a chanoyu instructor, as an assistant house manager for the Matsura family in Tokyo.7 Two years later in 1878, Matsura called Sudō Sakae in Hirado, another former sukiyagashira and now a chanoyu instructor, to come to Tokyo to work for him.8 At this point, Matsura had two former sukiyagashira as house assistants, whose role appears to have been to support Matsura in dealing with his chanoyu-related matters. Finally, the following year, after seven years of training, Matsura became skilled at the Chinshin-style chanoyu and received the Nine Secret Teachings of Full Proficiency (okuhikyūkajō kaiden). He was now the head of Chinshin chanoyu tradition in both name and in practice.9 By the time Matsura became an expert in his own chanoyu tradition, tea gatherings and the practice of chanoyu had also become more conspicuous in society and begun to establish their place in the kazoku class. On 16 August 1877, when the emperor made a visit to the first National Domestic Exhibition at Ueno, Wakisaka Yasuaya (1840–1908), the former lord of Tatsuno Domain, ceremonially offered a bowl of matcha to the emperor at the exhibition site.10 Wakisaka, a master of the Sōhen tea tradition, was one of the few domain lords who had actually devoted himself to chanoyu during the Tokugawa

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period. As discussed in a later section, Wakisaka was also keen on teaching and propagating chanoyu to his fellow kazoku. The significance of this episode at the exhibition was twofold. First, chanoyu was still seen as a ritual that was formal enough to be performed in front of the emperor. Second, Wakisaka, a kazoku of warrior origin, was not significant at all in political affairs in the new regime, as he had supported the losing side, namely the shogunate, in the Boshin War. He therefore seemed to be in an even worse place than Matsura, who had sided with the new government in the same war. Nonetheless, Wakisaka got the chance to perform a ritual before the emperor as well as the other members of the imperial family and his peers at a public event. The increasing significance of the chanoyu practice in the aristocratic society became even clearer when Iwakura Tomomi, the leading figure of Meiji politics, built a new tea-hut in his residence and showed it to his colleagues, mostly kazoku of courtier origin and some members of the imperial family, on 16 December of the same year.11 These events took place within a small circle of kazoku peers, such that everyone would have noticed what was going on in the circle. Getting involved in chanoyu must therefore have seemed to be a reasonable choice for Matsura at the end of the first decade of the Meiji era. He already had a rich family heritage, both in material terms – the Matsura family was also known for their collection of fine tea-related artefacts – and in terms of practice – he was the head of the Chinshin-style tea tradition.

The court noble: Higashikuze Michitomi and his refined pastime As the Meiji era entered its second decade, Matsura began to participate in and organize numerous tea gatherings.12 It seems as if Matsura had found in chanoyu a way to affirm his status and maintain and/or elaborate his social relationships within the newly established kazoku class. Chanoyu was clearly more than an anachronistic ritual of the former regime or simply an amusing pastime for kazoku of warrior origin. Kazoku of courtier origin, on the other hand, appear to have had slightly different reasons for learning the practice of chanoyu. Higashikuze Michitomi, an aristocrat of civil origin, started to learn chanoyu from Wakisaka Yasuaya, the former domain lord

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who had performed a tea offering ceremony to the emperor in 1877. Once he started chanoyu lessons with Wakisaka in 1879, he quickly became a devotee.13 He started his career as a tea connoisseur by ordering a tea-hut under the consultation of Wakisaka in August 1879.14 He then bought a set of tea utensils, again following the guidance of Wakisaka.15 Finally, on 2 December of the same year, he started to take chanoyu lessons from Wakisaka.16 Wakisaka was Higashikuze’s companion for his journey into tea connoisseurship. The practice of chanoyu effected a significant change in Higashikuze’s daily life. Before 1879, there was no sign whatsoever of chanoyu in his sociocultural life. His favourite hobby seems to have been playing go and writing Chinese poems. He listened to Qing music and played gekkin, a moon guitar for Qing music, with his fellow kazoku of courtier origin. Furthermore, in 1877, drinking tea meant drinking a literati-style steeped tea (sencha), not powdered green tea (matcha).17 As with Matsura during the first decade of the Meiji era, Higashikuze’s cultural activities were strongly influenced by literati taste, especially Chinese artistic and literary traditions. However, once he began practising chanoyu, chanoyu and tea gatherings dominated his daily activities. For example, he took chanoyu lessons from Wakisaka at least twice a month; he often visited antique tea utensil dealers on Sundays (with Wakisaka and sometimes with other friends); he invited friends for tea and was invited by them.18 He also often casually invited friends making a social visit to his residence into his tea-hut and offered them a bowl of tea.19 The following tea gathering, which Higashikuze attended in the summer of 1881, might show how much Higashikuze developed the social relationship beyond his own class through chanoyu. On 5 July 1881, Higashikuze was invited to a tea gathering organized by Miura Yasushi (1829–1910), a Meiji statesman and former middle-class samurai from Kii Domain, where Miura showcased his newly built tea-hut, a replica of the Rokusō-an, the original of which had been held by the Imperial Museum.20 The fellow guests at the gathering were Kohitsu Ryōchū, an expert in the authentication of old calligraphy and antiques and one of the sukiyagashira of the Imperial Museum, a steward of the Kii Tokugawa family who was attending on behalf of his lord, and Sen Sōza, the family head of the Omotesenke House. Given the lure of an interesting tea artefact, even a courtier-kazoku would accept an invitation from a middle-class statesman and this aristocrat would be sharing the room

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with a couple of former middle-class samurai (the Tokugawa steward and Sen Sōza) and a commoner (Kohitsu Ryōchū). Later in the same year, Higashikuze was sent to Kyoto on 1 October by the Ministry of the Imperial Household to pay a visit to Princess Yoshiko of Katsura (1829–81), who was on her deathbed. Princess Yoshiko passed away at one in the morning on 3 October. The same day saw Higashikuze’s visit to Sen Sōza’s house to see his family’s historical tea-hut and garden.21 Two days later, after the funeral, Higashikuze visited the Urasenke House and looked at their historic tea-hut and garden.22 Even though he was on duty, he managed to make some time for his enjoyment and satisfied his appetite for the aesthetics of chanoyu. Higashikuze’s case might be an extreme one. However, he provides a good example of how the cultural spheres and practices of the newly established kazoku class converged in the first decade and a half of the Meiji period – and of how chanoyu was instrumental in their doing so. According to Ōkubo Toshiaki, since they had different origins, the cultures of the warrior and civil elites were also rather different before the Meiji Restoration.23 Even after these two aristocratic classes were merged into one social group, their identities and cultural preferences remained distinct. It was not until the end of the first decade of the Meiji era that they began to formulate a shared sense of belonging to the same group under the Meiji regime. Ōkubo suggests that this was from the need for both kazoku groups to stay together and to function as a political and social bulwark for the emperor and the imperial institution, the role which the new government had given them.24 Two kazoku classes with two separate cultural identities had to stick together. The practice of chanoyu seemed to be one good way to glue these two aristocratic classes together, as the case of Higashikuze suggests, inasmuch as he was learning chanoyu from a former domain lord and socializing with him through chanoyu. Higashikuze’s chanoyu life was led by Wakisaka at the beginning, not only being taught by him but also getting advice from him on which tea utensils to buy, being invited to Wakisaka’s gatherings and accompanying him to various others. It seems that the more deeply Higashikuze got involved in the practice of chanoyu, the more he socialized with other chanoyu connoisseurs from various social backgrounds, such as Matsura Akira and other kazoku of warrior origin.

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For the kazoku of warrior origin, it is clear that chanoyu was a way of socializing with kazoku of courtier origin, even of getting close to the emperor himself, as Wakisaka did at the National Domestic Exhibition. For the kazoku of courtier origin such as Higashikuze, however, chanoyu had a somewhat different meaning. For him, the practice of chanoyu was attractive inasmuch as it was ‘refined’. Higashikuze wrote in his diary; 盆立点茶相伝、予学茶不欲為茶博士、只愛風情耳、然而安斐欲吾門 葉栄盛勧思 不止、依而及此挙非本意也25 The secret of bondate tencha26 was transmitted [from Wakisaka]. I learned tea not to become a master of tea. It was only because of my love of refinement. However, [Wakisaka] Yasuaya wants to extend and prosper amongst my clan and continues to encourage me. This attitude was not my original intention.

Higashikuze suggests how Wakisaka had encouraged him to deepen his knowledge of and skill in chanoyu and to gain the secrets of the tradition, even though he was not originally interested in them. Wakisaka seems to have had a more worldly interest in chanoyu, the utility of which for him went beyond simply being a cultured pastime. On the other hand, Higashikuze appears to like the practice of chanoyu for its connoisseurial aspects, the love of refinement and sophistication that could be gained through the practice of chanoyu.

The self-made man: Yasuda Zenjirō and his cultural investment Whatever the motivations for individual kazoku to pursue chanoyu and organize tea gatherings, chanoyu in general appears to have taken root in the newly-shaped upper-class society at the end of the first decade of the Meiji era. This would have been one reason why Yasuda Zenjirō, a very successful modern industrialist, was encouraged to learn chanoyu. Yasuda, the founder of the Yasuda conglomerate, was born to a lower-class warrior vassal family in Toyama Domain and came to Edo when he was twenty to become an apprentice to a wholesale dealer.27 At the time of the Meiji Restoration, Yasuda had a reputation as a reliable moneychanger.28 By the time the period

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entered its second decade, Yasuda had become one of the most successful of the entrepreneurs who made fortunes out of the turbulent situation caused by the Meiji Restoration. In 1878, Yasuda bought an enormous property, which had formerly belonged to the Tayasu family of the Tokugawa clan. Yasuda’s acquisition seems to have caused a sensation, as the ownership of the property changed from the Tokugawa to a merchant from a poor, half-samurai halffarmer family. Yasuda’s purchase of the site symbolized Yasuda’s success and the change in the social structure of the time. However, financial success and material prosperity were not enough to ensure an automatic ascent up the social ladder. Although Yasuda was renowned for his financial success, he was from a lower-class samurai background. More specifically, while he was technically from a ‘samurai’ family, his father was in fact a farmer who had bought the lowest samurai rank when Yasuda was a child and served the lord of Toyama Domain as chabôzu (a subordinate tea officer).29 Moreover, Yasuda had become a merchant, that is, a member of the social group that had been placed at the bottom of the rank system for centuries and was still seen as an untrustworthy social class.30 Yasuda took up chanoyu around 1880, when chanoyu seems to have become prevalent in kazoku society. Thus, one could assume that Yasuda started learning chanoyu in order to enter the social circle of the upper class. Once Yasuda started to learn chanoyu, however, like Higashikuze, he quickly became a dedicated chanoyu practitioner. From 1880 on, Yasuda constantly organized and was himself invited to numerous tea gatherings. In his diary he kept a detailed record of the tea gatherings that he attended. The entries related to the tea gatherings were later extracted from Yasuda’s diary by Takahashi Yoshio and privately published as Shōō chakaiki in 1927.31 Although Tea Diary does not appear to include all the tea gatherings that Yasuda attended or organized, the 400 gatherings recorded in the diary are more than enough to suggest his activities and preferences in chanoyu. According to Tea Diary, the first tea gathering that Yasuda hosted was held on 14 January 1880 at his residence in Yokoami. This gathering seems to have been organized to celebrate the New Year. The guests are listed as Nakai, Hoshino, Tanaka, Kosugi, Ebihara, Kobayashi, Yamaichi, Kobayashi Kin and ‘Yui’s wife’. According to Kumakura, none of these guests were prominent tea connoisseurs, nobles or high fliers.32 Moreover, the guest list included two women. The early Meiji period was still

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a time when the presence of women in official settings was uncommon. Thus, this tea gathering seems to have been a gathering for intimate friends. During the early years of Yasuda’s life as a tea connoisseur, which started in 1880, his guest lists often included the names mentioned above, including women. Additionally, many of the tea gatherings that he organized or attended were associated with music performances, go games, comic storytelling and other entertainments. However, when Yasuda invited guests from outside his social circle, he organized things rather differently. Two gatherings which Yasuda organized at his residence during the late winter and early spring of 1880 provide a good sense of how he dealt with these two different social groups. On 22 February, Yasuda invited high-ranking local government officials to a tea gathering, including the governor of Tokyo and members of the Tokyo prefectural assembly, most of whom belonged to the shizoku class.33 In addition to tea drinking and a formal meal, there was noh and kyōgen theatre. As mentioned above, both noh and kyōgen theatre had been patronized by the warrior elite during the Tokugawa period and were still receiving some patronage from the modern nobility.34 In other words, Yasuda deliberately organized this tea gathering in a way that would appeal to the former warrior class. On the other hand, the guests for a tea gathering held two months later on Sunday 25 April were Yui, Kobayashi, Hoshino and Matsumoto, together with their wives. All these names appear constantly in the early years of Yasuda’s Tea Diary, which suggests that they were members of Yasuda’s chanoyu circle. The gathering started in the morning with a game of go. At noon, guests were invited into a tearoom for a bowl of thin tea (usucha), which was followed by a formal meal. In the afternoon, they watched an entertainer sing and dance, and played flower-arranging games. Then, in the evening, the guests had a light meal.35 It was a full-day event. This gathering seems to have been intimate and casual, involving families and combining chanoyu with other entertainments. The difference in these two gatherings suggests that, in the early Meiji period, there was still a clear division between the cultural practices of the commoner and warrior elites. Yasuda seemed to know enough about the difference between them and to consciously separate them from each other. At the beginning, it seems that hosting and being invited to tea gatherings was a personal pleasure for Yasuda. However, as time went by, he invited guests from

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diverse backgrounds. In 1881 and 1882, his guests included local and national government officials, statesmen, well-known and not-so-well-known bankers and entrepreneurs, tea professionals, art dealers and artists. This indicates that Yasuda employed chanoyu as a way to establish a variety of social networks, seemingly useful for his business, and to build up his social status. However, it is not until 1885 that members of the kazoku start to appear regularly in Tea Diary. During the first two years of Yasuda’s life as a tea connoisseur, Wakisaka Yasuaya was the only aristocrat who attended Yasuda’s tea gatherings. It seems that through Wakisaka, other members of the kazoku, such as Matsura Akira and Higashikuze Michitomi, eventually began to show up at Yasuda’s tea gatherings. Moreover, the ways in which Yasuda organized his tea gatherings also changed over time. During the early days, with only a few exceptions, there were a small number of guests at each gathering, usually a maximum of five to six guests. Also, although Yasuda’s guest lists included persons from various backgrounds, on most occasions the guests for each tea gathering were from a similar background, government officials sitting with their colleagues while entrepreneurs sat with other entrepreneurs. In all three respects, Yasuda would change his practice in the second half of the Meiji period, as will become clear in Chapter 4. However, the one thing that did not change over time in Yasuda’s life as a tea connoisseur was his attitude towards tea utensils. The nature of his arrangement of tea ware and utensils was not at all ostentatious, unlike the later industrialist tea connoisseurs. It seems that Yasuda had less interest in collecting and displaying fancy tea objects. In the 1880s, Yasuda did not seem to be so keen on collecting lavish tea objects. The same utensils appeared again and again at his tea gatherings. The reason is not entirely clear. It may be because the market price of tea objects was collapsing during the early Meiji period. Given this, they would not have been a good investment for someone like Yasuda, from a lower-class samurai family, who may not have had the eye for choosing objects that would be worth investing in during a tumbling market.36 In any case, it was clear that he had little interest in collecting and displaying fine tea-related artefacts. Although Yasuda may not be an owner of refined tea art collections, he was a highly skilled chanoyu practitioner.37 Yasuda’s skill in chanoyu made him different from Masuda Takashi and other

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industrialist tea connoisseurs of the late Meiji period who were famous for collecting extravagant artworks in order to showcase their wealth and social status.38

Conclusion Even though aristocrats did not mingle with Yasuda until 1885 (except for Wakisaka), it was clear that different cultural spheres began to come together: the worlds of the warrior and courtier aristocracies by the early 1880s, and that of economic elite by the late 1880s. Through chanoyu, the two kazoku classes were able to share the same cultural space. The practice of tea gathering became more and more conspicuous in society in the following decades. The next chapter explores how chanoyu played a broader role in the social life of the elite in Tokyo in the mid-Meiji period.

4

Gathering for tea in Tokyo, c. 1880–1900

Introduction During the first one and a half decades of the Meiji era, chanoyu had to a certain extent begun to proliferate beyond the sociocultural life of the old aristocracy. As discussed in Chapter 3, the practice of tea gathering was becoming significant in the social life of the upper classes in Tokyo. Tea gatherings had been organized at private residences of the elite – members of the imperial family and the kazoku, the Meiji oligarchs, and the emerging economic elite. During the early years of the Meiji period, however, tea gatherings appear to have been a space for private, intimate, and sensitive conversations for a small number of guests who shared a similar interest, such as those, discussed above, held during the early modern period. A tea gathering hosted by the minister for home affairs, Yamada Akiyoshi (1844–92), at his villa in Mejirodai on 23 August 1883 appears to have been a typical example of an early modern form of tea gathering. There were six guests, including the governor of Tokyo, Yoshikawa Akimasa (1842–1920), and Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922).1 Yamada, Yamagata and Yoshikawa were all Meiji statesmen of the Chōshu faction, which had achieved pre-eminence in the political world. Like the warrior elites in sixteenth-century Japan, they must have strengthened their bond while sharing a bowl of tea. Nonetheless, from around the mid-1880s, it became clear that different social spheres – the worlds of old aristocracies and that of the emerging political and economic elite – were coming together through the practice of tea gathering. In March 1884, a Mr. Fujii (Fujii Nanigashi), a cabinet secretary, invited Prince The earlier version of this chapter appeared in Japan Forum. Oshikiri Taka, ‘Gathering for Tea in Late Meiji Tokyo’, Japan Forum, 25.1 (2013), 24–41.

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Komatsu, Sanjō Sanetomi (then on the Council of State), Yamada Akiyoshi and several other guests to a tea gathering at his residence.2 The term used in the article, ‘A Mr. Fujii’, shows that he was not nobility or a notable person, just an ordinary middle-class bureaucrat. Even so, Fujii was able to invite a prince as well as a member of the Council of State, most likely because he had built an unusual tea-hut in his garden.3 The trend continued towards the end of the decade, with more and more tea gatherings organized by elites from different backgrounds. In 1885, Sugi Magoshichirō, the high-ranking officer at the Ministry of the Imperial Household and a Meiji oligarch, invited princes Arisugawa, Komatsu, Kitashirakawa and Fushimi, as well as Higashikuze Michitomi and other aristocrats, to a tea gathering.4 Sanjō Sanetomi invited his colleagues to a tea gathering at his mansion on 5 December 1888, while on 14 November 1889, Prince Arisugawa invited Sano Tsunetami, a member of the Privy Council, Takasaki Itsumu, the governor of Tokyo, and entrepreneurs, such as Ōkura Kihachirō and Masuda Takashi, to his residence for tea.5 On 17 November 1889, Itō Miyoji, the secretary of state, invited Takasaki Itsumu and several other guests to his residence in Takanawa for tea.6 Through the practice of tea gathering, the members of the imperial family, high profile political figures, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs were able to sit in the same room and socialize while having a cup of powdered green tea together. By 1889, tea gatherings were clearly one of the social spaces in which the old and new aristocracies and the non-aristocratic elite – statesmen, local officials, and entrepreneurs – could share a cultural experience. The phenomenon was not limited to Tokyo. In 1888, Fujita Densaburō, an industrialist in Osaka, built a magnificent villa with a chanoyu facility in Amijima in Osaka and hired a tea master to look after his tea-related issues, namely, looking after his utensil collection and organizing tea gatherings, inviting high-ranking guests.7 Both old and new aristocrats, as well as middle-class bureaucrats and entrepreneur elites, began to practise tea intensively, seemingly due to its value in expanding their social relationships within and beyond their own class.

Chanoyu’s public profile As discussed above, chanoyu – especially the practice of tea gathering – was thriving in the social life of the elite. It was a matter of contemporary interest

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and an object of patronage for the elites who were experiencing a changing social structure. Nonetheless, chanoyu’s public profile was still ambiguous in the 1880s. Although a tea gathering was essential in the social life of the elite and tea utensils and tea architectures were being itemized as museum pieces, the early Meiji government officers, whose initial goal was to strengthen and modernize the country along Western lines, considered chanoyu – both the practice and its related material culture – irrelevant to their nation-building project, as demonstrated in Chapter 1. The ambiguous place of chanoyu at the beginning of the 1880s can be seen in an architectural plan of the social space where the government of Tokyo and the emerging elite both sought to affirm their positions in modern society. The first such space began to take shape in 1880, when the government of Tokyo invited private enterprises to cooperate in the renovation of the Momiji-yama in Shiba Park. The goal of this project for the local government was to build a facility for official banquets, where the elite could invite both foreign and domestic guests. On the other hand, the motive for their partners in the private sector was to establish a Western-style club, which could offer its members social amenities, meals and accommodation, with a membership exclusive to, according to Yomiuri shimbun, ‘kiken shinshi’ (gentlemen from the upper class).8 The stockholders from the private sector included several notable entrepreneurs of the early Meiji period, such as Yasuda Zenjirō, Koyasu Takashi (the founder of Yomiuri shimbun), Minomura Risuke (the head clerk of the Mitsui Corporation), Ono Zen’emon (the head of Ono Corporation), and Kumagai Naotaka of Kyūkyodō.9 The project was launched in March 1880. A year later, on 15 February 1881, the Kōyō-kan (the Maple Pavilion) opened for business. The architecture of the main building of the Kōyō-kan was Japanese in style and the club also had a noh theatre next to it. But in its first incarnation, there was no space for chanoyu.10 Until the Rokumei-kan – the Western-style official State Guesthouse – opened in the autumn of 1883, the Kōyō-kan functioned as the main facility for the state’s diplomacy and a number of foreign guests visited the premises.11 Almost as soon as the Kōyō-kan was opened, on 13 March 1881, the King of Hawai’i was invited for a visit, during which Prince Higashifushimi, the governor of Tokyo, the foreign minister, and several other high-ranking government officials, as well as several entrepreneurs, accompanied the king. During the visit, they

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were entertained with noh theatre and a music performance.12 Other early foreign guests to the Kōyō-kan included Russian Naval officers, the members of the British royal family, a Dutch Naval officer and an American Envoy to Qing China.13 Although there was no space for chanoyu when it first appeared, the organizers of the Kōyō-kan decided to add a room with chanoyu facilities only few months after its opening. The plan for extension came up around the same time as the government of Tokyo decided to withdraw from the Kōyōkan project.14 The timing coincided with the Meiji government’s planning of the Western-style official State Guesthouse – the Rokumei-kan. Architectural historian Kirisako Kunio suggests that the Meiji officials did not see Japanesestyle architecture as a suitable site for a diplomatic function and there was thus no longer any need for the government of Tokyo to be involved in the Kōyōkan in order to provide a facility for official diplomacy.15 While the Japanese-style mansion and cultural practices did not appeal to the government officers for their diplomatic purposes, the practice of tea gathering was clearly a crucial part of the social life of the entrepreneur elite. In 1883, a further expansion of the club was planned, including the addition of another room purpose-built for chanoyu, suggesting the interest of the entrepreneurs in the practice.16 It seems that while the government officials did not find chanoyu or its related facilities a useful tool for official diplomacy, modern industrialists were keen on including chanoyu in their social lives. Although the Kōyō-kan lost its significance for the nation’s diplomacy with the opening of the Rokumei-kan, it remained central for social exchanges among the domestic elite. Entrepreneurs dominated the steering committee and thus the club was actually administered by privileged industrialists. The ‘kiken shinshi’ (gentlemen from the upper class) to whom membership was reserved was defined by these members of the economic elite.17 This first attempt at creating a private club appears to have been a success, and established a pattern among leading entrepreneurs. Soon after the opening of the Kōyō-kan, in the summer of 1881, several industrialists who were engaged in the Kōyō-kan venture drew up a plan to establish another club. A year later, in 1882, they worked out a concrete plan and submitted a proposal for the construction of a building for a private club to the government of Tokyo.18 This club was named Hoshigaoka charyō. While the emphasis of

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the Kōyō-kan was on its function as a space for social gatherings, the main purpose of this new club was to provide a place to enjoy conventional arts and cultural practices developed in previous periods under the patronage of the aristocracy, such as classical music, noh theatre, tea gatherings, literati paintings and calligraphy.19 Tea gatherings were the central activity at the club,20 and this being the case, someone professionally trained in chanoyu was required. Hence, Matsuda Sōtei, one of the former sukiyagashira (head tea officers) for the Tokugawa Shogunate, was hired as a tea expert to look after the tea-rooms, tea utensils and tea gatherings at Hoshigaoka charyō.21 Hoshigaoka charyō opened for business on 17 June 1884. The club initially had 150 members, but by October of the same year the number had already increased to 250.22 Both princes Komatsu and Fushimi, as well as a number of aristocrats including Sanjō Sanetomi, were among the founding members, and therefore the Hoshigaoka charyō seems to have been fully supported by upperclass society, including members of the imperial family. A little after the club started business, on 1 September 1884, Prince Fushimi and his wife invited their relatives and friends to the club and held a tea gathering.23 Thereafter, a number of tea gatherings were organized at the club, with guests from diverse backgrounds, including members of the imperial family, including wives. Hoshigaoka charyō provided a social space for the elite of different origins to mingle and was thriving.

Chanoyu’s new place in the world of art In the 1880s, chanoyu experienced another spatial expansion. The private residences of the elite or private clubs, such as the Kōyō-kan and Hoshigaoka charyō, were not the only places where the aristocracy gathered for tea. Modern facilities such as exhibition sites and museums also gave chanoyu an opportunity to prove its usefulness in the modern world. In 1881, the Ryūchikai – the association established by influential art administrators in the Meiji government in order to revive and promote Japanese art traditions in 1879 – invited a number of high-ranking guests to the closing ceremony of its second Kanko bijutsukai (Art Exhibition of Antiques). At the ceremony, Sano Tsunetami, the president of the Ryūchikai and then a vice president of the

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Japanese Imperial Commission for the Viennese Exposition of 1873, provided bowls of tea to guests using antique tea utensils that were displayed at the exhibition.24 Such use of valuable antique tea utensils from the exhibition or collection in question seems thereafter to have been a typical way to entertain noble guests. On 28 March 1885, during a visit to the Imperial Museum in Ueno, Princes Yamashina, Komatsu and Kitashirakawa were invited for a formal meal and tea in Rokusō-an, the tea-hut purchased by Machida Hisanari in 1876 to display as an exhibit at the museum.25 On 22 November of the same year, several Meiji statesmen, including Sanjō Sanetomi and Yamada Akiyoshi, organized a tea gathering, again at the Rokusō-an and again using tea utensils from the museum’s collection.26 The museum hired two tea experts to look after its tea-related collections as well as gatherings organized by the museum.27 It seems that both the art society and the museum were making full use of their collections, not only displaying and studying them in order to promote industry, but also using them to entertain guests of high rank.

New employment and business opportunities for tea professionals The relationship between the social elite and chanoyu was firmly established by the end of 1880s. In addition to traditional sites, modern facilities – such as private clubs, antique society and museum – seem to have become new loci for the social life of the elite in Tokyo. These modern facilities clearly became places where tea professionals could find potential clientele. This may suggest the reason why the head of the Urasenke House, En’nō-sai, chose Hoshigaoka charyō as the venue in Tokyo for the ceremonial tea gathering at which, on 7 July 1889, he announced his succession as the thirteenth iemoto of the Urasenke tea tradition.28 Two years later, En’nō-sai and his wife moved to Tokyo. The increasing prosperity of chanoyu in Tokyo, notably at Hoshigaoka charyō, seems to have tempted En’nō-sai to come to Tokyo in order to promote the Urasenke tea tradition in the new capital by establishing solid relationships with the elite. While En’nō-sai was socializing with noble tea connoisseurs and seeking their patronage in Tokyo, his mother, Sen Yukako, the daughter

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of Gengen-sai and the wife of Yumyō-sai, remained in Kyoto, teaching at the Kyoto Girls’ School and giving tea lessons to the disciples of the Urasenke tea tradition.29 The reputation of the Urasenke tea tradition in the old capital, however, began to decline because the absence of the iemoto disappointed the disciples at home.30 En’nō-sai’s attempt to seek out patronage from the elite in Tokyo thus appears not to have achieved its goals, as his relocation jeopardized his position in the old capital. After spending five years in Tokyo, En’nō-sai and his family moved back to Kyoto in 1896. Even though En’nō-sai’s fate was somewhat mixed, the renewed connection between the modern elite and the practice of chanoyu opened up new possibilities for tea professionals, who had become underemployed after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The change in the social situation of chanoyu during the first half of the Meiji period paved the way for some former tea professionals to find employment again, by creating opportunities for work in both private and public sectors, for example in private clubs or staterun museums, or as employees of an entrepreneur, as mentioned above. In addition, some tea professionals also developed a commercial interest in chanoyu and demonstrated their own abilities as entrepreneurs by turning their skills and knowledge to profit. One conspicuous case is a tea instructor called Seki Ashio, who was the owner of a tea-hut in Shiba Park. Seki was a tea instructor in the Omotesenke tea tradition and had been teaching chanoyu since 3 April 1880.31 At first, he provided a chanoyu course in Kayabachō in the Nihonbashi district, but in 1887 he moved to Shiba Park and built a new tea-hut there. Not only was the park itself more central, and closer to the neighbourhoods in which the old and new elites congregated, but it was also only a stone’s throw from the Kōyō-kan, where they socialized. Seki used his various tea assets – his own knowledge, the hut and the location – as the basis for a diverse business portfolio, renting out his tea-hut to the public, providing consultancy services and giving advice regarding tea gatherings.32 Seki also provided private tutoring in chanoyu and contracted another teacher to run a course in Ogasawara-style etiquette, which formed the canon of courtly manners.33 Seki seems to have been targeting both people who could not afford to become a member of the Kōyō-kan or Hoshigaoka charyō and those who may have been socializing with the aristocracy, yet had not had the chance to learn or just did not know the requisite etiquette. Some pupils were simply

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interested in chanoyu, including Joseph Adam Sienkiewicz, the French Envoy to Tokyo, and his wife.34

Chanoyu’s new membership: tea beyond nationality and gender Sienkiewicz and his wife were very much interested in all things Japanese in general, as they furnished their own habitations with Japanese objects. In 1888, Sienkiewicz purchased a mansion in Iidamachi in order to set up the official residence of the French delegation.35 This Japanese-style mansion had formerly belonged to the Meiji statesman Ōkuma Shigenobu, and had a nice Japanese garden and a room for chanoyu.36 To make his official residence look more Japanese, Sienkiewicz replaced the Western-style front gate with a Japanesestyle one using Japanese cypress. Soon after his purchase of the former Ōkuma residence, he and his wife started chanoyu lessons with Seki. After studying for about a year, on 9 January 1890, they organized what appears to have been their first tea gathering, to which they invited a number of ambassadors as well as Japanese nobles.37 On 19 June, they organized another tea gathering, which had over 30 Japanese and non-Japanese guests.38 The wife of the French Envoy was not the only one learning chanoyu. The wife of Theodor von Hellben, the German Envoy to Tokyo, was also taking tea lessons, but from Matsuda Sōtei, the sukiyagashira of the Hoshigaoka charyō.39 It was not only the wives of the Western envoys who participated in the social life of the day through tea gatherings, however; so too did the wives of the Japanese male elite, albeit initially with their husbands. But sometimes these ladies, both Western and Japanese, organized tea gatherings without their husbands. On 6 February 1890, Sienkiewicz’s wife organized another tea gathering and invited Japanese and non-Japanese ladies for tea.40 A month later, on 6 March, she again invited a number of wives of the Japanese elite, including Yamagata Tomoko, the wife of the foreign minister Yamagata Aritomo, and Yanagihara Naruko, a lady-in waiting and the mother of Crown Prince Harunomiya, for tea at her residence in Iidamachi.41 The following day, Yamagata Tomoko invited several ladies to her residence for her monthly tea gathering.42 Although the nationality of the guests is unclear from the article in

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the newspaper, it was likely to have involved the wives of foreign envoys since the gathering was held on the day following the one organized by the wife of the French envoy. By 1890, therefore, tea gatherings had moved beyond their initial Japanese, male constituency, involving a wider range of participants including both foreign delegations and Western and Japanese ladies. Unlike the earlier period when women were denied access to public life, and very few women could formally enter tea institutions,43 the presence of women, at least with regards to tea gatherings, seems to have become prevalent and noticeable in society.44

The Wakei-kai On 21 March 1895, Masuda Takashi, renowned as a successful entrepreneur and art collector, organized a large social gathering at his mansion in Gotenyama, where he had built a tearoom in 1889. Masuda named the gathering Daishikai and it thereafter became an annual event. Although Daishi-kai took the form of a tea gathering, its initial and main purpose was to showcase Masuda’s new acquisitions for his art collection.45 For Masuda, a tea gathering was a space where he displayed his taste and wealth through expensive artworks. The skill and knowledge of chanoyu was not significant in Masuda’s social life until 1907. It seems that Masuda was interested in chanoyu only due to his business career and his passion for art collecting.46 Chanoyu was one of the vital cultural activities in the Mitsui business circle where Masuda had established his fame as an industrialist.47 Thus, having some relationship with chanoyu was beneficial for Masuda’s business career. Moreover, as the aesthetic standard provided by chanoyu was indispensable for the connoisseurial appreciation of the objects of Japanese arts, the practice of chanoyu – especially the tea gathering – was also inseparable from Masuda’s being a good art collector.48 Tea gatherings became an important social practice involving not only a wider range of elites and a place for public diplomacy, but emerging industrialist elites also found a new use for the space provided by chanoyu. Tea connoisseurs from the older generation, who had been practising tea since the 1870s, seem to have had a problem with Masuda’s attitude toward chanoyu. They also seem to have disliked and opposed chanoyu becoming a

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more public event, no longer under the monopoly of the old male elites. In 1898, a group of earlier generation tea connoisseurs established a tea connoisseur’s circle called Wakei-kai. Although the origins of Wakei-kai date back to the 1880s, with regular meetings amongst a specific set of tea connoisseurs, who took turns in hosting tea gatherings,49 in 1898 the members of this circle decided to formalize the arrangement and become exclusive. Given that Wakei-kai was established soon after Masuda had started to organize his annual Daishi-kai, which was becoming very popular amongst entrepreneurial elites,50 it seems that Wakei-kai was founded in order to secure the sense of privilege for the old elite practitioners of tea and to differentiate their practice from others, especially from that of the new economic elite. There were sixteen members of the Wakei-kai, six of whom were peers. Of those who were not, five were former middle-class samurai, three were commoners and two were old aristocracy (see Table 4.1). Among the peers, three were from the old aristocracy and three were new nobles who had been raised to the peerage because of their meritorious deeds during the Meiji Restoration or the First Sino–Japanese War. In terms of occupation, there were four military officers, five industrialists, five aristocrats, one literatus and one government official. From literati to military officers, nobles to commoners, the members of the Wakei-kai were from relatively diverse backgrounds and had a variety of professions. There appears to have been a certain hierarchy among the members. Matsura Akira’s biography claims that he was an advocate of the club and suggests that he was the one who came up with the club rules.51 Whether or not Matsura was actually the main force behind the Wakei-kai, he appears to have had an influential voice in the club as three of the members, Tō Taneki, Sanda Kanemitsu and Matsura Wataru, were disciples of his school of tea.52 The aim of the Wakei-kai was to organize tea gatherings, to prevent the members from turning to luxury in their practice, and to respect frugality as a basic principle. The overarching goal was ‘to show the public the essence of the way of tea’.53 According to the society’s regulations, for members of the Wakeikai, the essence of chanoyu was ‘to respect each other in silence’.54 Room decorations and meals should not be flashy, but rather simple and plain.55 As these regulations suggest, a tea gathering was not a place for showing off one’s social status or wealth. Tea gatherings organized by members of the Wakei-kai were small in scale and members were not meant to show off their possessions,

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Table 4.1 Compiled from Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshinryū chadō, 53 Name

Title

Year of Decoration

Occupation

Higashikuze Michitomi

Count

1884

Former courtier

Matsura Akira

Count

1884

Former domain lord

Itô Sukemaro

Viscount

1884

Lieutenant general of the Japanese Navy

Tô Taneki

Viscount

1884

Former domain lord

Ishiguro Tadanori

Baron

1895

General surgeon of the Japanese Army

Itô Toshiyoshi

Baron

1895

Lieutenant general of the Japanese Navy until 1892

Aochi Ikujirô

Commoner

–

Entrepreneur

Hisamatsu Katsushige

Retired kazoku

–

Former domain lord

Iwami Kanzô

Shizoku

–

Government official

Kanazawa San’emon

Commoner

–

Confectioner

Matsura Wataru

A relative of kazoku

–

Matsura Akira’s relative

Mitsui Takayasu

Commoner

–

Entrepreneur

Okazaki Yuiso

Shizoku

–

Entrepreneur (working for Mitsubishi)

Sanda Kanemitsu

Shizoku

–

Literati

Totsuka Bunkai

Shizoku

–

General surgeon of the Japanese Navy

Yasuda Zenjirô

Shizoku

–

Entrepreneur

even though some of them, such as Matsura Akira, had very fine tea utensil collections. The establishment of the Wakei-kai and their prohibition on using ostentatious tea utensils at their tea gatherings can be interpreted as a reaction by the old elite to the emerging nouveaux riches, such as Masuda Takashi, who were entering what had formerly been the old elite’s exclusive sociocultural sphere and parading their material wealth, as exemplified in pretentious tea utensils and other forms of art and by hosting grand tea gatherings where the main interest of participants was the ostentation of the guests and of the tea utensils used at the gathering. Matsura Akira once wrote: ‘Tea connoisseurs

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who love tea utensils and value their appearance are merely appreciating the formality. The real tea connoisseurs are the ones who appreciate tea from the heart’.56 Chanoyu is, Matsura emphasized, not about its materiality. Most of the members of the Wakei-kai were in fact very knowledgeable about good tea utensils and some possessed historically significant collections. Yet, it is not difficult to assume that the members of the club were encouraged not to use their fancy collections, even if they had many items. Rather, the skill and knowledge of chanoyu, which could not be obtained overnight, marked the difference between them and other participants of tea gatherings. To claim their social standing, the members did not need to count on the monetary value of artworks, which comprised the main arsenal for the nonaristocratic economic elites in their ascent of the social order. Many of the original members were skilled chanoyu practitioners – some were masters of certain tea traditions – and would not need tea experts to organize their tea gatherings. They were sufficiently trained in this refined practice and cultivated enough to play with the complicated codes of tea aesthetics without fancy tea utensils. The Wakei-kai seems originally to have been established to contest the dissemination of chanoyu amongst the non-aristocratic elite, especially the emerging new rich. However, the effort to keep chanoyu exclusive to the selected members of the society was challenged when new members with an entrepreneurial background replaced the original ones. Several years after the establishment of the Wakei-kai, most of the members who belonged to the old aristocracy passed away: Matsura Akira in 1908, Tō Taneki in 1909, and Hisamatsu Katsuhige and Higashikuze Michitomi in 1912. Like the steering committee of the Kōyō-kan, industrialists now ran the Wakei-kai. Given the openings in the membership, Masuda Takashi, Takahashi Yoshio and Mitsui Hachirōjirō, all from the Mitsui business circle, as well as several other entrepreneurs joined the Wakei-kai as new members.57 Takahashi Yoshio, one of the new members of the Wakei-kai from the Mitsui business circle, retired from his business career in 1912, and started to write a column for the Jiji shinpō newspaper. The topic of the column was tea gatherings and practice.58 Takahashi’s column started in February 1912 and continued, with a couple of changes of title, until 1937. His articles were later published as a book, Tōto chakaiki (Records of Tea Gatherings in the Eastern Capital). In the articles and the book, Takahashi

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vividly portrayed the social life of the industrialist elite and the aristocracy. By writing about contemporary affairs and figures as well as historical accounts of tea-related people and events, Takahashi was in part publicizing his own social life as a member of the elite, accomplished to at least some extent through tea gatherings. The membership of the Wakei-kai might have been limited, but its activities – and those of other tea circles – were no longer a secret. A tea gathering by the elite became an object of public interest towards the end of the Meiji period. Through Takahashi’s articles the lifestyle of successful industrialists and their cultural practices – what they were talking about and doing in a mysterious small tea-hut – as well as their personalities were publicized in the newspaper and information was shared by the readers.

Chanoyu and public diplomacy In 1890, the British Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain published his famous Things Japanese. In the book, he characterized chanoyu as: To a European the ceremony is lengthy and meaningless. When witnessed more than once, it becomes intolerably monotonous. Not being born with an oriental fund of patience, he longs for something new, something lively, something with at least the semblance of logic and utility59

Chamberlain was suggesting that chanoyu was obsolete and static, and would not draw the attention of Westerners. However, Chamberlain’s observation seems to have been wrong, with a number of Western envoys actually practising and gathering for tea in Japan in the 1890s. Chanoyu appears to have become more than something through which one might indulge one’s connoisseurial appreciation of Japanese curios.60 Towards the end of the Meiji era, chanoyu was entering a different stage in its modern development. On 21 February 1906, Prince Arthur of Connaught and his party, who were in Japan for the Garter Mission, visited the Mitsukoshi Dry Goods Store in Nihonbashi, which was affiliated to the Mitsui conglomerate. In preparation for the prince’s visit, an executive of the store consulted Matsura Akira, the aristocratic tea connoisseur who has already made a number of appearances in this book, asking him to design a tea-hut in the store. In responding to the

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request, Matsura designed a tea-hut located in a small rooftop garden on the third floor of the store. The hut was named ‘Kūchū-an’ (the Hut in the Sky). Matsura also furnished the hut with the requisite tea utensils, all of which, except for the teakettle and brazier, were newly made under his supervision.61 On the day of the visit, the prince and the party were guided to the rooftop garden on the third floor of the store. In the garden, there was a small tea-hut with a woman sitting inside performing chanoyu.62 Lord Redesdale recorded his impressions in his travel journal: In a little courtyard inside the shop they had caused to be built a tiny teahouse, not much bigger than a toy, in two compartments, in one of which sat a professoress of the Cha No Yu, the tea ceremonies, one of the most complex entertainments of old Japan. It was a treat to see the way in which she went through the mysteries of her craft. How gracefully she moved! How daintily her pretty little hands dealt with every stage of the process! The pouring of the water on the powdered leaves, the stirring of the mixture with a bamboo whisk (which must come from Nara), the covering of the cup, the final obeisance and handing of the cup to the honoured guest – every motion is prescribed. Not a finger must go astray, not a fold of the dress must be awry. There must be no hurry, nothing precipitate – not the semblance of a smile must strike a note of frivolity. It is all gentle and graceful, and very, very solemn. The little house was so small that only one of us at a time could take his place in the compartment which mimicked a guest-chamber. But the ceremony was complete and absolutely perfect, for the lady was a past mistress of her art.63

According to his journal, Prince Arthur and his suite do not appear to have sat in this ‘tiny’ house or had a bowl of tea. They did not participate in but observed the entire process of tea making as if it were a spectacle. Aside from what he had seen at the store, Lord Redesdale also wrote down an extensive historical account of chanoyu, most of which came from Basil Hall Chamberlain’s Things Japanese. Chamberlain did not appreciate the practice of chanoyu, considering it too ‘lengthy and meaningless’, ‘intolerably monotonous’ and ‘pointless’ – while nevertheless conceding that none could ‘brand [it] vulgar’;64 and indeed, Lord Redesdale seems to have found elegance and refinement in chanoyu, as elucidated in his journal. Since the early Meiji period, chanoyu had found a place as entertainment for public audiences, with bowls of tea being served to anonymous foreign as

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well as domestic visitors to Kyoto and elsewhere, as discussed in Chapters 2 and 5. By the mid-1900s, chanoyu seems to have become more like a theatre staged for the purpose of tourism and public diplomacy. Chanoyu in this sense did not include the element of gathering, namely, sharing the social and cultural experience by wining and dining and drinking powdered green tea together. With or without the gathering aspect, chanoyu was still useful for Mitsui. Even though it had originally been built to entertain Prince Arthur of Connaught, the Mitsukoshi Dry Goods Store and Mitsui made full use of the tea-hut.65 Thereafter, chanoyu became a regular spectacle performed for high-ranking foreign guests to the store. Four years later, a complete replica of the Kūchū-an was brought to the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 and used as a Japanese-style reception room for the Mitsui Trading Company. By the early twentieth century, chanoyu had secured its place in Tokyo not only as an object of patronage for the new elite but also as a medium of public diplomacy.

Conclusion This chapter has elucidated four significant changes that the practice of chanoyu underwent in the latter half of the Meiji period. First, the sites in which tea gatherings were organized extended. By the turn of the twentieth century, tearooms and tea-huts at the ruling elite and tea connoisseurs’ residences or private – and exclusive – clubs were not the only locations where tea gatherings were organized. Public places such as exhibition sites, a museum and a department store also housed purpose-built spaces for chanoyu and hosted tea gatherings. Tea gatherings remained the exclusive preserve of the elite, but the practice of chanoyu and its material culture were on display at various communal sites. In the early twentieth century, chanoyu was visible and accessible to non-elite visitors to these sites. As a consequence, the late Meiji period also saw the opening up of chanoyu to the general public. Moreover, although the male elite sought to use chanoyu for social advancement and to maintain, or even enhance, its exclusivity, the fact that some of the modern tea connoisseurs publicized their tea-related activities through mass publications showed that chanoyu had developed into a subject of public attention.

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Second, towards the end of the 1890s, chanoyu secured its place in Tokyo within the circle of the social elite. Due to the involvement of a number of elites from diverse backgrounds and nationalities, membership in this chanoyu circle was not limited to privileged Japanese men – who had been the main patrons of chanoyu in previous periods – but also included a number of foreigners and women. Third, the expansions of the space and the membership had also generated new types of employment. In addition to becoming a private tea tutor to members of the elite class, some tea masters were also privately hired as tea professionals by the industrialist elite. Some former sukiyagashira found jobs in modern public and private institutions, such as private clubs and museums. Fourth, and lastly, tea gatherings not only provided a social space but also functioned as a medium of public diplomacy. The visit by Prince Arthur of Connaught to the Mitsui Dry Goods Store in 1906 demonstrates that chanoyu sometimes functioned as a display that showcased Japanese tradition to foreign visitors. The use of chanoyu in public diplomacy was even clearer at international events, the most significant of which continued to be world’s fairs and international expositions, as will be discussed in Chapter 6. Chanoyu was also employed at a number of domestic and local exhibitions. Chapter 5 examines how chanoyu was represented at a series of fairs and festivities in Kyoto towards the end of the Meiji period.

5

Performing chanoyu in Kyoto, c. 1880–1900

While chanoyu in the new capital became vital as a means for interclass and intercultural socialization, the practice in the old capital had a slightly different meaning. In the mid-Meiji period, Kyoto re-established its significance as the resource of authenticity and source of all the traditions, heritage and legacies that supported the legitimacy of the emperor, the imperial institution, and the state. Material culture, from archaeological evidence to ceremonial practices, was important in crafting the new identity of modern Japan. By utilizing Kyoto’s cultural assets, as Takagi Hiroshi has argued, the new government successfully legitimized the modern imperial system in modern Japan.1 In this sense, the very existence of Kyoto, the former capital, which had a vast repository of material culture related to the imperial institution, became meaningful for the central government, and in return gave Kyoto a new value. The significance of the industry in Kyoto, a city that had been providing luxury goods to the aristocracy for centuries, had also transformed during the latter half of the Meiji era. The new formation and reformation of the identity of the city as well as its business structure was presented at public events, such as the Kyoto exhibitions and other festivals; and a change in the place of chanoyu went hand in hand with the transformation of the place of Kyoto and its industry. This chapter examines how chanoyu became central to the new experience of Kyoto, the city elaborating its modern identity by historicizing itself, by showing how chanoyu and a number of tea professionals emerged into prominence at exhibitions as well as other public events, in which the city showcased itself and performed for a national audience.

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Representing heritage As described in Chapter 2, by the early 1880s, the Kyoto exhibitions, at which chanoyu was performed as an entertainment, were not getting satisfactory results. However, the situation began to change in the second half of the decade. The Sixteenth Kyoto Exhibition in 1887 appears to have marked a turning point. Celebrating the first two decades of his reign and commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the death of the late Emperor Kōmei, the Meiji emperor was to come to Kyoto, the city where the imperial family had lived for more than a millennium, to conduct a number of ceremonies. The Kyoto Exhibition Association thus planned an exhibition to honour the emperor’s visit to the old capital. The exhibition was titled the Kyoto Exhibition of New and Old Arts (Kyoto shinko bijutsukai) and financially supported by the private sector, including the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce Rice Exchange, the Kyoto Stock Exchange, and national and private banks.2 The aim of the exhibition was to showcase the valuable antiquities in the storehouses and treasuries of temples, shrines and notable families as well as contemporary arts and crafts made by artisans in Kyoto.3 In its official chronicle, published in 1903, the association recollected: 京都ハ美術品ノ寶屈ニシテ新製美術品ノ淵叢タルコト云フヲ竢タス ト雖モ未ダ之ヲ一場ニ蒐集シテ天下ノ美觀ヲ究メタルコトナシ、玆 歳剏メテ之ヲ行ヒ社寺諸家競フテ重器珍寶ヲ出シ奇品精巧ヲ齎ラシ テ京都美術會ヲ大成シ曾テ天覧ヲ經ルノ榮ヲ辱フス4 It is clear that Kyoto is both a treasury of artworks and a source of new artworks. However, we had never had an opportunity to study their beauty thoroughly by gathering them in one place. This year, [the Kyoto Exhibition Association] did this. Many temples and notable houses competed with one another and presented their intangible artworks and precious treasures [in their collections]. [They] submitted extraordinary and exquisite objects to the Kyoto Art Exhibition which made it very successful. The exhibition also had the honour of having been held in the presence of the emperor.

To emphasize the significance of Kyoto as a source of art production, the exhibits included both material objects and the people who produced them. Thus, all the galleries and halls were filled with works of fine art and art

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crafts as well as artisans showcasing their skills. In the first gallery, artisans demonstrated the manufacturing process. Musical instruments were displayed in the front hall. Contemporary artworks, both fine art and art crafts, were presented in the east gallery of the exhibition site while the antiquities, loaned from various temples and houses, were displayed in the west gallery. In the north gallery, there were eight separate spaces. Four were decorated with objects related to aristocratic refinements and the other four replicated the interior decoration of aristocratic residences from four different eras.5 Here, two spaces were arranged with artefacts related to tea practices, both of powdered green tea (matcha) and literati-style steeped tea (sencha). The matcha space not only displayed the objects related to the practice but also provided a bowl of tea to visitors.6 The Mitsui family offered a number of valuable tea utensils to decorate the matcha section,7 and the family heads of the three Senke houses – experts in tea utensils – waited on and served a bowl of powdered green tea to visitors.8 Although matcha practice still seemed to be a subsidiary element of the exhibition, they were integrated into the main site and, specifically, in the section exhibiting the material culture of the aristocracy of earlier periods. Moreover, the iemoto of Senke tea traditions had been mobilized. On 1 February, Mitsui Hachirōemon (Takayoshi), the head of the Mitsui family, ceremoniously offered a bowl of tea to the emperor when the latter paid a visit to the exhibition site.9 It was a replication of the ritual that had been performed by Wakisaka Yasuaya at the first National Industrial Exhibition in 1877. Rokuroku-sai, the head of Omotesenke House served as a tea expert for Mitsui and made the bowl of tea for the emperor. Mitsui then brought the bowl to the emperor’s seat, and passed it to Sugi Mahoshichirō, the first assistant to the chief of the imperial household, who handed the bowl to the emperor.10 The tea offering ceremony, as well as the way that chanoyu was displayed at this exhibition, suggests how the exhibition itself was changing the place of chanoyu. First, although the main player in this event was Mitsui, who provided the tea utensils and brought the bowl of tea to the emperor, and Rokuroku-sai’s role was a supporting one, chanoyu was not simply a frivolous entertainment performed outside the exhibition site. Chanoyu may not have been the main focus of the exhibition, but tea objects, professionals, and practice were on display as part of aristocratic culture that was presentable to the emperor and were incorporated as such in the main exhibition site.

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There was another event during the exhibition that was reported in the local and national newspapers and which further demonstrates how the situation of the Senke houses was beginning to change. During the exhibition period, the Urasenke House received a visit from three princes, Kitashirakawa, Fushimi and Arisugawa, who accompanied the emperor to Kyoto for the official ceremony.11 The Hinode shimbun wrote, 豊太閤の在世のうちは屡々同家へ赴かれしとありしが其後は槐門貴 族方の望まれしともなかりに、、、三殿下、、、が御成になり、、、 千家は豊公以来始めての貴族の光臨 …12 The [Senke] House often received visits [from the nobility] during the reign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. However, after that they had not been preferred by the Council of State or aristocrats … thus … the visit by the three princes … was the first honourable visit by aristocrats to the Senke houses since the era of Toyotomi Hideyoshi …

The article suggests that the Senke houses had not had a strong connection with the aristocracy in Kyoto since the sixteenth century. But times had changed and the head of Urasenke House was now in a position to receive a visit by members of the imperial family residing in Tokyo. Similarly, the head of the Omotesenke House had supported the head of the Mitsui family by making a bowl of tea for the emperor at the exhibition. At the exhibition and outside the event, the relationships among the heads of the Senke houses, the merchant elite, the aristocracy in Tokyo and the emperor were highlighted and reported in the local and national newspapers, indicating the circulation of the news at both the regional and the national level.

Tea, authenticity and the aesthetics of display The 1887 exhibition was supposed to close on 18 February. However, the exhibition period was extended for five days because more and more visitors came to see the exhibition.13 The total number of visitors was 48,398, which was not many compared to earlier exhibitions, but considering the length of the exhibition period, which was only fifteen days, this number indicates the success of the event. Focused on art crafts, it seems that the Kyoto Exhibition

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Association had discovered how antiquities could be used both to attract visitors to the exhibition and as a resource to produce manufactured goods. The interest of Kyoto manufacturers and entrepreneurs in antiquities and other objects related to aristocratic refinements, including chanoyu, became crystal clear in January 1890 when a group of Kyoto merchants and artisans established Kyoto bijutsu kyōkai (the Kyoto Art Association).14 Kyoto merchants had discovered the potential of Kyoto’s traditional industries, focused on the production of decorative arts (bijutsu kōgei), and the use of antiquities for stimulating it. Kyoto’s advantage was its long history of skills in and designs for the production of luxury goods, not the production of industrial commodities,15 and exhibitions were the place to showcase them. The place of chanoyu practice seems to have changed along with the increasing demand to display antiques and aristocratic material culture that embodied the strength and capability of Kyoto’s industry at the Kyoto exhibitions. Reflecting the shift in interest, the Nineteenth Kyoto Exhibition of 1890 was titled Kyoto bijutsu hakurankai (the Kyoto Art Exhibition) and focused on fine arts and art crafts, both antiques and contemporary pieces. Moreover, the exhibits had to be inspected by the local government and judged sufficiently refined to be displayed at the exhibition.16 The Kyoto Exhibition was no longer a place for competition among manufacturers but somewhere to showcase the artworks verified and authorized by the local authority. As such, legitimacy became important. It was not simply the object that was significant at the exhibition. The history – the life stories of the people who produced the artefacts in the past – also became essential. The association therefore also displayed historical pieces produced by prominent artisans and artists in a separate section at the exhibition. The association also compiled and published their biographies.17 Objects and people were both central at the Nineteenth Kyoto Exhibition of 1890, and were historicized through the narratives produced about them. Antique tea utensils were one of the key items displayed at the exhibition to show the material culture of antiquities, and to demonstrate the beauty of tea utensils properly and effectively, the aesthetics of display deriving from chanoyu practice became increasingly significant.18 The exhibition appears to have been successful and confirmed the direction in which the merchants and manufacturers in Kyoto were heading: improving the production of arts, both fine arts and art crafts, by elaborating their design.19 In

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October, the Kyoto Art Association started to publish a journal, Kyoto bijutsu zasshi (The Kyoto Art Magazine), in which to study and evaluate the visual decoration and design of material culture from earlier periods, especially luxury goods and artworks.20 The practice of old aristocratic refinements as well as the manifestation of the narratives attached to the objects were also evident at the Twenty-second Kyoto Exhibition of 1893 titled Kyoto-shi shinko kōgeihin tenrankai (Kyoto City New and Old Art Crafts Exhibition), the same year when the World’s Columbian Exposition was held in North America. Members of the Kyoto Exhibition Association were fully aware of this international event. Thus, the goal of this exhibition was to demonstrate to potential foreign customers the exquisiteness of commodities produced in Kyoto.21 Quantity was not the organizer’s concern. Rather, quality was what mattered. The Kyoto Exhibition Association put a great deal of effort into screening the exhibits. Potential exhibits were examined by experts, including artists who had been appointed by the Ministry of the Imperial Household as teishitsu gigei-in (imperial household artists), such as Mori Kansai.22 After the inspection, the art works that met the standard were displayed in the main exhibition site while the others that were not approved were sold in the shops outside the gallery.23 The Kyoto Exhibition Association also reconsidered the way in which they displayed the objects and introduced the novel method of ‘an authentic Japanese decorative schema’ (Nihon koyū no sōshokuhō) so that the exhibits would capture the eye of foreign consumers and publicize the sophistication and elegance of the art crafts produced in Kyoto.24 Thus, in the antiques section, a display replicating a room for chanoyu was again employed to showcase valuable antique tea utensils in order to enhance their aesthetic presentation.25 Aside from the chanoyu setting (matcha kazari), there were three other spaces dedicated to the display of valuable antiques. One imitated the interior decoration of the residence of a high-ranking courtier, a style established in the Heian era (yūsoku kazari), and another that of the military aristocracy, a style established in the fourteenth century (shoin kazari). The third one displayed antique writing implements, both Japanese and Chinese, which referred to one of the bun activities of the Tokugawa period. Entrepreneurs and manufacturers in Kyoto seem to have found that displaying products following the modern encyclopaedic classification system

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was inadequate for fully demonstrating the potential beauty that lay in the products that Kyoto produced and commodities they wanted to sell. ‘An authentic Japanese decorative schema’ (Nihon koyū no sōshokuhō) was the solution and matcha kazari, the method and aesthetics of display provided by chanoyu practice, was one of its manifestations. The aesthetic code derived from chanoyu practice was one of the ways to support the aims and goals of producers in Kyoto. The practice and material culture of tea, which had once been dismissed as pointless because they belonged to the old world and were hence viewed as obsolete, turned into something meaningful and useful in promoting industry and commerce in the new era and the future of the old capital. Again, this exhibition was a success in terms of the number of visitors, which increased to 78,659.26 At the Twenty-second Kyoto Exhibition, tea utensils were one of the main exhibits and chanoyu provided a crucial way of showing the aesthetics of ‘authentic art objects’. The relationships among chanoyu, tea utensils and Kyoto were highlighted at the exhibition. Chanoyu practice gained this importance in Kyoto not because it was an aristocratic refinement that enabled interclass socialization, as was the case in Tokyo, it was rather because chanoyu facilitated the promotion of industry in Kyoto. Chanoyu, both in terms of the materials used and the practice itself, underwrote the ‘authenticity’ of Japan’s material culture and its cultural production.

Performing chanoyu for industry While it became clear that new elites were patronizing chanoyu in Tokyo by the mid-1890s, as described in Chapter 4, the merchants and manufacturers in Kyoto found chanoyu practical as it provided an ‘authenticity’ to displays of valuable antiques at exhibitions. Not only did the elites in Tokyo as well as merchants and manufacturers in Kyoto benefit from practising chanoyu, but the newly established association for tea producers also found chanoyu useful as it contributed to promoting their business. Tea in general had been one of the key export commodities for Japan since the opening of the ports in 1858. Japan’s tea exports quickly increased from 13,379,895 pounds sterling in 1868 to 27,403,918 in 1877.27 It went up to

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28,799,037 in 1878, 37,831,958 in 1879 and 40,114,391 in 1880 (all in pounds sterling). However, the amount of domestically produced tea was 22,829,502 in 1878, 21,591,040 in 1879 and 26,506,986 in 1880 (all in pounds sterling).28 Statistically speaking, between 1878 and 1880, the amount of tea exported to Britain and the US exceeded the amount of domestically produced tea leaves. Sugiyama explains that this was because the government had only an inadequate means of accounting for domestic tea production until 1881.29 Thus, it is not entirely clear whether or not the amount of tea exported actually exceeded the amount of domestically produced tea. It might also suggest that tea producers were exporting counterfeit tea: mixing something else with tea and/or adding artificial flavourings and colourings.30 Whatever the case, it is clear that the quality of Japanese tea products was low and its reputation in overseas markets fell quickly. Seemingly as a consequence, tea exports slumped around 1881.31 In 1883, Japanese tea was temporarily banned from the US market.32 To improve the situation, the Meiji government issued the Tea Trade Association Regulations (Chagyō kumiai junsoku) in 1884, trying to obtain control over tea production. Following the implementation of the law, tea producers established tea producer associations at both the national level, in the form of the Central Tea Trade Association (Chūō chagyō kaigisho), and at the regional level, for example the Kyoto Tea Trade Association (Kyoto-fu chagyō kumiai).33 These tea trade associations made an effort to improve the quality of the Japanese product as well as its reputation in overseas markets.34 One of their efforts to find their way out of the problem was to publicize their products at both international and domestic exhibitions.35 Therefore, from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Tea Trade Association ran a commercial teahouse in order to advertise the quality of their products, as examined in Chapter 6. The efforts of the tea producers’ associations were also clear at the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition of 1895, which took place in Kyoto. The improvement in the reputation of Japanese tea was especially important for Kyoto tea producers, given the city’s proximity to Uji. However, historically speaking, Uji had developed as an area for producing tencha (or matcha, powdered green tea) and gyokuro (high-grade leaf green tea) in large quantities, neither of which had ever been export commodities. Tea manufacturers in Uji and its neighbours had been producing the middle-grade green tea (sencha)

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only since the opening of the ports. Therefore, although Uji had been famous for producing good quality green tea since the Tokugawa period, the region was a latecomer in the production of sencha, the product aimed at the overseas market.36 Thus, a teahouse at the National Industrial Exhibition appeared to be a good opportunity for the Kyoto tea manufacturers to publicize their product. The Kyoto Tea Trade Association invested a significant amount in this exhibition by collecting contributions from regional tea producers and constructing a sukiya-style building for their commercial teahouse, which replicated the famous Yodomi tea-hut at the Konkai Kōmyōji in Kurotani.37 The Yodomi tea-hut, a thatched-hut-style room purpose-built for chanoyu, was originally designed by Fujimura Yōken (1613–99), one of four eminent disciples of Sen Sōtan, a grandson of Sen no Rikyū. In other words, the hut was designed by a tea master and originally built solely for matcha tea practice. For this exhibition, Yabunouchi Jōchi, the head of Yabunouchi House, supervised the design and made two rooms in the hut: one for serving bowls of powdered green tea (matcha) and one for cups of middle-grade leaf green tea (sencha).38 Thus, at a National Industrial Exhibition in a teahouse run by tea producers, a tea-hut that had originally been designed for the practice of serving and drinking powdered green tea was used as a space in which to serve both powdered green tea and leaf green tea. The association was intending to invite high-ranking Japanese and foreign men to these tea services.39 The teahouse was located in a courtyard that had a very fine view. It was refined and elegant and was ‘good enough for the attendance of gentlemen of high rank’.40 The prices were 3 sen for a cup of medium or high-quality green leaf tea, 5 sen for a cup of black tea, and 10 sen for a bowl of powdered green tea. All servings were accompanied by a complimentary sweet.41 The teahouse opened its doors from 1 April and the goal of the Kyoto Tea Trade Association was to promote its tea products. For the tea service itself, the tea producers’ association hired an instructor of literati-style tea practice for the sencha room, which was furnished with tables and chairs.42 Although the decoration of the room was thus arranged under the supervision of a sencha practice instructor, the actual service was carried out by a number of young waitresses. ‘Young girls with powder on their faces took care of the service’, the reporter for Hinode shimbun wrote, but he felt ‘unromantic’ in the room because they ‘looked younger than fifteen’. 43 In the

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sencha tearoom, the reporter seems to have anticipated a sensual atmosphere as he was surrounded by a number of young women. Unfortunately for him, they were younger than he appears to have considered appropriate for the setting. While the sencha tearoom provided a somewhat feminine ambiance, the matcha tearoom seemed to give a more confined, authoritarian and masculine impression. In the latter, the reporter for Hinode shimbun wrote that the guests had to squeeze themselves into a room with a floor space of four and a half tatami mats (approximately 8.2 square metres). Bowls of powdered green tea were made and served by Yabunouchi Jōchi – a man in his mid-fifties. At the teahouse, the matcha tea practice was associated with taste, a confined space and male authority; and in order to understand the beauty of the art, one had to be familiar with the practice and its aesthetic codes. Thus, the reporter gave up making his own judgement because he did not see himself as ‘a man of taste’. Instead, he suggested the reader ‘ask the master in the room about the charm of the settings’.44 Compared to the matcha tearoom, the sencha tea service was more casual and – seemingly – more entertaining. The presentation of powdered green tea practice the reporter from Hinode shimbun saw at the exhibition in 1895 was clearly different from that at the early Kyoto exhibitions, where the service had been provided mostly by young girls from the pleasure quarters in an open space and relaxed manner, to entertain visitors and to add an amusing supplement to the exhibitions. At the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition, powdered green tea – the highest grade of all tea drinks – and middle-grade leaf green tea – a commodity for ordinary consumption – were served in the same building under the general umbrella of ‘tea production’. The performance of tea practices, whether of matcha or sencha, was expected to play a significant role in the promotion of industry and commerce. More people were able to see a tea master performing chanoyu and experience the cultural environment produced by the practice. Whoever came to the exhibition, regardless of their class, could experience and consume the practice of chanoyu, which had been monopolized in the previous eras by the elite. Powdered green tea practice was no longer a sideshow as it had been at the early Kyoto exhibitions. The Fourth National Industrial Exhibition was not the only place where powdered green tea was consumed and the practice commodified. The

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exhibition was part of a festival celebrating the 1,100th anniversary of the relocation of the capital from Nara to Kyoto. According to Kuni, industrialists in Kyoto had sought to hold the exhibition as a way to boost the local economy, which had not yet recovered from the slump of the beginning of the Meiji era.45 As the main aim was to attract visitors and to stimulate their appetite for consumption, as Kuni suggests, one of the projects for the local authorities was to develop the facilities with which to support the tourist industry, such as temples, shrines and other historical sites.46 Prompted by the local authorities, therefore, seventy-two of these religious institutions opened their doors to visitors during the exhibition period and showed them their collections, which were normally locked away in the storehouses.47 For example, shrines such as Ebisu Shrine near the Gion district and Matsuo Shrine in the Arashiyama area, as well as temples such as Myōshinji in Hanazono area, all opened their treasure houses to the public.48 Kitano Shrine in the north-western part of Kyoto also opened its treasure house to the public from 10 April.49 Additionally, temples with imperial affiliations held memorial services for their respective emperors. Myōshinji, an imperial villa for Emperor Hanazono (1297–1348), held a memorial service for him from 8 to 14 April. More than 2,800 priests gathered at the temple for this service. At Daikakuji in the Saga area, there were memorial services for Emperor Saga (786–842), whose villa it had been. The treasure house of Daikakuji was open to the public from 10 April to 30 May.50 Although both Myōshinji and Daikakuji were located in the west end of Kyoto, an average of more than 200 visitors per day came to see the treasure house of Daikakuji and hence shops and eateries around the temple experienced an upsurge in business during the period.51 The opening of treasure houses in the western part of Kyoto and the attention that generated must have drawn visitors, who initially came to see the exhibition in the eastern district, to the other end of the city. All the resources of the city, including the material culture associated with its history and the emperors, were mobilized to attract visitors; and it seems that their efforts were successful. Chanoyu was treated as one such resource, as it played an essential role in entertaining the visitors to these temples, shrines and other places of interest, including the pleasure quarters. Typically, a bowl of tea was provided at these temples and shrines. At Daikakuji, a bowl of tea was provided to the visitors on site.52 A number of tea gatherings were held at the Kitano Shrine. On 25 April,

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1, 15, 20 and 25 May, and 1, 15, 20 and 25 June, tea gatherings were held in two pavilions, while on 3 and 8 May and on the same days in June, gatherings were held in one pavilion.53 When visitors went to see Kitano Shrine, they would also see or be able to experience chanoyu. Chanoyu was one of the exhibits on show in Kyoto, not only at the National Industrial Exhibition but throughout the city. During this exhibition period, the size of the tea service at the annual Miyako Odori Festival in Gion district was also expanded. There was an increase in numbers both of the female entertainers who performed the teamaking procedure in front of the audience – which had been the custom since the beginning of the Miyako Odori Festival – and of those serving bowls of powdered green tea to guests.54 In Gion district, which was located near the Okazaki exhibition site, the owners of the machiai chaya (commercial teahouses used by courtesans for entertaining their clients) were clearly expecting exhibition visitors to fuel their business. It was not only the exhibition organizers and Gion district that were awaiting an increase in the number of visitors, however. On the opposite side of the city, the owners of the machiai chaya in the Shimabara pleasure quarter, which was located near Nishi Hongan-ji, also estimated that their business would improve because of the exhibition. They renovated the wall surrounding the quarter by planting cherry blossoms and pine trees and built a new tea-hut and playhouse in the quarter to prepare for their potential customers. Chanoyu was performed in order to enhance the entertainment industry, which was one of the city’s key businesses. They also organized an exhibition of antiques, dance performances, tea gatherings, flower arrangement parties and other refined entertainments during the exhibition period.55 During the exhibition, tourists in Kyoto could experience and consume a bowl of tea in many places in the city, from historic sites to the pleasure quarters. Chanoyu was undoubtedly one of the vital tourist attractions. Kuni points out that the 1895 domestic exhibition was not successful, because it did not have nationwide involvement; rather, the exhibitors who contributed to the exhibition were concentrated in the Kinki region, that is, Kyoto and its neighbouring prefectures.56 However, it was successful in its aim of reviving the city in general. Inasmuch as the exhibition helped the city to renew its infrastructure, for example improving the public transportation system and

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road conditions, it also confirmed the potential for developing the tourist industry in Kyoto.57 And evidently, tea drinking and chanoyu had become one of the key elements for Kyoto’s new profitable business – tourism.

Teaching tea at schools As the place of chanoyu at the exhibitions changed, so the significance of chanoyu lessons in Kyoto was also transformed. In 1889, at the Kyoto Girls’ School (Kyoto jogakkō), the name of the ‘dining manners’ (shokurei) course was changed to the ‘tea manners’ (charei) course and became elective.58 Although it was not a compulsory course, chanoyu became an independent course taught by Yumyō-sai, the retired house head of Urasenke House, and Sen Yukako, the daughter of Gengen-sai and the wife of Yumyō-sai.59 The new prominence of chanoyu and the Urasenke House in Kyoto is also suggested by the fact that Dōshisha Girls’ School, a private school founded in 1877, introduced tea lessons in its curriculum in 1892.60 Unlike the tea course at Kyoto Girls’ School, where chanoyu was taught as an elective, chanoyu at Dōshisha Girls’ School was included in the core curriculum and was taught up to the konarai goto level (literally, ‘small accomplishments’, the level that comes after nyūmon, entry level).61 Kyoto Girls’ School also introduced konarai goto to their course from 2 June 1894, which was now taught by Sen Yukako, the mother of En’nō-sai of the Urasenke House, who had also been teaching at Dōshisha Girls’ School since 1894.62 The introduction of advanced-level tea lessons at schools suggests there was a demand from parents, who were the above mentioned Kyoto industrialists. In Kyoto, parents saw chanoyu as a skill that their daughters must attain at school, and furthermore that their daughters’ knowledge on chanoyu should go beyond entry level.

Festivals, chanoyu and tea professionals As illustrated above, by the late-1890s, tea in Kyoto, as a commodity and as a practice, had become increasingly conspicuous at exhibitions and elsewhere. Chanoyu was an object of cultural consumption that was materialized through

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performances and beverage services in various places, such as exhibition sites, pleasure quarters, temples and shrines. It embodied legitimacy and authenticity, as well as enjoyment. These different elements of chanoyu, which could be found in various situations, were beautifully synthesized in a largescale public event that took place in Kyoto at the end of the nineteenth century – the Hōkō sanbyakunen-sai (the 300th Commemoration of the Death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi) in 1898. The Hōkō sanbyakunen-sai, which crystalized the modern image of chanoyu, was prompted by the emerging popularity of Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the end of the nineteenth century.63 The festival was planned under the pretext of celebrating the 300th anniversary of the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was known as one of the three unifiers of early modern Japan and more particularly for his two failed invasions of Korea, in an attempt to unify the two realms of Japan and China. During the Tokugawa period, Hideyoshi’s legacy had been dismissed by the regime. The Tokugawa force destroyed the House of Toyotomi in 1615 and the burial place of Hideyoshi was ruined in 1619 by the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada. Thus, the idealization of Hideyoshi as a successful military leader first emerged from the rejection of the Tokugawa regime just before the fall of the shogunate. According to Takagi Hiroshi, the significance of Hideyoshi was inflated as Hideyoshi’s life story matched with the needs of the Meiji government, which was implementing the universal conscription system, enforcing all male subjects to become soldiers. For them, Hideyoshi’s life story – an ordinary man born to a peasant family, who started his military career as a lowest-rank samurai, but finally achieved the rank of Imperial Regent – seemed to be an ideal model.64 Takagi also suggests that Hideyoshi’s two failed attempts to invade Korea were in fact admired by the political leaders of the Meiji government.65 When Marquis Kuroda Nagashige, the president of Hōkokukai—the association established to reconstruct the Hōkoku Shrine and Hideyoshi’s burial place—made a presidential speech for Hōkokukai, he stated that Hideyoshi ‘sent an army overseas, expanded the borders and enlarged the fief ’.66 In this connection, it is not insignificant that the Hōkō sanbyakunen-sai was staged on this scale for the first time in the wake of Japan’s victory over Qing China in the first Sino–Japanese War (1894–95). The glorification of Hideyoshi’s (failed) attempts was, as Kumakura Isao has argued, also the result of Meiji Japan’s evolving imperial ambition in Asia.67

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Moreover, Hideyoshi’s new national importance was not limited to him being a successful military leader. Hideyoshi’s role as an acclaimed patron of art production was also clear in the historical narrative of Japanese art that was crafted at the end of the nineteenth century and can be found in Histoire de l’art du Japon (History of the Japanese arts), produced by the Imperial Commission to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. Histoire de l’art du Japon pointed out that Hideyoshi had patronized Sen no Rikyū, the founding father of all the matcha traditions, and so might be strongly associated with tea.68 It is therefore not surprising that both the military and cultural aspects of Hideyoshi’s career were on display at the festival and chanoyu had a prominent, if not preeminent, role to play. The Hōkō sanbyakunen-sai started with an opening Shintō ceremony on 1 April and ended with the closing Shintō service on 31 May. During this period, a variety of historical artefacts related to Toyotomi Hideyoshi were displayed at the Kyoto Imperial Museum as well as temples and shrines.69 As for entertainment, there was a dancing procession by the Kyoto citizens and sumō-wrestling matches.70 There was also the annual Miyako Odori Festival, which was taking place in the Gion pleasure quarter as usual.71 Professional as well as amateur performers offered noh performances at shrines.72 Various cultural practices were demonstrated and a range of material culture was mobilized and showcased throughout the city to celebrate the festival. In both static exhibits and moving performances, chanoyu took centre stage. First, tea utensils related to Hideyoshi were displayed at the Kyoto Imperial Museum.73 Second, between 18 and 20 April, tea offering ceremonies were conducted by local entrepreneurs as well as the house heads of hereditary tea elite families at the Hōkoku Shrine, the main site of the festival, in which Hideyoshi was enshrined as deity. More than 300 people attended the ceremonies on the first day, more than 1,500 on the second day.74 The local newspaper reported the room arrangements and utensils used at many of the tea gatherings that took place in Kyoto during the festival.75 Thirdly, at least thirteen temples and shrines housed large-scale tea gatherings, in which a number of prominent tea practitioners of Kyoto, including entrepreneur tea connoisseurs, such as Mitsui Hachirōjirō, Hirase Kamenosuke, Fujita Densaburō and Ijūin Kanetsune, as well as tea professionals, such as the iemoto of the Omotesenke House and his disciples,

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were mobilized as hosts.76 These tea gatherings were modelled on the Great Tea Gathering at Kitano (Kitano ōchakai) organized by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the fifteenth year of Tenshō (1587) and ran from 15 to 28 April 1898. A number of tea connoisseurs from Tokyo visited Kyoto during the period to participate in the festival. One of these, Count Matsura Akira, had been invited to Kyoto to attend the ceremony.77 Sanda Shigemitsu and Tō Taneki – Matura’s tea connoisseur friends from the Wakei-kai circle – accompanied him.78 While he stayed in Kyoto from 16 to 23 April, Matsura attended six tea gatherings in total, including one held by Mitsui Hachirōemon, who was also a member of the Wakei-kai.79 Matsura and his fellow tea connoisseurs did not attend tea gatherings hosted by the Senke houses. However, Matsura and his friends visited ‘the famous tea-hut’ by Sen no Rikyū, and paid visits to the heads of the Senke houses to see their tea-huts and gardens.80 Matsura and his tea friends must have enjoyed chanoyu-related cultural heritage that belonged to these members of the hereditary tea elite. At the Hōkō sanbyakunen-sai of 1898, the place of chanoyu, as well as that of tea professionals, was quite different from that during the early to midMeiji period. Although tea professionals had always been involved in tearelated public events in Kyoto, the role they had played was a supporting one: helping the merchant elite, such as the Mitsui family and the Kyoto Exhibition Association, by making tea and arranging the decoration of the rooms. But in 1898, the heads of the Senke houses and practitioners of their tea schools independently organized tea gatherings that were comparable to those of the industrialist tea connoisseurs. Visitors to Kyoto would see objects and performances related to chanoyu as well as the iemoto performing the practice, whether or not they were interested in tea-drinking customs. A few months after the festival, the head priest of the Kitano Shrine, which enshrines Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), a legendary figure of the early Heian era (784–1185), proposed the establishment of an organization to support the shrine’s forthcoming festival in 1902. It seems that the Hōkoku Shrine’s festival had been very successful in attracting visitors, as well as getting financial support for reconstructing the damaged shrine. Although the initial plan for the Kitano Shrine festival had first been announced in 1896, the head priest made the proposal to establish the organization a few months after the Hideyoshis’ festival was over.81 In November 1898, the chief priest of

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the Kitano Shrine travelled to Tokyo, asking aristocrats and entrepreneurs to become members of the patrons’ organization for the festival. The chief priest stated that the year 1902 was ‘destined to be the best time in one’s lifetime’ in which to hold a large-scale festival, as it was the millennial anniversary of the shrine.82 The festival was also a good justification for asking for donations to repair the shrine and to expand its garden and other facilities.83 Responding to the proposal from the shrine, more than one hundred aristocrats and entrepreneurs from both Tokyo and Kyoto became members of the organization and gave financial support for the festival, including Count Ōkuma Shigenobu, the foreign minister of the time, and Baron Mitsui Hachirōemon.84 The Kitano sen’nen-sai (the Kitano Millennium Festival) took place in the spring, of course, along with other annual events, such as the Kyoto Exhibition and the Miyako Odori Festival. At the same time, many temples and shrines in Kyoto opened their treasure houses to visitors.85 The Kitano Festival combined with other major social events must have attracted a huge number of tourists to Kyoto. The festival started at 10 o’clock in the morning on 25 March with a Shintō opening ceremony and ended on 13 May.86 At the festival, chanoyu was even more prominent than it had been at the Hokō sanbyakunen-sai of 1898. The Senke houses and tea-related industries, such as tea producers and artisans of tea utensils, played a significant role at the festival by conducting a number of ceremonies at the Kitano Shrine day after day during the festival period. The Senke houses’ involvement in the festival was intense, as the Kitano Shrine, chanoyu and the Senke houses had historically had a deep relationship since the sixteenth century starting from Hideyoshi’s Great Tea Gathering at Kitano (Kitano ōchakai) in 1587. On 5 April, the head of the Omotesenke House offered 30 bamboo tea scoops to the shrine and an offering ceremony was conducted. After the ceremony, these bamboo tea scoops were sold for 10 yen. The shrine office had to choose recipients by drawing lots, as there were too many people who wanted them.87 Additionally, five matcha-offering ceremonies were conducted during the festival: by the Omotesenke House on 12 April, the Urasenke House on 17 April, the Yabunouchi House on 25 April, by a tea instructor from the Urasenke tea tradition on 26 April, and by the Hayami House of the Omotesenke tea tradition on 29 April.88 Each ceremony had more than 100 guests. Most of them

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were practitioners of tea traditions, and had come from Osaka just to attend the ceremony.89 For these matcha-offering ceremonies, the tea producers of Kyoto provided the tea, donating four tea jars (chatsubo) filled with tea leaves for powdered green tea to the Kitano Shrine and conducting an offering ceremony on 26 March. A huge amount of tea was donated to cover all the tea served at the Kitano Shrine during the festival period: 2 kin (approximately 1.2 kg) of powdered green tea for koicha (thick tea) and 50 kin (approximately 30 kg) for powdered green tea for usucha (thin tea). Fifty carriers were needed to bring the pots into the shrine.90 The amount of tea provided for the festival as well as the popularity of tea scoops, made by the iemoto of the Omotesenke tea tradition and fancied by a large number of amateur tea practitioners, shows the centrality and popularity of chanoyu practice as well as the Senke tea traditions at this festival. In addition to these ceremonies, a number of tea gatherings were held at two tea-huts attached to the Kitano Shrine, Shōhaku-ken and Meigetsu-sha, during the festival period. The hosts for these gatherings changed daily; tea instructors from the Urasenke tea tradition assisted the hosts at Shōhaku-ken while tea instructors from the Omotesenke tea tradition supported the hosts at Meigetsu-sha.91 At the festival, therefore, the Omotesenke and Urasenke houses became more noticeable than ever. The place and popularity of the hereditary tea elite houses in Kyoto seem to have drastically changed compared to that at similar events in the early to mid-Meiji period. In the earlier period, female entertainers were the ones who had served tea as a sideshow to the main event and the industrialist elites had hosted tea gatherings and provided the tea utensils, while the tea professionals had simply assisted them. However, at the Kitano Festival of 1902, the heads of the Senke houses were more prominent than the Yabunouchi House during the entire festival period concerning the tea-related programme, since they were the ones who organized large-scale tea gatherings at the main site of the festival, the Kitano Shrine.

Conclusion The initial aim of the Kyoto exhibitions was to educate manufacturers and promote industry and commerce through the display of new technologies.

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However, the direction of the Kyoto exhibitions changed between 1887 and 1897. Starting from 1888, exhibits were not limited to contemporary products. The Kyoto exhibitions began to include antiques, admitting that they were useful as a resource for promoting the city’s industries and for attracting visitors to Kyoto. Additionally, from the 1890s, the Kyoto Exhibition Association found the methods of display deriving from old aristocratic practices and material culture to be useful in displaying the main exhibits, that is, artefacts with history or an ‘authentic’ aesthetic quality. At this juncture, chanoyu became more significant for Kyoto’s industry as it was one of the key means of expressing Kyoto’s importance in providing an aesthetic sheen, under the name of ‘authenticity’, to the manufacturers producing goods targeting the foreign market. Thus, the Kyoto merchants and manufacturers appreciated chanoyu as an essential skill that their daughters should obtain. As a beverage, bowls of tea had been served as refreshment and chanoyu performed as entertainment at exhibitions during the first two decades of the Meiji period. However, in the latter half of the Meiji era, the context for tea practice changed. A bowl of tea came to be provided as a beverage implying status and as an emblem of refined aristocratic cultural practice. The place of tea as commodity and as practice had become prominent in Kyoto towards the end of the nineteenth century. Along with the change in the place of chanoyu itself, in both Kyoto and Tokyo, the place of tea professionals, especially the descendants of Sen no Rikyū, had also changed. As pointed out in Chapter 2, they had been inconspicuous in Kyoto during the first two decades of the Meiji period. Nevertheless, as shown in this chapter, towards the end of the era, these hereditary tea elites as well as their traditions were playing a prominent role at public events, which were able to mobilize a great number of elites, both in Kyoto and Tokyo, and a substantial amount of material culture, such as tea, tea performance, gardens and architecture. The story of the hereditary tea elites at the end of the Meiji period as well as how they reacted to the situation is discussed in Chapter 7. Before exploring the organizational effort by the iemoto and the disciples in the early twentieth century, the next chapter examines how chanoyu was displayed at international events in the latter half of the Meiji period.

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Introduction By the late Meiji period, the practice of chanoyu and tea professionals in Kyoto had become of considerable importance to the development of city’s new identity. In the capital – both new and old – chanoyu was a matter of interest as a contemporary practice and as an aesthetic tradition. Chapter 6 follows up on the topic discussed in Chapter 1 and examines the place of chanoyu at international events. It examines how tea was displayed at two international expositions: the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, the first exposition in which a private enterprise of tea producers ran its own commercial teahouse, and the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 in London, the final two-nation exhibition in which the Meiji government took part. By examining these two overseas events, this chapter explores the significance of international expositions in the canonization of the art of chanoyu as a tradition of modern Japan.

Tea, Japan and the international expositions Late nineteenth-century Japan saw a number of drastic changes in both its domestic circumstances and its place in the world. First, the Meiji government successfully set up a politico-legal system with Western features by promulgating the Meiji Constitution in 1889 and inaugurating parliamentary government the following year. Second, although heavy industry did not take off until after the First World War, late nineteenth-century Japan saw the development of modern industry and private enterprises. Third, in 1894 the Japanese government successfully concluded the Anglo–Japanese Treaty of

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Commerce and Navigation, which signalled the end of unequal treaties and abolished extraterritoriality in Japan.1 These achievements were reflected well by the way in which the Japanese Imperial Commission displayed Japan at international expositions.2 The changes were epitomized in the way that tea and chanoyu were exhibited at the exposition sites in the last two decades of the Meiji period.

History, fine arts, and chanoyu at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 The Meiji government received an invitation from the US to participate in the World’s Columbian Exposition on 3 March 1891. The newly inaugurated national assembly drew up an additional budget of 630,000 yen for the fair, and 2,552 people were mobilized to prepare for Japan’s participation, with 16,500 exhibition items gathered together.3 The government’s main aims for attending this exhibition were, first, to stimulate future trade by displaying samples of Japan-made goods and, second, to boost Japan’s esteem globally.4 For the latter purpose, the Meiji government built the Ho-ō-den, or the Phoenix Palace,5 where Japanese historical material culture was displayed chronologically. The Ho-ō-den had three wings, each of which represented a particular era in Japanese history, displaying art objects from the era in question: the Fujiwara period in the left wing, the era of the Ashikaga shoguns in the right wing and the time of the Tokugawa regime in the central annex. The Ashikaga era wing consisted of two rooms: one was a library and the other was a room for chanoyu.6 The tearoom was decorated with tea utensils and other artistic objects. At the World’s Columbian Exposition, chanoyu-related material culture was classified as ‘artistic and historic objects’ that could be staged at an international event to enhance the nation’s prestige. In addition to displaying Japan’s cultural history in material form at the Hōō-den, the Imperial Commission also published and displayed a book entitled History of the Empire of Japan, which encompassed ‘salient facts from early ages down to the present time’.7 The book contained nine chapters and was an official history of the Empire of Japan. It was written by the members of the Committee of Historiographical Compilation at the Imperial University

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and was compiled under the direction of the Department of Education, at the request of the Imperial Japanese Commission, and was intended for the use of visitors to the Japanese Section of the World’s Columbian Exposition.8 History of the Empire of Japan had many features that distinguished it from other brochures that the Meiji government had produced for previous international expositions in order to introduce the country. Amongst many other things, the history of art production received significant attention in History of the Empire of Japan. Even though a description of chanoyu had appeared in official catalogues and guidebooks for previous expositions, the account of the practice of chanoyu was, in most cases, included in the industrial or agricultural production section and as a ritual that once had importance but was now a diminishing custom of the past.9 In History of the Empire of Japan, on the other hand, the practice of chanoyu was credited with having fostered the aesthetic developments of ceramic productions. Although Japanese ceramics were well received at the world’s fairs before the Columbian Exposition, they were displayed and seen as handicrafts or manufactured goods. At the Chicago Exposition, however, the Meiji government convincing the directors to display Japanese ceramics as fine art objects, not in the section of decorative art or arts manufacture.10 Japanese ceramics as well as other three-dimensional arts in general – such as metalwork and lacquer wares – were included in the fine arts section.11 In other words, craft manufactures – the nation’s marketable commodities – were categorized as fine art at the Chicago Exposition. With this elevation of status, the aesthetic attributions of producer and history became even more important for ceramic production. In Section 4 of Chapter 6, History of the Empire of Japan stated: the Keramic (sic) industry made progress not less remarkable than that of painting during the Muromachi epoch … The vogue attained by the Cha-no-yu (tea ceremonial) cult under the Ashikaga Shoguns and owing to the efforts of Sen-no-Rikiu, a celebrated dilettante of Hideyoshi’s time, had a marked influence in encouraging the development of Keramics, and several expert (sic) of the craft made their appearance. During the reign of Gokashiwabara, a potter named Shozui travelled to China to study the processes of his art, and on his return he established a kiln in Hizen, where the first Japanese translucid porcelain was produced. Shozui adapted his

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methods to the canons of the Cha-no-yu cult, making simplicity and purity of style his chief objects.12

Here, chanoyu was in the official narrative associated with the formation of aesthetic styles in the Ashikaga era and during the reign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It also claimed that chanoyu was one of the reasons for the development of the ceramic industry during these periods. A maker of tea ceramics was also identified by name and presented as an originator of a particular type of Japanese ceramic production. In Section 8 of Chapter 8, History of the Empire of Japan indicated: In the keramic field, the process of decorating faience with vitrifiable enamels over the glaze was introduced by Nomura Ninsei in the Genna era (1614 AD). This ware was known as Kyō-yaki, or Kyōto faience. Subsequently ... special varieties ... were produced, the various kinds being distinguished by peculiarities of techique (sic) and decoration. Kobori Masakadzu (commonly called ‘Enshū’), a vassal of the Tokugawa, and Matsudaira Harusato (known as ‘Fumai’), feudal baron of Matsuye, supplied the keramists with special designs and caused pieces to be potted which possessed highly artistic qualities.13

Other than Shozui, Nomura Ninsei was mentioned here. Additionally, famous chanoyu masters, such as Kobori Enshū and Matsudaira Fumai, were also mobilized to explain the tastes and styles of ceramic production in History of the Empire of Japan. Potters were praised to confirm the aesthetic quality of the Japanese ceramics and tea masters canonized to justify their validity as the objects of fine arts. Because of its deep connection with the developments of ceramic production, chanoyu has found its place in the official narrative of the history of the art of the Empire of Japan. Chanoyu was no longer a declining and troublesome social ritual that belonged to a diminished past, as depicted in the official report for the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, but a custom attributed to art production and connoisseurship, which had contributed to the development of Japanese art history. In both the Ashikaga era section of the Ho-ō-den, decorated with antique tea-related objects, and the official history, the significance of chanoyu was highlighted as an important part of the history of the Empire of Japan, embodying the legitimacy of Japan’s art and aesthetics. Japanese ceramics at

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the World’s Columbian Exposition were categorized as fine art objects and they were associated with the integrity of the Empire. A style and history of ceramic production was explained through historical figures that had a profound relationship with chanoyu. At the World’s Columbian Exposition, chanoyu was characterized as one of the sources of Japanese art production and an important resource of its history. At this juncture, chanoyu’s connection with the history of Japanese arts became a new raison d’être and the source of the legitimacy of the practice in modern Japan.

Modern private enterprise, tea, and the World’s Columbian Exposition Chanoyu also served the interests of private industrialists at the World’s Columbian Exposition. For the first time at the exposition, the Central Tea Trade Association, a nationwide organization of tea producers, ran a commercial teahouse to promote its products.14 The main aim of the association in running the commercial teahouse was to familiarize visitors with Japanese tea and methods of its preparation. The programme prepared by the organization wrote that the aim of the teahouse was to: advertise thoroughly and impress upon the minds of the world’s nations the genuine tea by indicating to you how the genuine Japan tea … should be cooked, how it may be served … how the ceremonies were carried down from the ancients … and what decorations of the house, both interior and exterior, are essential for welcoming the tea guests; besides the information of the Japanese architecture, old historical curios …15

In order to do so, the association, with a budget of over 19,000 yen, built a Japanese-style parlour replicating the Imperial Palace style, a bamboo villa, and a cotton tent in the garden.16 The cotton tent was a standard tea salon, where visitors were served a cup of middle-grade leaf tea (sencha) and a small cake for 10 cents. At the bamboo pavilion – a special tea salon – it cost 25 cents for a cup of high-grade leaf tea (gyokuro) that had never before been on the international market plus a couple of Japanese cakes, described by a visitor as ‘sweet and rather peculiar’.17 The most spectacular exhibit of all was the ‘Cha-No-Ma’ – the imperial-style tea parlour, which served powdered green

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tea (matcha) and cost 50 cents per visit. An attendant accompanied visitors with ‘deferential obeisance’, leading them down the correct path through the garden, explaining the various features of the show so that visitors could experience ‘the holy of holies of the tea-making and tea-drinking business’.18 Once the visitors entered the tea parlour, they sat on a chair and watched the performance of chanoyu as if it were a stage in a miniature theatre.19 The commercial teahouse was successful. It ran from 10 May until 15 July, during which time 3,001 visitors purchased powdered green tea, 15,273 purchased the highest quality leaf green tea and 24,324 purchased standard, or middle-grade, leaf green tea.20 The sales figures showed that powdered green tea was less popular than leaf teas.21 Yet, matcha and the chanoyu performance at the Japanese teahouse was a dazzling attraction that appears to have boosted the nation’s fame. Cups of matcha were served to former US president Benjamin Harrison and Princess Eulalie of Spain on their visits to the fair on 12 June, and matcha was well received.22 Although it is not clear whether or not the princess and the president enjoyed the show, they drank matcha, and each took home a can of leaf green tea of the highest quality (gyokuro) as a souvenir.23 The Central Tea Association saw powdered green tea as the beverage that should be offered to guests of the highest rank, while the leaf tea was a desirable souvenir. At the fair, the Japanese were said to understand ‘the commercial value of politeness’ and knew their business – like the French – but were more polite and less conspicuous and self-conscious than them.24 The practice of chanoyu at the fair seemed to be one good way to enhance the quality of Japanese products as well as nation’s esteem. The practice of matcha drinking was appealing enough to attract the aforementioned distinguished guests. Combined with the performance of chanoyu, powdered green tea (matcha) was a beverage of status and repute, regardless of its popularity or market demand. At the fair, the tea association found chanoyu and powdered green tea promising for its business not because of its sales, but because of the potential cultural and aesthetic values – the elegance, the artistic character and the knowledge of how to make everything look refined and visually attractive. As a consequence, chanoyu was firmly acknowledged as a prestigious – and useful – practice for the modern Japanese tea industry. Although chanoyu was displayed in somewhat limited contexts, namely within the history of art

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production and a commercial space, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 marked the point at which the significance of chanoyu as an embodiment of Japan’s civilization, cultural history, and authenticity was promoted by the Imperial Commission, as well as by Japanese tea industrialists.

The Japan–British exhibition of 1910 The key role that chanoyu played at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was to demonstrate the authenticity of Japan’s civilization as embodied in its particular forms of beverage service and of art. At the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910, chanoyu seems to have played an even broader role. The Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 was not planned by the British government and was therefore not an official event for the British. Even so, for both the Meiji government and private industrialists, it was still a good opportunity for public diplomacy and for publicizing the nation and its products.25 Thus, the Imperial Diet invested a huge amount in this exhibition – 1,800,000 yen (the equivalent of 180,000 pounds sterling), when the total government budget for the fiscal year of 1910 was 548,250,314 yen.26 There were more than 2,200 Japanese exhibitors, both public and private, and more exhibits were sent to this exhibition than any other.27 The Japan section, at 130,000 square feet, was nearly twice the area that Japan had occupied at the World’s Exposition at St Louis of 1904. This emphasis by the government seems to have initially been caused by Japan’s changing role on the world stage. After Japan’s two unexpected military victories over Qing China (1895) and Russia (1905), the Meiji government was now facing anti-Japanese feelings and growing unpopularity in the world.28 In 1907, in an article entitled ‘The Japanese Invasion of the World’, The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times claimed: Ever since the Russo–Japanese War Japan has been coming to the front, and the race of yellow-brown men from the Far East is making itself felt in many countries. Japan has become a power.29

For Britain, as perhaps for the rest of the Western world, it had become impossible to ignore the presence of Japan. As the title of the article suggests, however, its new prominence was also seen unfavourably. The Meiji government

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was aware of the ambivalence with which Japan’s rise was viewed and was willing to ease the tension. Chanoyu had already been acknowledged in the English-speaking world as an ancient, spiritual, elegant and refined traditional Japanese custom through a number of essays on Japan, such as Basil Hall Chamberlain’s Things Japanese (1890), Nitobe Inazō’s Bushidō (1898), Okakura Kakuzō’s The Book of Tea (1906), and Lord Redesdale’s The Garter Mission to Japan (1906). With the interest of the Western audience and acknowledgement from them, exhibits related to chanoyu seem to have been a convenient way for the Imperial Commission to pursue its desire to showcase Japan as having a civilization in its own right. The number of sites and exhibits referring to chanoyu increased at the Japan–British Exhibition. Tea – in the forms of its related practices, commodities, and artefacts – was found in various sections, including the history section, the Japanese gardens and the Women’s Pavilion.

The Historical Palace: chanoyu in the history of the Empire of Japan By the early twentieth century, a number of books aimed at non-Japanese readers had been published on Japan’s history, culture, and customs. Yet the Imperial Commission’s view was that these books on Japan did not help the nation’s Western counterparts fully understand the Japanese nation. The Imperial Commission had noted: 近時我邦ノ事物ニ就テ記述シタル英文ノ著書ハ管ニ数十百種ノミナ ラスト雖歴史風俗ノ如キハ文辭繪畫ノ能ク髣髴シ得ル所ニ非サルカ 故ニ善ク此等ノ書ヲ讀ムモ未タ眞相ヲ捕捉スルコト能ハサリシ Recently, there have been numerous books written in English about our country’s things. However, unlike texts, paintings and drawings, a history, customs and manners are not easy to envision. Even though the readers have read those books, they would not be able to capture the reality.30

The Japanese official report continued: 今回ノ陳列ヲ見テ一暼ノ下直ニ領會スル所アリシモノノ如ク獨讀書 人ノミナラズ一般ノ公衆モフカク興味ヲ覺エタルモノノ如シ

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When the audience sees the display at the exhibition they will understand it at a glance. Moreover, it will draw the attention not only of the intellectuals but also of the regular populace.31

The Imperial Commission had considered the power of visual representations to be persuasive, and attempted to manifest Japanese history in visual form at the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910. For the Historical Palace, the Imperial Commission produced ‘a series of twelve tableaux representing the manners, customs, and attainments of different periods in Japan’s history’.32 The tableaux were exhibited in a chronological order. The first tableau depicted the mythical era of the Emperor Jinmu (660 BCE), showing the first settlement and cultivation of the archipelago and hence demonstrating the beginning of the history of the Japanese Empire. The final tableau, titled ‘contemporary Japan’, portrayed the Imperial Palace Plaza full of cheering people from all nations and classes. In the background of this tableau were painted a number of artefacts that symbolized the modern era in Japan: Western-style architecture, such as the Ministry of Justice, as well as vehicles embodying the advance in technology, including a horse-drawn carriage, a bicycle, a rickshaw and a motorcar.33 Between the tableaux showing Japan’s beginnings and contemporary situation, there were ten tableaux showing eight different historical periods. Chanoyu was depicted in the tableau portraying the Tokugawa era (Tableau No. 11). The British official report wrote that chanoyu was ‘represented in one of the tableaux, occupying a space of four mats and a half, a regulation size for a tea-room’.34 The tableau showcased the typical architectural styles of a residence for the warrior elite, namely shoin (a room for use as a library or study) and sukiya (a room for chanoyu). A Japanese garden was painted behind the room and two mannequins were placed in the room itself: a young female figure about the age of eighteen serving a bowl of tea to an old male about the age of sixty.35 Both the British and Japanese official reports explained that chanoyu came into fashion in the Ashikaga period and was one of the most representative Japanese customs.36 Chanoyu, according to the official British report, ‘is mainly observed as a means of teaching etiquette to the young and of providing lessons in simplicity, order, virtue, and concentration of mind’.37 The Official British Report also described chanoyu as:

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The custom of tea-drinking has long been the practice in Japan, and the ceremony connected with it is still observed in that country. So important a part has tea-drinking played in Japanese life that traces of its influence are found everywhere in art and literature as well as in the construction of houses.38

This aged custom had influenced much of the material culture of this country and it was ‘still observed throughout Japan’.39 The practice of chanoyu not only demonstrated the history of Japan but also connected the country’s past with the present. By demonstrating the continuity of chanoyu from the Ashikaga era to contemporary Japan, the practice was displayed as a skill and discipline that provided the historical ground for the assertion that Japanese civilization had a cultural continuity from the fifteenth century to the present, and that Japanese civility had existed long before the introduction of Western elements – which had been incorporated only fifty years previously. As noted in the official British report, the goal of the Historical Palace was: to show to Japan’s Western ally that Japan’s civilisation has not been of modern acquisition, as is often believed in the West, but that she has had a long and varied history of her progress … the history of more than 2,500 years.40

Displaying chanoyu at the Historical Palace certainly helped the Imperial Commission achieve this goal. The Imperial Commission made a conscious decision in order to increase the popularity of the Empire of Japan. Chanoyu was selected because the practice and its material components were among the most alluring and comprehensible elements of Japanese civilization already known to Western audiences, since the custom of tea drinking was something that had been repeatedly described and commented on in Western literature on Japan.41 In order to achieve its goal, the government also manipulated the ways in which chanoyu was displayed at the exhibition. First, the relationship between chanoyu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi was entirely absent, despite the fact that official narratives on chanoyu prior to the 1910 exhibition emphasized the relationships amongst Toyotomi Hideyoshi (and Sen no Rikyū), chanoyu and the art history of Japan. Moreover, Hideyoshi was increasingly popular in Japan at the time, as described in Chapter 5. Nevertheless, there was no

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sign of Hideyoshi in the history section or anywhere within the Japan–British Exhibition, either as a historical figure or as a patron of the Japanese art. The Meiji government saw the Japan-Britain Exhibition of 1910 as a space for improving Japan’s image following its rise in the global community, which had largely been seen unfavourably. Emphasizing Japan’s cultural and historical aspects seems to have been one of the government’s solutions. The relationship between chanoyu and the warrior elite, not least Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was famous for two failed attempts to invade Korea, was not considered an appropriate association to emphasize at this exhibition. Second, the narrative and display provided by the Imperial Commission at the 1910 exhibition overlooked the social aspect of the practice of chanoyu. The way in which chanoyu was showcased in the history section suggested that chanoyu was something performed generally by members of the Japanese nation, including women, thus demonstrating the civility of the people of Japan. In reality, however, chanoyu in its origin was a social practice common amongst the male elite. The socializing function of chanoyu, as embodied in the form of tea gathering, was crucial for the practice of chanoyu and for the social life of the elite. Nevertheless, this societal aspect of chanoyu was not shown in the tableau or anywhere in the display, or the official reports of the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910. The purpose of this tableau was to emphasize, through the representation of chanoyu, the civility, decency, integrity and morality of the Japanese people. It was, therefore, the ritual and disciplinary aspects of chanoyu that received attention.

The Women’s Pavilion and chanoyu Chanoyu-related material culture was also displayed at the Women’s Pavilion. The aim of the Women’s Pavilion was to show the range and degree of education of Japanese women by demonstrating the items produced by female students from kindergarten to university. At the Women’s Pavilion, chanoyu was displayed as one of women’s leisure activities. A set of tea utensils was displayed together with equipment for flower arrangements, photographs, games and sport.42 By showing that women had also acquired the modern pastime (as represented in photographs and sports) and the various cultural practices that

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embodied the long-standing traditions of the Japanese Empire (as represented in chanoyu and flower arrangements), the Imperial Commission intended to demonstrate that Japanese women were as disciplined, refined and cultured as men. Again, neither the exclusiveness of chanoyu nor the social function of tea gathering was presented as a feature of chanoyu, since these did not seem to fit the idea that chanoyu represented the enduring civilization, discipline, courteousness and sophistication of ‘the people of Japan’, which included women. At the 1910 exhibition, chanoyu was depicted as a Japanese tradition that was no longer exclusive to the male ruling elite.

Promoting Japanese tea As had been the case since the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Imperial Commission and the tea producers agreed to run a commercial teahouse at the 1910 exhibition, which they considered an effective way to promote Japanese tea, as British people were especially fond of drinking tea.43 The Central Tea Trade Association originally planned to provide 120,000 yen for the Japanese teahouse and asked the government for 60,000 yen in financial support. However, the Imperial Commission concluded that the association’s demand was excessive. In the end, the association received a little more than a fifth of its requested budget. The government does not seem to have approached Japanese tea products with the same marketing enthusiasm as the association. This may be because the Central Tea Association was not the only enterprise that ran a refreshment space at this exhibition. On the initiative of the governor-general of Taiwan, Nozawa & Co. Ltd was in charge of the Formosa teahouse promoting Taiwanese oolong tea, and in fact, Formosa oolong tea received more emphasis by the Meiji government. First of all, the size of the budget allocated to the Japanese teahouse by the government was lower than that of the Formosa teahouse. The government granted a total subsidy of 13,000 yen, 6,500 yen from the budget for the fiscal years of 1909 and 1910. The association itself provided 10,000 yen, making a total budget of 23,000 yen, of which 4,000 yen were used to build the Japanese teahouse.44 On the other hand, the government granted the Formosa teahouse a subsidy of 20,000 yen.45

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In addition, the location and grandeur of the Japanese teahouse were less impressive than those of the Formosa teahouse. First, the Formosa teahouse was more than three times bigger than the Japanese teahouse: the Japanese teahouse occupied 361 square metres, while the Formosa teahouse was allocated 1,241 square metres by the Imperial Commission.46 Second, the Formosa oolong teahouse occupied a site on the ground and first floors of the right wing of Pavilion No. 6, near the Elite Garden, which was located almost at the centre of the exhibition site in a place that could easily catch the eyes of passers-by, while the Japanese teahouse was placed at the northern end of the site. In the earlier plan, the Japanese teahouse was in the Garden of Peace, situated near the Wood Lane entrance, and next to the Historical Palace, which was in the centre of the exhibition site, where it was easy to draw attention.47 In the end, however, it was moved to a site by the lake in the Garden of Floating Islands, the Japanese-style garden that stood near the Daily Mail Pavilion, towards the northern end of the exhibition site, far from the main entrance or the entertainment attractions.48 It was clear to the Tea Trade Association that Japanese tea was not going to be as popular as the Formosa oolong tea. At the teahouse, only English-style black tea and middle-grade green tea (sencha) were sold, for three pence per cup (twelve sen). Unlike the teahouse at the Chicago Exposition, matcha and high-grade green tea (gyokuro) were not on the menu: they were served only on request.49 Organizers had carefully chosen decorations with Japanese flair (nihonshumi) so that the products would appeal to their potential customers. While the British electric lighting system lit up the interior, dozens of Kōrin-style paper-covered lamps (Gifu-chōchin) ornamented the exterior of the teahouse.50 Inside the building, one of the alcoves was decorated with a triptych Kanō School painting and an yūzen-dyed velvet panel depicting the Byōdō-in Temple and Mount Fuji hung above the paper sliding door.51 The shoin part of the building was used as a space to display flower vases and other art objects related to the art of tea drinking.52 More than ten women dressed in yūzen-dyed kimonos served as waitresses at the teahouse. The Japanese commercial teahouse was built in the Garden of Floating Islands, where small islands were ‘surrounded by a large expanse of water’ and joined by bridges.53 The Japanese commercial teahouse was in a place that resembled a ‘miniature Japan’54 and was ‘an exact replica of those found in the Far East, and stands amid exquisite surroundings’.55

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The association also constructed a small purpose-built thatched house near the commercial Japanese teahouse in the Garden of the Floating Islands. It was used solely to advertise Japanese tea products by exploiting artistic tastes and material culture deriving from matcha-drinking practices.56 The house contained a four and a half tatami mat room with an alcove and a staggered shelf.57 It was decorated with a set of daisu and a gold-leaf folding screen, following the aesthetic code provided by the chanoyu practice. A threestep stand was arranged on the staggered shelf, on which various teas were displayed, including green and black – in brick or other forms – in glass bottles or Shigaraki ceramic tea jars covered with brocade and fastened with a scarlet silk string.58 The Official Guide boasted that customers visiting the Japanese teahouse experienced a short imaginary trip to Japan, while journalist Hasegawa Nyozekan considered the settings slightly superficial for those who had seen the real gardens in Japan.59 According to him, the taste of Japanese green tea did not match British consumer preferences.60 For Nyozekan, Formosa oolong tea had better prospects as an export.61 Nevertheless, the Central Tea Trade Association appear to have made an extra effort to promote Japanese tea by catering to visitors’ tastes for exotic goods, and it was successful in selling the image and experience of the Far East.62 In terms of the size of the teahouse, budget, number of visitors, and popularity, the Formosa teahouse was more successful than the Japanese teahouse despite its higher prices. Formosa oolong tea was sold at six pence per cup and nine pence per pot, and was expensive compared with the prices of the refreshments served at the Japanese teahouse, as well as at the other cafés and restaurants. Still, the Formosa teahouse attracted approximately 1,747 visitors a day – 251,616 altogether – while the number of visitors to the Japanese teahouse totalled approximately 57,000.63 The tea producers had been trying to add cultural value to Japanese tea products to attract British customers by emphasizing appearance over taste and utilizing the material culture derived from chanoyu. The material components of chanoyu were employed to add a Japanese flair to the commercial products. Nevertheless, as evidenced by the steady decline in exports of Japanese tea after the Japan– British Exhibition, the Central Tea Trade Association’s efforts did not bear fruit.64 Japanese tea did not sell well because its taste did not appeal to British

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consumers. Specifically, given the existence of different types of tea that were more appealing to the British market, such as Formosa oolong, sales of Japanese tea as an export item would no longer be the main concern for the Meiji government. Instead, for the government, the significance of Japanese tea – especially matcha and its related practices, history and material culture – lay in its function as a cultural symbol and the benefits it could convey to the nation in this respect. The government and private enterprises had different interests in their mobilizations of chanoyu. While the government presented the practice of chanoyu as a custom that represented Japan’s history and culture, the commercial organizations exploited the material aspect of chanoyu to add cultural value to their products. Yet, both the government and private enterprises showcased chanoyu as a representation of Japanese civility at these two expositions. Through this unintended collaboration between the government and private enterprises, chanoyu was showcased as the nation’s tradition, embodying the authenticity of its historical progress and the civility of its people. For the country, chanoyu could no longer be an elitist cultural practice, dominated and monopolized by the male elite as it was in the past. This transformation of the place of chanoyu for the Japanese Empire and the industry seems to have also encouraged some hereditary tea elites to start cultivating non-elite practitioners as their followers. The final chapter explores the innovations of one of these hereditary tea elites, the Urasenke House, which appears to have successfully managed to cope with the changing place of chanoyu towards the end of the Meiji era.

7

Teaching chanoyu in modern Japan: the case of the Urasenke School

Introduction By the late Meiji period, chanoyu, especially the practice of tea gathering, had emerged as a means for public diplomacy and its membership had expanded beyond nationality and gender, as illustrated in Chapters 3 and 4. As examined in Chapters 5 and 6, the ways in which chanoyu was displayed at exhibitions, both domestic and international, and other public events indicated the usefulness of chanoyu for modern industry and the nation. Chanoyu was effective, to certain extent, in promoting commerce and enhancing the nation’s prestige. Chanoyu was viewed as a practice that provided the nation with its historical and cultural continuities and aesthetic models, therefore securing its place as a legitimate cultural practice in modern Japan. At this juncture, En’nō-sai of the Urasenke tea tradition and his family identified amateur practitioners as their potential clientele. There were a number of tea schools that survived the early Meiji period. Additional tea organizations were established in the Meiji period founding their organizations on the ‘modern’ way of thinking, such as Dai Nihon Sadōgakkai. This chapter focuses on the Urasenke tea organization in particular, because the Urasenke School was one of the earliest institutions that transitioned successfully from the pre-modern to modern form. In the early twentieth century, the Urasenke tea school had started to disseminate its teaching by using publications, such as textbooks and a monthly journal, to target their devotees. This chapter examines the published works by the Urasenke organization to explore the thought and practice of their tea tradition at the end of the Meiji era.

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Textbooks In September 1903, En’nō-sai authored and published a chanoyu textbook, Chadō hamano masago.1 The word ‘chadō’ literally means ‘the way of tea’, while hamano masago (‘sands on the beach’) is an idiomatic expression for ‘many’ or ‘countless’. Thus, the title Chadō hamano masago meant ‘many ways of tea’. Although several chanoyu lesson books, mostly manuscript copies, had been available since the Tokugawa period, the novel feature of Chadō hamano masago was that it had been written by an iemoto. In previous periods, the iemoto’s art had been transmitted through performance. The secrets of the house arts had ‘always consisted essentially of demonstration by the teacher without explanation, and then of minute imitation by the pupil’.2 The publication of textbooks meant the textualization of the knowledge by the head of the house art. Volume One of the textbook starts with an introductory section, followed by a chapter explaining the genealogy of the Urasenke House, indicating Sen no Rikyū as the founder of the Urasenke School. The third section lists ‘one hundred poems by Sen no Rikyū’ (Rikyū Hyakushu) – the teachings in the form of poetry that are claimed to have been given by Sen no Rikyū – emphasizing the relationship between the Urasenke tea tradition and Sen no Rikyū in terms of both genealogical continuity and intellectual legacy. The textbook has five volumes. Each volume explains different kinds of tea-making procedures that the pupils who enter the world of chanoyu learn at entry level (nyūmon). Volume 1 explains the different types of procedures for charcoal setting. The differences amongst the procedures are derived from room designs, seasons and utensil arrangements. Volume 2 depicts the variants of tea-making procedures according to room design and season. Volume 3 describes tea-making procedures using a variety of shelves (tanamono). Volumes 4 and 5 are the instructions on shichiji-shiki (seven drills). The textbook details the movements required for various tea-making customs. The handling of particular tea utensils, however, remains a secret and is only transmitted orally.3 It does not include knowledge regarding tea utensils or the history of tea. It also does not involve any aesthetic or philosophical elements of chanoyu practice. The textbook is strongly technical in its character.

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The textbook’s aim was to prevent practitioners from feigning knowledge of these skills and arts. It therefore seems to have been targeting tea instructors who were teaching entry-level pupils, as well as amateur practitioners at the early stage of their training, who could use the book as a reference when reviewing what they had learned. This book’s publisher was located in Osaka; therefore, it is not clear whether it was widely circulated at the national level. Nonetheless, it was republished in February 1908 under the title Chanoyu michishiruhe (The Guide to Chanoyu),4 showing a certain demand in the market. In April of the same year, En’nō-sai published another textbook, Konaraigoto jūroku kajō denju (The Teachings of Sixteen Small Accomplishments), which explained the sixteen different skills taught at the second level of tea training.5 Although the advanced skills were unwritten and taught only through performative instructions, the publication of textbooks signified that the head of the house art had made changes to the way the knowledge and skills should be transmitted to his disciples. Through these publications, the Urasenke tea organization was making technical aspects of chanoyu more accessible to the general public. The publication of these textbooks, therefore, not only provided guidance to those who wanted to correctly enact the procedures but also disseminated a standardized form of knowledge authorized by the iemoto – the highest authority of the school. It also exemplified the iemoto organization’s reevaluation of the roles of qualified tea instructors – the group of practitioners at the middle layer of the hierarchical pyramid-shaped knowledge transmission system. These qualified tea instructors were crucial for connecting the iemoto (and his organization) with the vast number of amateur pupils who were placed at the bottom layer of the system. By publishing a textbook that targeted the middle-layer tea instructors, the iemoto organization must have gained greater control over the quality of information transmitted to the pupils at the margins of this iemoto-centric world order. The publication of the textbook not only textualized and standardized the technical side of the chanoyu practice, until the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, all the heads of the three Senke houses served various domain lords as sukiyagashira or chadōgashira. With the institutional patronage of the warrior class, the practice of chanoyu was firmly tied to the ruling elite. The

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heads of the Senke houses did not need to fortify a nationwide organizational bond with the mass followers at the bottom layer of the iemoto system in order to maintain the reputation of their schools and to assure the continuation of the houses’ traditions.6 However, in the new era, it turned out that the support of the masses was crucial – and available – for the survival of the house art. It was clear that the organization needed to reconsider the iemoto’s relationship with non-elite practitioners who in previous eras would not have had a connection with the head of the house art. They had reshaped the relationships amongst the iemoto, the qualified tea instructors, and the amateur pupils, by giving technical instructions through the textbooks written by the head of the tradition.

Kon’nichi-an geppō The Urasenke House’s attempt to remodel and reinforce the structure of the pyramid-shaped system could also be found in the publication of the monthly journal, Kon’nichi-an geppō, which seems to have created an imagined community of the iemoto, certified tea instructors, and amateur tea practitioners. The first issue of the journal appeared in 1908, following the 1907 ceremony commemorating Sen no Sōtan, a grandson of Sen no Rikyū. Organized by the Urasenke House, the service provided an opportunity to recognize the loyalty of its followers. Although the Urasenke House did not advertise the event, disciples of its tea tradition attended it, from all over the country. Some of them were immediate disciples of Gengen-sai, En’nōsai’s grandfather. Most of Gengen-sai’s followers were over seventy or eighty years old, yet they still came to Kyoto for the memorial service to worship Sōtan.7 As the memorial service was so successful, En’nō-sai decided to expand the Urasenke tradition to repay the devotion of his followers.8 En’nō-sai argued, in order to increase the influence of his tea tradition, that tea gatherings should not be exclusive. In the editorial of the first issue of Kon’nichi-an geppō, En’nōsai regretted the situation whereby invitations for tea gatherings remained exclusive to guests who had direct contact with the hosts. He criticized the lack of means to announce the venue for tea gatherings – which were held in various regions – to disciples living outside those regions or across

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the nation.9 En’nō-sai suggested that the practice of tea gathering should be all encompassing, as long as the participants were devoted to the Urasenke tea tradition. He encouraged his disciples to accept guests from outside their own social circles, as well as to participate in tea gatherings hosted by strangers. Exclusivity and intimacy were the significant features of the tea-gathering practices in the pre-Meiji period. Even in the late Meiji era, elite exclusivity remained one of the prominent features of chanoyu practice in the new capital. These features were rejected by the iemoto himself. By implicitly criticizing elitism, En’nō-sai seemed to be promoting openness of and accessibility to the practice. According to En’nō-sai, tea gatherings should be open to all practitioners. He continued: 名品珍器の貴重品を集め如何に完全無缼の道具取合せあるも之れを 全國一門の社中に参考に楽みに或は何れの社中に如何なる名品珍器 の秘蔵のあるを照會するの機關不備にして充分なる發展を期するに 能はざるを遺憾とし10 Even though the arrangement of the tea utensil decoration is flawless, with valuable fine articles and rare objects, the other disciples of the Urasenke tea tradition cannot study or enjoy it. Additionally, there is no adequate means to ask which disciples have tea treasures. [The Urasenke House] regrets that it is difficult to fully expand [the Urasenke School] without the system to support it …

En’nō-sai argued that fine tea utensil collections should be available to the view of the owner’s tea colleagues nationwide. He encouraged his disciples to showcase – not conceal – their own valuable tea utensils through tea gatherings. The iemoto’s suggestion was intended to deepen the understanding of chanoyu’s aesthetic codes by sharing information and experience. To facilitate the circulation of information amongst practitioners, the Urasenke organization was trying to establish a system that would stimulate social exchanges amongst amateur practitioners. The monthly journal thus intended to create a forum where mass practitioners could communicate with each other. The journal also seemed to have developed a community-like discursive space for the iemoto’s disciples to interact with the organization, as well as a channel to indoctrinate them to some extent. The principle of building a community – and thus ensuring the survival of the house by opening up the practice of chanoyu to

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the general public – could also be found in the proposed content of Kon’nichian geppō, as documented as follows:11 1. essays on chanoyu and ancient customs regarding tea gathering providing adequate information to dedicated practitioners; 2. articles containing facts hidden from the public and describing the unconventional behaviour of well known tea masters; 3. the list of tea instructors’ names and addresses, as well as reports on disciples who had been awarded the certificate and the list of their names, addresses and tea instructors; 4. columns written by authorities and eminent personages; and 5. reports on the tea gatherings held by disciples for reference and for facilitating better communication amongst devotees. It is clear from the first, second, and fourth points that the journal aimed to disseminate the Urasenke House’s interpretation of historical events. These historical accounts, as asserted in the journal, were written by ‘authorities and eminent personages’, thus ensuring their legitimacy. By reading the journal, readers encountered the Urasenke tea institution’s interpretation of the history of chanoyu and their account of renowned chanoyu masters and the practice. As the third point shows, the journal also aimed to create a direct link between the iemoto and practitioners by developing a reward system. The journal was proposing that practitioners should contribute to the Urasenke tradition if they wished to be accredited by the head of the art. By suggesting a way to gain acknowledgement from the iemoto, the journal made practitioners aware of how they should behave to be identified by the highest authority of the school. Moreover, as the fifth point shows, the Urasenke organization was explicitly encouraging social and cultural exchanges amongst practitioners and, by doing so, creating a community for them and their traditions. The journal also intended to circulate and share the names of Urasenke devotees, including both tea instructors and dedicated pupils, in various regions. The circulation of the names of direct disciples and amateur practitioners also meant formal recognition not only by the iemoto and his institution but also by the readers of the journal who were members of the Urasenke chanoyu community. The journal also reinforced the hierarchical order, not only amongst the iemoto,

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the tea instructors and the vast majority of non-professional followers, but also amongst amateur practitioners by dividing them into two groups, devoted followers and the others, by recognizing and publicizing the names of the former in the journal. The journal and the textbooks seem to have increased the non-elite tea practitioners’ access – ‘although an imaginary one’ – to the headquarters of the tradition. However, the fact that the iemoto organization published textbooks that only covered the entry and secondary levels indicated that the transmission of further skills and knowledge remained a secret and was only done performatively. Access was only eased at the entry level: a personal connection was required beyond that. The journal also clearly showed the Urasenke institution’s intention to keep certain knowledge exclusive in terms of its transmission. In the first issue of the journal, the Urasenke House assured readers that they were ‘willing to answer any questions’, but the questions were limited to the scope of ‘the entry level of learning’.12 Despite all these publications, encouragements and standardizations, the Urasenke House kept the core of the tradition undisclosed. Knowledge regarding procedure became more confidential and the transmission system stricter. To maintain the organization’s iemoto-centred world order and to secure control over the knowledge and how it was transmitted, the institution had to reject tea instructors who claimed to teach the Urasenke-style chanoyu but who had not been qualified through its system. In the journal’s first issue, the Urasenke House attacked such tea instructors as the ‘self-professed tea masters’ who were teaching chanoyu without sufficient knowledge of it.13 Additionally, the intended control over the instructor–pupil network was evident from the beginning; Kon’nichi-an geppō repeatedly asked licensed instructors to report their pupils’ names and degrees of attainment to the office of the Urasenke School.14 All tea instructors had to show allegiance to and align with the Urasenke organization by disclosing the names of their pupils if they wished to be honoured as dedicated disciples.

Chanoyu in modern society The Urasenke House was not only concerned with its relationship with its followers’ community. Another challenge was the view of society, especially the

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non-elite populace. As discussed in previous chapters, in the early twentieth century, chanoyu was a practice taken up by modern tea connoisseurs, many of whom flaunted their material wealth by displaying their ostentatious art collections at tea gatherings. These elites were predominantly male connoisseurs who tended to dismiss the manners, rituals, and aesthetic codes established by the tea institution.15 However, as is shown in En’nō-sai’s writing in the first two issues of Kon’nichian geppō, the Urasenke House was anti-elitist. The organization targeted the general public, half of them being women. To cope with the modern world, En’nō-sai had changed the conventions of his institution and started awarding the general public the iemoto’s official recognition and permitting them full membership, such as accepting female disciples from around 1905 – which rarely happened in the Tokugawa period – and granting teaching licenses to female tea instructors.16 While the number of qualified female tea instructors increased, that of amateur male tea practitioners seems to have stagnated. It appears that the majority of men – especially those in their prime – felt as if chanoyu did not belong to them. The tea-gathering practice provided a space for aesthetic appreciation, through the collection and display of its utensils, for the rich and powerful (and people with plenty of time to spare), with the ritual side of the practice for women. In the second issue of Kon’nichi-an geppō, En’nō-sai addressed his concern regarding this relationship between chanoyu and broader society: 茶道とは如何なるものか、其要旨は何ぞ、と問はれたらんには　我 首祖利休居士の教訓にある如く、質素を旨とし仁義禮智信の五常の 道を明にし、之を實行するを以て茶道の要旨の第一とすると答へ ん　(中略)　茶道は實に平民的なり　貴賎貧富の別なき也、一視同 仁、孔子の所謂仁、釈迦の所謂慈悲、キリストの所謂愛なるもの、 之實に斯道の中心たり17 What is the way of tea? What is the point of practising it? If someone asks me this question, I would answer as stated in Sen no Rikyū’s teaching, that the main point is its principle of simplicity. It clarifies and applies to humanity, justice, courtesy, wisdom and sincerity, which are the invariable five ways of Confucianism … The way of tea is truly egalitarian, irrespective of rank and

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for the rich or the poor. [This is] a universal brotherhood; [it is equivalent to] ren in Confucianism, mercy in Buddhism, and love in Christianity. This is the central concept of the way [of tea].

His statement is simple – chanoyu should be taken seriously, similar to classical philosophy or major religions. He continues: 茶道は婦女子の行のみ堂々だる男子の執るべき業にあらずとし、或 は消極的なりといひ、或は厭世的なりと叫び妄に攻撃する言には敏 なれどその行為たるや實に言語同断なるもの蓋し尠少ならざるべ し.18 Some claim that chanoyu is what women do and is not for dignified men. Some argue that it is passive or pessimistic. These people are good at attacking, using words without a reason. However, the behaviour of many of them is unspeakable.

En’nō-sai proclaimed that the practice of chanoyu is not necessarily feminine and is a canon of good behaviour. It is an embodiment of humanity that can be applied universally. Therefore, people who do not respect chanoyu are ill-mannered, not respectable persons even if they claim to be educated intellectuals. While attacking the intellectuals who did not take chanoyu seriously, En’nō-sai also severely criticized the behaviour of the so-called tea masters, whom he considered responsible for forming an undesirable image of chanoyu in society. He complained: 茶道を正しく守れる人行へる人之を茶人といふ、反言すれば人道に 背かざる人之を茶人とはいふ也、人道を解せざる人之を無茶人と號 す、然るに茶人としいはば、單に世に遠きものとし、偏癖なるもの とし、此品は茶人向なり、彼の人は茶人然たりなど、変人を以て目 せらるるに至りしは抑も何人の罪ならん、斯道の人自ら省て改良す べきにあらざるなきか.19 Tea masters are the ones who can properly maintain and practise the way of tea. In other words, tea masters are the ones who follow humanitarianism. If one does not understand what humanity is, then the person is a master of nonsense. However, [in the current trend] a tea master is simply thought to be a naive figure with an odd habit. When one says, ‘this piece has the taste of a tea master’, or ‘one is similar to a tea master’, it means that such an object

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or figure is strange. Who is to be blamed for this? Those who practise the way [of tea] must think of themselves and change their attitude.

En’nō-sai regarded the so-called ‘tea masters’ as ‘strange’, ‘naïve’ and ‘weird’. If his comment was based on the widely accepted view of ‘tea master’ in Meiji society, being a ‘tea master’ was by no means a preferable station, and chanoyu did not sound like an attractive activity for a serious man to be involved in. Of course, this was not true in En’nō-sai’s opinion. He declared his intentions as being to improve society’s recognition of chanoyu: 余は於是卒先改良の衝に當らんとし茶道の書籍を刊行し月刊雑誌を 刊行し、尚進んで方法形式に於ても改善を期せんとす20 I, therefore, will take the initiative and bring about a reformation by publishing books and monthly magazines on the way of chanoyu, and furthermore, by improving methods and forms [of chanoyu].

To start with, En’nō-sai proposed to make changes to the tea-making procedures. For example, he stated, ‘Although there is a history of sharing a bowl of thick tea with fellow guests at a gathering, with the development of the sense of hygiene, many people worry about germ infection. Thus, I am thinking about reforming this method and announcing a new one in the near future’.21 En’nō-sai’s statement shows his innovativeness. The act of drinking tea from the same bowl had been one of the essential features of chanoyu, as this act was a ritual demonstration of the equality of everyone in the room and a means to develop the intimacy of the group – which was the fundamental characteristic of tea gathering in the pre-modern era. Nevertheless, the iemoto was determined to reform this convention in order to fit its practice within the standards of the modern world. En’nō-sai’s attitude aligns with efforts made by his grandfather, Gengen-sai, when he and the other tea professionals invented the table-and-chair method (ryūrei) in the early Meiji period, as illustrated in Chapter 2. The table-and-chair method was created in an attempt to adapt chanoyu to the influx of Western material culture after the Meiji Restoration. Gengen-sai had modified the procedure by introducing novel material culture, while En’nō-sai intended to change the tradition by implementing the modern concept of hygiene in the practice.

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Conclusion For the iemoto of the Urasenke tea tradition, its modernization meant reshaping of the relationships between the iemoto and his disciples/amateur practitioners. The publication of a monthly journal created a discursive space in which the dominant voice was the iemoto’s. It also functioned as a tool to promote communication between disciples and practitioners living in different areas. In other words, the publication restructured the relationship between the iemoto and numerous amateur pupils who, in the previous period, would not have had direct relations with the head of the art. It was not only the formation of the imagined community that took place. It also had an effect on the standardization of knowledge, which was transferred to amateur pupils through the publication of the monthly journal and the textbooks. Over the long term, these publications must have affected and reinforced the attachment of the disciples and the amateur pupils to the iemoto. Although the extent of circulation and readership of the journal is not clear, it was likely circulated amongst qualified tea instructors, not only those living near the institution, namely the areas in the Kyoto-Osaka-Kōbe area, but also those who were residing in distant places. The iemoto of the Urasenke tea tradition were always conscious of the current trends and society’s demands, and kept modifying their practice to correspond to social changes by introducing novelties and innovations. Similar to his grandfather, Gengen-sai, En’nō-sai was one of the iemoto who tried to innovate in order to stay relevant in a changing world. For them, chanoyu was not an obsolete heritage but tradition in motion. Yet, this was only the beginning for En’nō-sai. The Urasenke tea tradition had not yet firmly secured its place. On 24 January 1909, the heads of various tea traditions gathered in Tokyo and established the Chadō kyōkai (the Chanoyu Association). En’nōsai and his institution were ready to move on to a new stage by joining the association located in Tokyo, thus irrevocably shifting the centre of cultural production from the old capital to the new one. The Meiji era only witnessed a glimpse of the rise of the modern iemoto system, which flourished in subsequent periods.22

Conclusion

This book has sought to highlight the place of chanoyu practice and its material culture in Japanese society as it underwent major structural changes. As examined in Chapter 1, the material components of chanoyu practice were meaningful for some government officials, such as Machida Hisanari and Ninagawa Noritane, as tangible cultural heritage, but for mainstream officials the material culture from the past was irrelevant to the country’s future development. Nevertheless, chanoyu practice was a part of the social life of the elite in both the new and old capitals. Chapter 2 demonstrated how chanoyu was conspicuous in Kyoto, as it was one of the forms of the merchant elite’s cultural capital and was mobilized in their efforts to reconstruct the city’s economy and identity. Yet, in the early Meiji period, chanoyu culture lost its significance as an aristocratic practice in Kyoto. On the contrary, in Tokyo, as described in Chapter 3, the practice of tea gathering continued to be vital in elite social life. The practice was especially critical when the aristocratic and non-aristocratic elites were consolidating their social status under the new regime. By the 1890s, the practice of tea gathering saw the opening up of its membership beyond its traditional constituents, as discussed in Chapter 4. However, even though chanoyu was vividly practised by the elite, its public life – chanoyu’s importance as a legitimate ceremonial custom – was on the wane. It was not until the 1890s that chanoyu practice resurged with a new twist, gaining a new outlook as one of the cultural traditions of modern Japan serving the country’s public diplomacy. In modern Japan, as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, one of the prominent aspects of chanoyu was its close ties with the nation’s art history. It was not only an historical source of art production, but also provided the aesthetics of

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display in the contemporary industrial world. The method of display deriving from the art of chanoyu was especially significant at domestic and international exhibitions. The context for chanoyu as a beverage also had a critical role in the modern history of Kyoto. A bowl of tea came to be recognized as a status symbol and an emblem of refined aristocratic cultural practice. The place of tea as a prestigious commodity and chanoyu as a distinguished practice had become conspicuous in Kyoto towards the end of the nineteenth century. The prominence of chanoyu as a refined (and practical) social and cultural practice was especially evident in Kyoto, the city that produces ‘authentic’ Japanese crafts. Thus, the practice of chanoyu was an essential skill in the merchant elite’s social and commercial lives in Kyoto. It was therefore also understood to be one of the critical skills that the daughters of Kyoto merchants should acquire before marriage. The prominence of chanoyu as a canon of Japanese tradition became even more evident at international expositions in the latter half of the Meiji period. Chapter 6 explored how tea was displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 in London, and how these events were significant in the canonization of the art of chanoyu as a Japanese tradition in the modern period. In the international arena, the government and the private sector displayed chanoyu differently, and their interests were different but their representations interacted with each other. The relationships amongst Japan, its history, and chanoyu were evident in both of their displays. Although their collaboration was unintended, on both occasions, chanoyu was displayed as a symbol of Japanese tradition. When demonstrated to a foreign audience, chanoyu was presented as an example of the civility and authenticity of the empire of Japan, its industry, and its people. Chanoyu could no longer belong solely to the male elite, as it had done previously. The matcha-drinking practice was now a culture that should be opened to all members of the nation. It was around this time that Ennō-sai of the Urasenke tea tradition and his family recognized amateur practitioners – who would not have had direct relations with the head of the art in the previous period– as promising potential clients. For the iemoto of the Urasenke tea tradition, the modernization of its institution meant the reshaping of the relationship between the iemoto and his followers. Chapter 7 delved into the transformation of the Urasenke tea

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tradition at the end of the Meiji period by examining its textbooks and monthly journal, which created a discursive space where the iemoto’s views could be disseminated. The publications not only contributed to the formation of the community, but also had an impact on the standardization of the knowledge that was transferred to amateur pupils. In summary, this book has discussed the transformation of chanoyu during the Meiji period, while describing how this transformation was effected gradually through diverse social, cultural and commercial activities. The development of chanoyu involved multiple actors – each with different motives, some of which did not easily align with the state’s modernizing project or its subsequent mobilization of tradition. Eventually, chanoyu was able to emerge as a representation of tradition, symbolizing the independence and authenticity of Japanese civilization. For the state, chanoyu could provide a means of distinguishing itself from Japan’s allies. For industry, the practice could add authentic allure to its products. Thus, by the end of the Meiji period, chanoyu was understood by society to be an imperative practice for the state and industry, and its public and ceremonial meanings resurfaced. The Meiji period was a dynamic era of major reconstruction and uncertainty. The fall of the Tokugawa regime and the establishment of the Meiji government brought a new political system to Japan. This period witnessed not only large administrative changes, but also significant economic reforms such as Japan entering the global market system. Culturally, it was a period when the population experienced a vast influx of novel material cultures, ideas, and institutions. Culture in the Meiji period is often depicted as the outcome of conflict and compromise between two major groups – the hegemonic state and the oppressed people. However, there were more subtle agents in the making of the culture of modern Japan, as demonstrated in this book. Dynamic and vibrant negotiations amongst a variety of actors resulted in the creation of a modern cultural space. From this space emerged the canonization of Japanese traditions of various material cultures and aristocratic practices.

Notes

Acknowledgements 1

An earlier version of this chapter first appeared in Japan Forum in 2013. Taka Oshikiri, ‘Gathering for Tea in Late Meiji Tokyo’, Japan Forum, 25.1 (2013), 24–41.

Introduction 1

Morgan Pitelka, ‘Introduction to Japanese Tea Culture’, in Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice, ed. Morgan Pitelka (New York: Routledge, 2003), 1.

2

Ōtsuki Fumihiko ed., Genkai, 2nd edition (Tokyo: Ōtsuki Fumihiko, 1891), 648.

3

Taka Oshikiri, ‘Tea in Japan’, in Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, ed. Helaine Selin (Berlin: Springer, 2016). Matcha, that is, powdered/ground green tea, and the method of preparing it were introduced to Japan’s imperial court by Eisai, a Buddhist monk who visited Song China at the end of the twelfth century. The custom of drinking matcha was a novelty and, at the beginning, strictly limited and exclusive to the highest echelon of society. The supply of tea was scarce, and restricted to the members of the imperial court and to religious institutions, and its use remained ceremonial until the mid-fourteenth century. With the rise of the warrior class in the mid-fourteenth century, the method of tea cultivation and the custom of tea drinking were transmitted to the temples in eastern Japan – Kamakura – through the circulation of goods and people between the imperial capital and this new political centre. The custom of drinking tea finally spread outside the religious institutions and developed into a form of entertainment known as a tea match (tōcha). In the fifteenth century, tea drinking then developed into an elaborate social practice that required more refined spaces and aesthetics, as it was now performed at the residence of the shogun – the warrior leader. The audience hall

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Notes was decorated with a number of material objects which were brought into Japan from China and beyond by Buddhist monks. The shogun’s audience hall became a space where the power and wealth of the ruler was showcased. Elaborate rituals performed at the shogun’s office developed a refined style called karamono suki, producing both art connoisseurs serving the shoguns as cultural advisors (dōbō) and written instructions for decorating the hall.

4

Kumakura Isao, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū (Tokyo: Nihonhōsōkyōkaishuppan, 1980). Tanaka Hidetaka, Kindai chadō no rekishishakaigaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 2008), 54. Kumakura argues that Matsudaira Fumai (1751– 1818) and Ii Naosuke (1815–60), domain lords who wrote books on chanoyu practice during the Tokugawa era, marked the beginning of modern scholarship with respect to chanoyu practice. Kumakura argues that there are modern features, suggesting the birth of critical thinking, in their writings. On the other hand, the sociologist Tanaka Hidetaka points out that many historians of chanoyu practice agree on the year 1929 as the beginning of modern scholarship on it, since this was when Takahashi Tatsuo (1868–1946), also known by his pseudonym Baien, published Chadō (literally, ‘the way of tea’). Takahashi Tatsuo was a linguist teaching the preparatory course of Keio Gijuku at the time when he published the book.

5

Yoda Tōru, ‘Nihon bijutsushi ni okeru chanoyu’, Kokka 1292 (2003); Satō Dōshin, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: Bi no seijigaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1999); Kitazawa Noriaki, Me no shinden (Tokyo: Bijutsushuppan, 1989). According to Yoda, this was especially evident in the field of Japanese art history, as the field had been created in the Meiji period by institutionalizing the Western concept of the study of visual arts.

6

Sen Sōshitsu and Sen Sōshu eds., Chadō zenshū (Osaka: Sōgensha, 1936–7).

7

Early examples of such works include Kuwata Tadachika’s Bushō to chadō (The Warrior Elite and the Way of Tea, 1943) and Nihon no chadō (The Way of Tea in Japan, 1955), as well as Hayashiya Seizō’s Cha no bijutsu (The Fine Art of Tea, 1965). Examples of the English literature are Beatrice M. Bodart, ‘Tea and Counsel: The Political Role of Sen Rikyū’, Monumenta Nipponica, 32.1 (1977), 49–74; Theodore M. Ludwig, ‘Before Rikyū: Religious and Aesthetics Influence in the Early History of the Tea Ceremony’, Monumenta Nipponica, 36.4 (1981), 367–90; Christine Guth, Art, Tea and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Andrew M. Watsky, ‘Commerce, Politics, and Tea: The Career of Imai Sōkyū’, Monumenta Nipponica, 50.1 (1995), 47–65; Morgan Pitelka ed., Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History and

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Practice (New York: Routledge, 2003); Morgan Pitelka, Handmade Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005). 8 Tanihata Akio, Kinsei chadōshi (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1988), and Kuge sadō no kenkyū (Kyoto: Shibunkakushuppan, 2005); Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The body of amateur practitioners is underrepresented in the early Japanese literature on the history of chanoyu, albeit with a few exceptions. Tanihata Akio examines chanoyu practices of the warrior elite, the courtiers and the commoner-elite during the Tokugawa period. Eiko Ikegami also discusses the use of chanoyu in social networking amongst the citizenry during the Tokugawa period. 9 Kristen Surak, Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice (California: Stanford University Press, 2012); Katō Etsuko, Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); Chiba Kaeko, Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony: The Voices of Tea Practitioners in Northern Japan (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2010). For example, the sociologist Kristen Surak has worked on the relationship between nationalism and chanoyu, arguing that chanoyu is one element of an acknowledged national culture, which has served to craft the ‘Japaneseness’ of the Japanese. Surak argues that the use of certain cultural practices to mould a sense of nation-ness in modern Japan emerges together with the establishment of the modern nation state. The Meiji period did not see the category of the nation as an inclusive community, and it was still absent at the early stage of the modern period. While the anthropologist Katō Etsuko discusses the issue of gender by looking at chanoyu practices in postwar Japan and argues that women were empowered by practising chanoyu in a male-dominant society, Chiba Kaeko, another anthropologist, criticizes Katō for overlooking class conflict amongst the practitioners of chanoyu, which Chiba finds evident from the ethnography that she collected during her research. In her book, Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony, Chiba explores female practitioners in northern Japan, examining the interwoven class and gender issues in contemporary Japanese society with reference to chanoyu. 10 Kristen Surak to a certain extent examines amateur practitioners during the Meiji period. Morgan Pitelka’s Handmade Culture briefly discusses the art of chanoyu in the early Meiji period in relation to the head of tea schools (iemoto). 11 Matsuzawa Yūsaku, ‘Chihōjichisei to minkenundō, mishūundō’, in Iwanami kōza Nihonrekishi (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2013), 131–64.

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12 Makihara Norio, ‘Bunmeikaikaron’, in Iwanami kōza nihontsūshi, vol. 16 (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1992), 249–90; Karube Tadashi, ‘Bunmeikaika no jidai’, in Iwanami kōza Nihonrekishi vol. 10 (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2013), 241–67. For example, while Makihara Norio discusses the Bunmei kaika movement as an oppressive programme by a hegemonic state controlling everyday practices of the general populace by implementing modern concepts, such as public health, Karube Tadashi proposes that the Bunmei kaika movement was not a simple ‘westernizing’ programme led and imposed by the Meiji state on the regular populace but rather a collaborative work between the State and intellectuals, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi and other progressive scholars. 13 Yoshida Yutaka, ‘Kindaishi heno shōtai Iwanami kōza Nihonrekishi vol. 15 (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2014), 3–22; Matsuzawa, ‘Chihōjichisei to minkenundō, mishūundō’, 131–64. 14 For example, Matsuzawa Yūsaku ed., Kindai nihon no hisutoriogurafi (Tokyo: Yamakawashuppansha, 2015); Margaret Mehl, History and the State in Nineteenth Century Japan (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997); Itō Mamiko, Meiji nihon to bankokuhakurankai (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 2008); Kitazawa, Me no shinden; Kuni Takeyuki, Hakurankai no jidai: Meiji seifu no hakurankaiseisaku (Nagoya: Iwatashoin, 2005) and Hakurankai to meiji no nihon (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 2010); Satō Dōshin, Meijikokka to kindaibijutsu: Bi no seijigaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1999); Yoda, ‘Nihon Bijutsushi ni okeru chanoyu’, 27–36; Peter F. Kornicki, ‘Public Display and Changing Values: Early Meiji Exhibitions and Their Precursors’, Monumenta Nipponica, 49.2 (1994), 167–96. 15 Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). 16 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū. Moreover, Kumakura argues, chanoyu was rejected in the early Meiji period as it was to a large extent useless for ‘modern’ nation building. Conventional aristocratic activities such as tea gatherings and flower arrangements were irrelevant when the new regime was trying to replace the old political system with a new one. However, as Kumakura goes on to point out, the practice revived and came into vogue once again around the mid-Meiji period. Kumakura concludes that chanoyu was able to make its way into the modern world by being acknowledged as tradition (dentō). He also states that the modernization of chanoyu practice involved a transformation from a playful sociocultural activity (yūgei) to a rigid ceremonial tradition, which supported the state’s interest in making the modern nation. 17 Stephen Vlastos, ‘Tradition’, in Mirror of Modernity, ed. Stephen Vlastos (Berkley : University of California Press, 1998). Building and expanding on Hobsbawm

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and Ranger’s argument in The Invention of Tradition, Stephen Vlastos’ edited book, Mirror of Modernity, explores a variety of so-called ‘Japanese traditions’ and demonstrates that many which claim continuity with the historical past (some from antiquity) actually have recent origins. In Vlastos’ volume, a number of chapters examine how these ‘traditions’ functioned as a stabilizing force in a modern capitalist society characterized by rapid, destabilizing change. The term ‘invented’ also has a broader meaning in Mirror of Modernity. Vlastos uses the word ‘invented’ interchangeably with the word ‘chosen’ tradition or traditions in ‘strategic use’. Thus, the word ‘invented’ does not always mean invention from scratch but includes the broader notion of reshaping and modifying practices with certain ideological intentions and implications. 18 Taka Oshikiri, ‘The Shogun’s Tea Jar: Ritual, Material Culture, and Political Authority in Early Modern Japan’, The Historical Journal, 59.4 (December 2016), 927–45. 19 Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense (London: University of California Press, 2006), 5. 20 The matcha-drinking practice was incorporated into the social life of the emerging elite – the warrior class – in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and developed into a form of art, which today we now identify as being chanoyu by the late sixteenth century. Watsky, ‘Commerce, Politics, and Tea’, 47–65. In the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, teagathering rituals and tea utensil collecting served as opportunities for political theatre for the warrior leaders. But the practice of tea gathering was not exclusive to the warrior elite. Wealthy commoners in prosperous cities such as Kyoto, Nara and Sakai also began practising the elaborate tea-drinking ritual in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and socialized with the warrior elite through tea gatherings. Some of the merchant elite built their political careers utilizing their talent in the art of chanoyu. 21 Surak, Making Tea, Making Japan, Chapter 3. 22 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, 303. 23 Inagaki Kyōko, Jogakkō to jogakusei: Kyōyō, tashinami, modan bunka (Tokyo: Chuōkōronsha, 2007), 4–39. Inagaki Kyōko suggests that the massification of girls’ education began in the urban areas around the 1910s and spread nationally during the 1920s and 1930s. When Inagaki examined the lives of schoolgirls who went to secondary school (jogakkō) in the Kinki area during the 1930s and 1940s, it turned out that 33 per cent of the girls had regular chanoyu lessons until they got married.

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24 Fukaya Masashi, Ryōsaikenboshugi no kyōiku (Nagoya: Reimeishobō, 1998). 25 Suzuki Mikiko, ‘Taisho showa shoki niokeru bunka toshite no okeikogoto’, in Onna no bunka, ed. Aoki Tamotsu (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2000). As Suzuki Mikiko points out, it seems that by the interwar period, with the emergence of the new middle class, chanoyu became associated with feminine accomplishment in general. 26 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, 303. 27 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū; and Surak, Making Tea, Making Japan. 28 Inagaki, Jogakkō to jogakusei, 5–6. For example, the attendance rate for primary schools for girls was 22.5 per cent in 1878, which rose to only 60 per cent in 1899. In 1905, less than 5 per cent went on to secondary education, which was where chanoyu was taught. 29 Inagaki, Jogakkō to jogakusei, 6. Also Sharon N. Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings, ‘Meiji State’s Policy towards Women, 1890–1910’, in Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein (Berkley : University of California Press, 1991), 157. By 1910, primary school attendance for girls had reached approximately 100 per cent, but according to Inagaki Kyōko, secondary education for girls was only en mass from around 1925, when the number of girls who went on to secondary education rose to 25 per cent. 30 Utagawa Kōichi, ‘Senzenki ni okeru risōteki joshizō no dentō/kindai wo toraeru shiten toshiteno ongaku no tashinami: Kenkyū dōkō ni miru kanoōsei to kadai’, Gakushūin daigaku kenkyū nenpō, 60 (2013), 196. Indeed, in 1913, 20 per cent of the female students learned chanoyu. In other words, the number of girls learning chanoyu declined significantly between 1913 and 1920. 31 Utawagawa, ‘Senzenki ni okeru risōteki joshizō no dentō/kindai wo toraeru shiten toshiteno ongaku no tashinami’, 196. This is also clear from the data suggested by Utagawa where he points out that only 5 per cent of female students in Tokyo had taken chanoyu lessons at school. 32 Monbushō ed., Monbushō reikiruisan (Tokyo: Ōzorasha, 1987), 423. Also see Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, 303 and Kobayashi Yoshiho, ‘Hana’ no seiritsu to tenkai (Osaka: Izumishōbō, 2007), 382. 33 Kobayashi, ‘Hana’ no seiritsu to tenkai. Kobayashi Yoshiho examines this point in her book and argues that chanoyu was incorporated into school life for female students in the Meiji period as it was already seen as a female accomplishment which should be obtained before a good marriage. 34 Nishiyama Matsunosuke, Iemoto no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1982), 130–31 and Iemotosei no tenkai (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1982),

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487. According to Nishiyama, during the Tokugawa period, even though there were a number of women taking tea lessons, very few women could enter tea institutions. 35 Some tea institutions did not allow women to become disciples. For example, the Urasenke tea institution seems to have been the first to open its doors to female practitioners, and that did not happen until after the Russo–Japanese war (1904–05) (Chiba, Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony, 92). In other words, that is when tea institutions started to count female amateur practitioners as members of their community. Therefore, it could be argued that the visibility of female practitioners in society in the late Meiji era was not about an increase in the actual number of female amateur practitioners. This puzzle, however, together with the still open question of why chanoyu came to be seen as a female accomplishment and feminine virtue, must be left aside. 36 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū; Nishiyama, Iemoto no kenkyū and Iemotosei no tenkai. Not necessarily all tea schools employ the iemoto system in order to maintain their traditions. For example, the Sekishū tea tradition and its branches do not hold iemoto as their head. A number of these organizations were established and developed during the sixteenth century and flourished during the Tokugawa era. 37 Ichimura Yūko, ‘Ōsaka ni okeru bakumatsu-meijishoki no chōnin bunka: Ōbaya Hirai-ke no rekidai tōshu to Enshū-ryū chadō’, in Chajin to chanoyu no kenkyū, ed. Kumakura Isao (Kyoto: Shibunkakushuppan, 2003). For example, according to Ichimura Yūko, the Hirai family in Osaka did not have any kinship with the founder of the Enshū tea tradition but kept the title of iemoto for a branch of the Enshū tea tradition when there was no one in the original family who could succeed to the title. Therefore, while the iemoto system was primarily based on familial lineage, inheritance of the title was not necessarily exclusive to lineage. The house art was maintained regardless of continuity in bloodlines. 38 Nishiyama, Iemoto no kenkyū, 14. According to the list provided by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, these arts and cultural practices included Shintō, Buddhism, shugendō, Confucianism, medicine, onmyōdō, mathematics, etiquette, flower arrangement, chanoyu, incense burning, noh and kyōgen, waka (verse writing), shō, hichiriki, teki, biwa (musical instruments for the court music), koto, kagura, gagaku (dances for court music), painting, calligraphy, kemari (kickball), linked poem writing, haiku writing, go, shōgi and so on. Many cultural practices were

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Notes monopolized by certain families and were elaborated into what one might call ‘house arts’ and institutionalized in the mid-Tokugawa period.

39 Tsutsui Hiroichi, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, in Chadō no rekishi, ed. Tanihata Akio (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1999). 40 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryōchōsaiinkai ed. Higashikuze Michitomi nikki. Tokyo: Kaumikaikan, 1992. 41 Yasuda, Zenjirō. Shōō chakaiki. Tokyo: Yasuda Zenjirō, 1927. 42 Matsura Atsushi, ‘Jo’, in Matsura Akira-haku den, ed. Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo (Tokyo: Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo, 1930); Yamamoto Nobuki, Kokushi daijiten, 1979. 43 Personal correspondence with Mr Kuga Takashi, the curator at the Matsura Shiryō Hakubutsukan. 44 Following this trend, a number of tea connoisseur circles were also established in the Kinki region towards the end of the Meiji era, becoming more prominent in the Taisho period. This book focuses on the Wakei-kai, since the other circles fall outside the temporal and spatial delimitations of the research. Although Kumakura Isao has done some research on these tea circles in his Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, the protagonists and significance of these circles would merit further attention. 45 Keywords used include: tea (cha) and powdered green tea (tencha, matcha); tea architecture (chashitsu, sukiya); tea gatherings (chakai, chaji); tea making (tencha); tea masters (chajin, chashō); chanoyu (sadō, chadō); tea officers (chadō, sukiyagashira, chabōzu); antiques and tea utensils (chadōgu, chawan, chaire, kottō); tea production and producers (chagyō, chagyōsha); the names of various tea traditions; the names of individuals related to chanoyu, including those who have appeared in other sources used in this book; the names of commercial banqueting spaces (Hoshigaoka charyō, Kōyōkan); the names of antique dealers (e.g. Kohitsu Ryōchū); the names of important tea structures (Rokusō-an, Hassō-an etc.); particular exhibitions (e.g. Kanko bijutsukai); and the names of historical tea-related figures (e.g. Sen no Rikyū, Kobori Enshū, Furuta Oribe, Katagiri Sekishū, et al.). 46 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai ed., Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi (Kyoto: Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, 1903), 7. 47 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 8. 48 Namiki Seishi, ‘Kyoto no shokihakurankai ni okeru kobijutsu’, in Kindai Kyoto kenkyū, ed. Takagi Hiroshi, Ijū Tsutomu and Maruyama Hiroshi (Kyoto:

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Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2008), 325. National Archives of Japan keeps some records from between 1868 and 1874. 49 Kyoto Shimbunshashi Hensaniinkai ed., Kyoto shimbunsha 90-nen-shi (Kyoto: Kyoto Shimbunsha, 1969), 412. Kyotofuritsu Sōgō Shiryōkan holds a copy of Hinode shimbun. The National Diet Library also holds Hinode shimbun, as well as Chūgai Denpō. Kyotofuritsu Sōgō Shiryōkan and the National Diet Library also hold the copies of Kyoto shinpō (which later changed its name to Kyoto shimbun), which were published by Saikyō Shimbunsha between 1871 and 1873. 50 Kyoto Shimbunshashi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto shimbunsha 90-nen-shi, 412.

Chapter 1 1 Itō first studied Chinese medicine under his father and then turned to Western learning (rangaku) and studied under Fujibayashi Fusan (1781–1836). As a biologist, he studied the Owari school of Chinese natural history (honzōgaku) under Mizutani Hōbun (1779–1833) and Western natural history under Phillip Franz von Siebold (1796–1866) during the 1820s. Having studied Carl Peter Thunberg’s (1743–1828) Flora Japonica, he published Taisei Honzō Meiso in 1829. Itō’s work as a biologist combined the knowledge of Chinese and Western medicine and natural history. His aim in doing so, according to Endō Shōji, was to improve his main discipline: medical practice. Sugimoto Isao, Itō keisuke (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1960), 108–09; Endō Shōji, Honzōgaku to yōgaku: Ono ranzan gakutō no kenkyū (Kyoto: Shibunkakushuppan, 2003), 290–91. 2 Keisuke Monjo Kenkyūkai ed., Kinkaō nikki (keiō yonen shōgatsu- urū shigatsu) (Nagoya: Nagoya-shi Higashiyama Shokubutsuen, 1997), 38–9, 65–6, 79–80. 3 Ishin Shiryō Hensan Jimukyoku, Ishin shiryō kōyō, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Meguroshoten, 1939), 468. 4 Keisuke Monjo Kenkyūkai, Kinkaō nikki (keiō yonen shōgatsu- urū shigatsu), 38–9, 65–6, 79–80. 5 Tsumaki Chūta ed., Kido Takayoshi nikki (Tokyo: Nihon Shiseki Kyōkai, 1932–33). A similar pattern of consumption can be found in the diary of Kido Takayoshi (1833–77), who seems to have bought artefacts related to tea practice whenever he visited Kyoto. 6 See for example, Chapter 2. 7 See Chapter 3.

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Notes

8 See Chapter 4. 9 David L. Howell, ‘The Social Life of Firearms in Tokugawa Japan’, Japanese Studies, 29.1 (2009), 65–80. 10 Seki Hideo, Hakubutsukan no tanjō (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2005), 25. 11 La Commission Imperiale Japonaise, Notice sur l’Empire du Japon et sur sa Participation a L’exposition Universelle a Vienne, 1873 (Yokohama: C. Levy, 1873), 49–50. 12 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 6–9 and 40. Machida was a former inspector general (Ōmetsuke) of the Satsuma domain who had studied in London from 1865 to 1867 and who had been to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867 as one of the domainal representatives. 13 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 30; Kuni Takeyuki, Hakurankai to meiji no nihon (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 2010), 48; Yonezaki Kiyomi, ‘Kaidai’, in Ninagawa Noritane, Nara no sujimichi (Tokyo: Chuōkōronbijutsushuppan), 446. At the Bureau, Machida’s colleagues were Itō Keisuke, Tanaka Yoshio (1838–1916) and Ninagawa Noritane (1835–82). Tanaka was a biologist who had studied under Itō and who had also been to the Paris Exposition as a representative of the Shogunate. 14 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 27. 15 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 31–34. 16 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 72–76. 17 Yasumaru Yoshio, Kamigami no meiji ishin (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1979). 18 Shirahata Yōsaburō, Daimyō teien: Edo no kyōen (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1997). 19 Kumakura Isao, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū (Tokyo: Nihonhōsōkyōkaishuppan, 1986), 163–4. For example, in 1871, the Sakai family, the former lords of Himeji Domain, put their household goods up for auction. However, 65 items out of 81, including a number of famous tea-related objects, failed to reach the reserve price, and they thus withdrew the items from auction. 20 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 32. The only catalogue from the Tokugawa era is Matsudaira Sadanobu’s Shūko jisshu compiled in 1800, which is an outcome of his nationwide investigation of antiques. 21 Seki, Hakubutsukan no tanjō, 77. 22 Hōmushō ed., Hōrei zensho, vol. 6 (Tokyo: Naikaku Kanpōkyoku, 1912), 217–19. 23 Hōmushō, Hōrei zensho, 217–19. 24 Hōmushō, Hōrei zensho, 221. 25 Dajōruiten part 2, vol. 169, case 30. National Archives of Japan. 26 Dajōruiten part 2, vol. 169, case 30. National Archives of Japan.

Notes

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27 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 9. Ninagawa was appointed by the Ministry of Education. It appears that Kishi Kōkei unofficially accompanied the group because his name is only found in Ninagawa’s journal, Nara no sujimichi. Moreover, when the Central Office of the Great Council of State (Dajōkan Seiin) made inquiries regarding the names and the number of the officers who were involved in this survey, the Ministry of Education replied that there were only four people – Machida, Uchida, Seko and Ninagawa – taking part in the mission. Thirtieth day, eighth month, fifth year of Meiji. Kōbunroku Meiji 5, vol. 47, case 24. National Archives of Japan. 28 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 9. 29 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 9. 30 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 9. 31 Dajōruiten part 2, vol. 169, case 30. National Archives of Japan. 32 The Bureau of Products was transferred from the Institute of Education to the Ministry of Education (Monbushō) and changed its name to the Museum Bureau (Hakubutsukyoku) in 1871. 33 Yonezaki, ‘Kaidai’, 437. 34 Yonezaki, ‘Kaidai’, 448; Kōbunroku Meiji 5, vol. 47, case 24. National Archives of Japan. 35 Ninagawa was born in a family who had worked for generations as members of the lower-level staff of Tōji in Kyoto, a prestigious Esoteric Buddhist temple that had originally functioned to provide protection for the nation. He had loved old things since his childhood and studied them by visiting eminent specialists and investigating precious treasures. Even prior to the Jinshin Survey, Ninagawa had already been to temples and shrines in various regions to investigate the treasures they possessed. Yonezaki, ‘Kaidai’, 438. 36 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 29–30. 37 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 29–30. 38 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 21. 39 Third day, eighth month. Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 153–4. 40 Fourth and fifth day, eighth month. Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 144–55. 41 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 392–7. 42 Sunkoroku is a type of ceramic produced in Thailand since the fourteenth century and imported to Japan during the reign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the early period of the Tokugawa era. ‘Sunkoroku’, Daijisen, 1998. 43 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 392–3. 44 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 85–7.

136

Notes

45 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 155–9, 321, 325, 326 and 331. Ninagawa’s preferences with respect to chanoyu are not clear from the journal. However, he seems to have had a social relationship with the house head of the Yabunouchi tea tradition. Ninagawa gave the latter an Awata ceramic clove burner (chōji buro) and a sake cup as a memento when Ninagawa’s father passed away during his trip, and distributed a number of chanoyu-related items in memory of his father. He also ‘enjoyed’ visiting the Eiraku – a family that had been making tea ceramics since the mid-eighteenth century – and purchased some Kiyomizu ceramics from Kiyomizu Rokubei and Shichibei during his stay in Kyoto for the survey. 46 Ninagawa, Nara no sujimichi, 392. 47 Takeyuki Kuni, Hakurankai no jidai: Meiji seifu no hakurankaiseisaku (Nagoya: Iwatashoin, 2005), 32–3. 48 Wagner was a German chemist, while von Siebold a son of the famous Dutch physician who lived in Dejima in the late Edo period, had worked as a government interpreter from the end of the Edo period. 49 Hakurankaijimukyoku, Ōkokuhakurankai hikki, 1875, 16–19. 50 Kuni, Hakurankai to meiji nihon, 58. 51 Tanaka Yoshio and Narinobu Hirayama eds., Ōkokusandō kiyō (Tokyo: Moriyama Harufusa, 1897), 16–17. 52 Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan ed., Tokyo kokuritsu hakubutsukan hyakunenshi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, 1973). 53 Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Tokyo kokuritsu hakubutsukan hyakunenshi; Michael Moser, Fotoalbum mit japanischen Exponaten auf der Wiener Weltausstellung 1873. Bildarchiv Austria. Sadly, Lord Matsudaira’s prestigious tea utensils were lost at sea when the ship sank off Iruma near Izu while it was carrying the exhibits back from Vienna. 54 National Research Institute for Cultural Properties ed., Meiji bankokuhakurankai bijutsuhin shuppin mokuroku (Tokyo: Chūōkōron Bijutsushuppan, 1997), 41. 55 Weltausstellung,Officieller General-Catalog (Vienna: General Direction, 1873). 56 Japanischen Ausstellungescommission, Catalog der Keiserlich Japanischen Ausstellung (Wien: Ver. Der Japanischen Ausstellungs-Commission, 1873), 46–7. 57 Beikoku Hakurankai Jimukyoku ed., Beikoku hakurankai hōkokusho vol. 1: Shuppin kaisetsu (1876), 220. 58 Beikoku Hakurankai Jimukyoku ed., Beikoku hakurankai hōkokusho vol.2: Shuppin mokuroku (1876), 6–24; Japanese Commission, International Exhibition, 1876: Official Catalogue of the Japanese Section and Descriptive

Notes

137

Notes of the Industry and Agriculture (Philadelphia: Japanese Commission, 1876), 15. 59 See for example, Satō Dōshin, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: Bi no seijigaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1999); Princess Akiko of Mikasa, ‘Morse says Karatsu: Reconstructing the History of Japanese Ceramics in the West’, Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Japanese Art History for Graduate Students, Opposition and Fusion in Visual Art, March 2008. 60 Christine Guth, Art, Tea and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Chapter 2 1

Kyoto-shi ed. Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 7 (Kyoto: Gakugeishorin, 1974), 34–6.

2

Kyoto-shi, Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 7, 132.

3

Nishiyama Matsunosuke, Iemoto no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1982), 355–6. According to Nishiyama, although their terms of employment were different from those of the other vassal sukiyagashira, the family heads of the Senke houses had also served as sukiyagashira for various domains during the Tokugawa period: the family head of the Omotesenke House had served Kii Domain, the family head of the Urasenke House Kaga Domain, and the family head of Mushanokōji House Matsuyama Domain. They were exceptional in being able to base themselves in Kyoto while providing their expertise occasionally, whenever needed, to the domain lords.

4

Nishiyama, Iemoto no kenkyū, 367–71.

5

Kitazawa Noriaki, Me no shinden (Tokyo: Brucke, 2010), 123–4.

6

National Research Institute for Cultural Properties ed., Meijiki fuken hakurankai shuppin mokuroku-meiji 4-9-nen (Tokyo: Chūōkōronbijyutsushuppan, 2004), 37–43.

7

National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Meijiki fuken hakurankai shuppin mokuroku-meiji 4-9-nen, 37–43.

8

National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Meijiki fuken hakurankai shuppin mokuroku-meiji 4-9-nen, 82–5.

9

National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Meijiki fuken hakurankai shuppin mokuroku-meiji 4-9-nen, 92–3.

10 Peter F. Kornicki, ‘Public Display and Changing Values: Early Meiji Exhibitions and Their Precursors’, Monumenta Nipponica, 49.2 (1994), 167–96. Since the

138

Notes mid-eighteenth century, scholars from the fields of medicine and biology had organized the public display of natural objects (bussankai). Temples and shrines have a longer history of displaying their cultural and religious assets, in events in which they showcased their treasures as a means of raising funds (kaichō). At the high end, there was the public display of pictorial art and calligraphy (shogakai). There were also freak shows and street entertainments that had more popular and commercial characteristics (misemono).

11 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai ed., Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi (Kyoto: Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, 1903), 3. 12 Kyotofushiryô betsubu hakurankai. Manuscript, National Archives of Japan. 13 Kyotofushiryô betsubu hakurankai. Manuscript, National Archives of Japan. 14 Kyotofushiryô betsubu hakurankai. Manuscript, National Archives of Japan. 15 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 3. 16 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 3. 17 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 2. 18 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 3. 19 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 13- 19. 20 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 31. 21 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 417. 22 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 38; Maruyama Hiroshi, ‘Meiji shoki no kyoto hakurankai’, in Bankoku hakurankai no kenkyū, ed. Yoshida Mitsukuni (Kyoto: Shigunkaku Shuppan, 1986), 237. 23 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 417. 24 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 189. 25 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 197. 26 See for example, Harada, Chōnin chadōshi, and Tanihata, Kinsei chadōshi. 27 Shimizu Minoru, ‘Mitsui-ke to chanoyu’, in Chadō no rekishi, ed. Tanihata Akio (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1999), 189–224. 28 Tanaka Yutaka, ‘Hirase Rokō to Osaka no chanoyu’, in Chadō no rekishi, ed. Tanihata Akio (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1999), 225–62. The Hirase family not only supported the Mushanokōji House financially but also kept the title of iemoto – as a trustee – when no male successor was available in the house. 29 Tsutsui Hiroichi, ‘Kamiryū no cha to shimoryū no cha’, in Chadō shūkin, vol. 5, ed. Murai Yasuhiko (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1985), 52–7. 30 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 408–9. 31 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 408–9. 32 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 408–9.

Notes

139

33 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 410. 34 Saikyō Shimbun, ‘Kyoto-fu gijiroku’, 21 May 1880; Kyoto-fu Sōgō Shiryōkan ed. Kyoto-fu hyakunen no shiryō, vol. 9 (Kyoto: Kyoto-fu, 1973), 52. 35 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 413. 36 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 414. 37 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 414. 38 Kyoto Furitsu Daiichi Kōtō Jogakkō ed. Kyoto furitsu daiichi kōtō jogakkō sōritsu dai 35-nen kinenshi (Kyoto: Kyoto Furitsu Daiichi Kōtō Jogakkō, 1907), 5. 39 Kyoto Furitsu Daiichi Kōtō Jogakkō, Kyoto furitsu daiichi kōtō jogakkō sōritsu dai 35-nen kinenshi, 102. 40 Kyoto-fu Sōgō Shiryōkan, Kyoto-fu hyakunen no shiryō, vol. 2, 731; Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 60–61. 41 Kyoto-fu Sōgō Shiryōkan, Kyoto-fu hyakunen no shiryō, vol. 2, 427. 42 Kyoto-shi ed. Kyoto no rekishi, vol. 8 (Kyoto: Gakugeishorin, 1973), 175. 43 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 225–6. 44 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 229–34.

Chapter 3 1

See Chapter 4 for the activities of the Wakei-kai.

2

Ōkubo Toshiaki Kazokusei no sōshutsu (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1993), 169.

3

Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo ed., Matsura Akira-haku den (Tokyo: Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, 1930), 149–51.

4

Patricia J. Graham, ‘Lifestyles of Scholar-Painters in Edo Japan’, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 77.7 (1990), 262–83. Bun refers to training in or learning the arts of peace, and so acting like a ‘bun-jin’ (literatus), which the shogunate had encouraged the warrior elite to do during the Tokugawa period. To be a bun-jin, one must be a practitioner and connoisseur of various arts at the same time: participating in and appreciating noh and kyōgen theatre; composing Chinese and Japanese poetry; playing musical instruments; practising tea, both Chinese literati-style steeped tea (sencha) and chanoyu; practising and knowing the value of paintings and calligraphy; collecting antiques and writing accessories appreciated by Chinese literati.

5

Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Matsura Akira-haku den, 151–7.

6

Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo ed. Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō

7

Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 26.

(Tokyo: Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, 1933), 26.

140

Notes

8

Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 26.

9

Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 27.

10 Kunaichō ed., Meiji tennōki vol. 4 (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1970), 243; Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai ed., Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kasumikaikan, 1992), 293. 11 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 306. 12 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 27. 13 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 362. 14 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 362. 15 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 366–70. 16 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 375. 17 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 270–307. 18 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 314–78. 19 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 314–78. 20 Yūbin Hōchi, 23 August 1876. In August 1876, the Museum Bureau obtained the famous Rokusō-an, a mid-seventeenth-century tea-hut built by a tea master, Kanamori Sōwa (1584–1657), as an exhibit for their future museum. 21 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 446. 22 Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki, vol. 2, 447. 23 Ōkubo, Kazokusei no sōshutsu, 178. 24 Ōkubo, Kazokusei no sōshutsu, 178. 25 17 July 1880. Kasumikaikan Kazoku Shiryō Chōsaiinkai, Higashikuze Michitomi nikki vol. 2. 26 Bondate tencha is a type of tea procedure using a tray. 27 Yamamura Kōzō, A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship (London: Harvard University Press, 1974), 153–5. 28 Yamamura, A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship, 153–5. 29 Yamamura, A Study of Samurai Income and Entrepreneurship, 153.

Notes

141

30 Nagatani Ken, ‘Jitsugyōka bunka no senryakukeishiki’, in Haikaruchā, ed. Aoki Tamotsu (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1999), 177–94. 31 Hereafter referred to as Tea Diary. Takahashi Yoshio, ‘Batsu’, in Yasuda Zenjirō, Shōō chakaiki (Tokyo: Yasuda Zenjirō, 1927). 32 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū. 33 Tokyo nichinichi shinbun, 24 February 1880. 34 Otabe Yūji, Kahō no yukue (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2004), 161–4. According to Otabe Yūji, imperial princes such as princes Fushimi, Yamashina and Higashifushimi started to come to the regular monthly performances of the Umewaka School around 1874 and by 1877. Noh dance was a practice which was associated with the cultural life of the upper-class society involving the imperial families and old aristocracies of both warrior and courtier origins. 35 Yasuda, Shōō chakaiki, 9. 36 Takahashi Yoshio, Kinsei dōgu idōshi (Tokyo: Ariakeshobō, 1990). 37 Takatani Takashi, ‘Kokon chajin keifu taizen’, in Nihon jinbutsu jōhō taikei vol. 85, ed. Haga Noboru (Tokyo: Kishunsha, 2001), 298. 38 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, 193–5.

Chapter 4 1

Yomiuri shimbun, 25 August 1883.

2

Yomiuri shimbun, 15 March 1884.

3

Yomiuri shimbun, 15 March 1884.

4

Yomiuri shimbun, 16 June 1885.

5

Yomiuri shimbun, 6 December 1888 and 16 November 1889.

6

Yomiuri shimbun, 20 November 1889.

7

Yomiuri shimbun, 1 March 1888.

8

Yomiuri shimbun, 4 January and 12 February 1881.

9

Kirisako Kunio, Kindai no chashitsu to sukiya (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2004), 42; Tokyo nichinichi shimbun, 12 June 1880 and 18 February 1881.

10 Yomiuri shimbun, 12 February 1881. 11 Kirisako, Kindai no chashitsu to sukiya, 43–4; Yomiuri shimbun, 12 June 1881. 12 Yomiuri shimbun, 15 March 1881. 13 Asahi shimbun, 1 September 1881; Yomiuri shimbun, 12 June, 29 October 1881, and 29 June 1882. 14 Yomiuri shimbun, 12 February 1881; Kirisako, Kindai no chashitsu to sukiya, 43.

142

Notes

15 Kirisako, Kindai no chashitsu to sukiya, 44. 16 Kirisako, Kindai no chashitsu to sukiya, 43. 17 Chūritsu seitō seidan, 3 April 1881. When the famed Kabuki actors Ichikawa Danjūrō and Onoe Kikugorō applied for the membership, the members of the steering committee – all of them entrepreneurs – rejected their applications, saying, ‘As the club membership includes members of the imperial family, even in the current civilizing era, [we] hesitate to include someone such as an actor as a member. Thus, [we] are not granting the membership’. 18 Kirisako, Kindai no chashitsu to sukiya, 43. 19 Chōya shimbun, 10 July 1884. 20 Tokyo yokohama mainichi shimbun, 13 June 1883. 21 Shinsen Tokyo meisho zue, no. 151. 22 Yomiuri shimbun, 11 October 1884; Shinsen Tokyo meisho zue, no. 151. 23 Yomiuri shimbun, 2 September 1884. 24 Yomiuri shimbun, 15 April 1879 and 1 July 1881. 25 Yūbin hōchi, 23 August 1876; Yomiuri shimbun, 2 July and 1 April 1885. 26 Yomiuri shimbun, 25 November 1885. 27 Yomiuri shimbun, 25 November 1885 and 20 April 1887. 28 Yomiuri shimbun, 10 July 1889. 29 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 435. 30 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū. 31 Yomiuri shimbun, 30 March 1880. 32 Yomiuri shimbun, 9 November 1887. 33 Yomiuri shimbun, 18 November 1887. 34 Yomiuri shimbun, 26 March 1889. 35 Yomiuri shimbun, 13 January 1888. 36 Yomiuri shimbun, 26 March 1889. 37 Yomiuri shimbun, 2 July 1889 and 11 January 1890. 38 Yomiuri shimbun, 21 June 1890. 39 Yomiuri shimbun, 2 June 1890. 40 Yomiuri shimbun, 2 February 1890. 41 Yomiuri shimbun, 6 March 1890. 42 Yomiuri shimbun, 6 March 1890. 43 Nishiyama Matsunosuke, Iemoto no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1982), 130–31; Chiba, Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony, 92. According to Chiba, some tea institutions did not allow women to become disciples until

Notes

143

the late Meiji era. In other words, female chanoyu practitioners were severely underrepresented in Tokugawa society. 44 The extent to which these wives learned chanoyu is not clear. It is possible that these ladies hired tea masters to organize their tea gatherings in a manner similar to the way male tea connoisseurs such as Fujita Denzaburō in Osaka, mentioned above, had done to manage his social life through chanoyu. If tea professionals were involved in these gatherings, the knowledge and skill of chanoyu was not essential or crucial in organizing them. The relationship between women and chanoyu in upper-class society in the Meiji period needs further investigation. 45 Nagai Minoru, Jijo: Masuda Takashi-Ou den (Kamakura: Nagai Minoru, 1939), 566. 46 Nagai, Jijo, 346 47 Guth, Art, Tea and Industry. 48 Guth, Art, Tea and Industry. 49 Yasuda, Shōō chakaiki. 50 Nagai, Jijo. 51 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 53–4. 52 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 56. 53 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 54. 54 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 54. 55 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 54. 56 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 55–6. 57 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 54. 58 Takahashi Yoshio, Tōtochakaiki (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1989), 13. 59 Chamberlain, Basil H., Things Japanese, 1st edition (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1890), 338. 60 Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 338–9. 61 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō. 62 Redesdale, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, The Garter Mission to Japan (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1906), 39. 63 Redesdale, The Garter Mission to Japan, 39–40. 64 Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 338–9. 65 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Shingetsu-an to Chinshin-ryū chadō, 77–8; Jinno Yuki, Shumi no tanjō: Hyakkaten ga tsukutta (Tokyo: Keisōshobō, 1994), 51.

144

Notes

Chapter 5 1

Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai tennōsei to koto (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2006), 128–9.

2

Hinode shimbun, 8 January 1887.

3

Kyotohakurankai Kyōkai ed. Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 235.

4

Kyotohakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 246.

5

Hinode shimbun, 16 January 1887.

6

Hinode shimbun, 16 January 1887

7

Hinode shimbun, 2 February 1887.

8

Hinode shimbun, 8 January 1887.

9

Hinode shimbun, 1 and 2 February 1887; Kunaichō ed., Meiji tennōki, vol. 6 (Tokyo: Yoshikawakōbunkan, 1970), 690–91.

10 Hinode shimbun, 10 February 1887. 11 Yomiuri shimbun, 13 January 1887; Hinode shimbun, 5 February 1887. 12 Hinode shimbun, 5 February 1887. 13 Hinode shimbun, 18 February 1887. 14 ‘Kyoto bijutsu zasshi hakkō no shushi’, Kyoto bijutsu zasshi, 1 (1890), 1. 15 ‘Kyoto bijutsu zasshi hakkō no shushi’, 1. 16 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 260. 17 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 260. 18 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 262. 19 Kyotobijutsuzasshi hakkō no shushi 1, 1. 20 Kyotobijutsuzasshi hakkō no shushi 1, 1–4. 21 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 291. 22 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 293–4. 23 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 292. 24 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 291. 25 Kyoto Hakurankai Kyōkai, Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi, 292. 26 Kyotofuritsu Sōgō Shiryōkan ed. Kyoto-fu hyakunen no shiryō, vol. 2 (Kyoto: Kyotofuritsu Sōgō Shiryōkan, 1972), 427. There were 59,585 visitors to the Twentieth Kyoto Exhibition of 1891, and 61,576 to the Twenty-first Kyoto Exhibition of 1892. 27 Chagyōkumiai Chūōkaigisho ed., Nihon chagyōshi (Tokyo: Chagyōkumiai Chūōkaigisho, 1935), 132. 28 Chagyōkumiai Chūōkaigisho, Nihon chagyōshi, 132–3. 29 Sugiyama Shinya, Japan’s Industrialization in the World Economy (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), 143; Chagyōkumiai Chūōkaigisho, Nihon chagyōshi, 133;

Notes

145

Nihon chagyō bōeki gairan (1935), 116–17. Sugiyama’s suggestion is supported by the fact that the amount of domestic production that appeared in the statistics drastically increased to 46,304,773 pounds sterling in 1881. In the same year, the amount of export was 38,176,946 pounds. 30 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai ed., Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi (Kyoto: Kyoto-fu Chagyōkaigisho, 1994), 356. 31 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi, 356. 32 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi, 358. 33 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi, 358; Ōtani Kahei, ‘Seichagyō no enkaku to sonogenkyō’, in Meiji shōkōshi, ed. Shibusawa Eiichi (Tokyo: Hōchisha, 1910), 240. 34 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi, 376–84. 35 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi, 366. 36 Kyoto-fu Chagyō Hyakunenshi Hensaniinkai, Kyoto-fu chagyō hyakunen-shi, 158–9. 37 Hinode shimbun, 5 January 1895. 38 Hinode shimbun, 5 January 1895. 39 Hinode shimbun, 21 March 1895. 40 Hinode shimbun, 5 January 1895. 41 Hinode shimbun, 5 January 1895. 42 Hinode shimbun, 21 March 1895. 43 Hinode shimbun, 21 March 1895. 44 Hinode shimbun, 21 March 1895. 45 Kuni Takeyuki, Hakurankai no jidai: Meijiseifu no hakurankaiseisaku (Nagoya: Iwatashoin, 2005), 127. 46 Kuni, Hakurankai no jidai, 152. 47 Kuni, Hakurankai no jidai, 144. 48 Hinode shimbun, 11 April 1895. 49 Hinode shimbun, 11 April 1895. 50 Hinode shimbun, 11 April 1895. 51 Hinode shimbun, 11 April 1895. 52 Hinode shimbun, 9 April 1895. 53 Hinode shimbun, 11 April 1895. 54 Hinode shimbun, 13 February 1895. 55 Hinode shimbun, 5 March 1895. 56 Kuni, Hakurankai no jidai, 146–7.

146

Notes

57 Kuni, Hakurankai no jidai, 153. 58 Kyoto Furitsu Daiichi Kōtō Jogakkō, Kyoto furitsu daiichi kōtō jogakkō sōritsu dai 35-nen kinenshi, 14–15. 59 Tsutsui, ‘Iemoto no cha no fukkō’, 445. 60 Kobayashi, ‘Hana’ no seiritsu to tenkai, 285. 61 Kobayashi, ‘Hana’ no seiritsu to tenkai, 285. 62 Kyoto Furitsu Daiichi Kōtō Jogakkō, Kyoto furitsu daiichi kōtō jogakkō sōritsu dai 35-nen kinenshi, 20. 63 Hinode shimbun, 9 April 1898; Takagi, Kindai tennōsei to koto, 158–9. 64 Takagi, Kindai tennōsei to koto, 158–9. 65 Takagi, Kindai tennōsei to koto, 160. 66 Kuroda Nagashige, ‘Hōkokukai ni tsuite’, Hōkokukai shuisho (1897), cited in Takagi, Kindai tennōsei to koto, 160. 67 Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, 165. Although Kumakura describes the movement as a form of ‘nashonarizumu’ (nationalism) in his book, when one closely examines Kumakura’s text, the term ‘pan-Asianism’ seems to be more accurate as he has been describing Japan’s imperial ambition in Asia. Therefore, the translation here avoids the term ‘nationalism’ in an effort to reflect the broader meaning, rather than to carry out a faithful word-for-word translation. 68 Commission Impériale du Japon à l’Exposition Universelle de Paris, 1900. Histoire de l’art du Japon (Paris: M. de Brunoff, 1900). 69 Hinode shimbun, 15 April; Yomiuri shimbun, 30 January 1898. 70 Hinode shimbun, 20 and 24 April 1898. 71 Hinode shimbun, 15 and 16 April 1898. 72 Hinode shimbun, 20 and 23 April 1898. 73 Hinode shimbun, 9 April 1898. 74 Hinode shimbun, 20 and 21 April 1898. 75 Hinode shimbun, 17 and 20 April 1898. 76 Hinode shimbun, 10 April 1898. 77 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Matsura Akira-haku den, 310. 78 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Matsura Akira-haku den, 310. 79 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Matsura Akira-haku den, 310–11. 80 Matsura Hakushaku-ke Henshūnjo, Matsura Akira-haku den, 311. 81 Asahi shimbun, 4 and 12 December 1896. 82 Isono Katsujirō ed. Tenmangū sen’nen-sai kitano kaishi (Kyoto: Isono Katsujirō, 1906), 1. 83 Isono, Tenmangū sen’nen-sai kitano kaishi, 1.

Notes

147

84 Isono, Tenmangū sen’nen-sai kitano kaishi, 2–4 and 26–8. 85 Yomiuri shimbun, 25 March 1902. 86 Hinode shimbun, 25 March 1902. 87 Hinode shimbun, 6 April 1902. 88 Hinode shimbun, 11 April 1902; Isono, Tenmangū sen’nen-sai kitano kaishi, 79–81. 89 Hinode shimbun, 13 April 1902. 90 Hinode shimbun, 28 March 1902. 91 Hinode shimbun, 26 March 1902.

Chapter 6 1

The Meiji government subsequently signed similar treaties with other extraterritorial powers: 22 November 1894 with the US; 1 December 1894 with Italy; 8 June 1895 with Russia; 4 August 1895 with France; and 5 December 1896 with Austria. These treaties all came into effect in 1899 ‘Jōyakukaisei’, Kokushidaijiten (1979–1997).

2

Itō, Meiji Nihon to bankokuhakurankai. Also, Lisa Kaye Langlois, Exhibiting Japan: Gender and National identity at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2004), 1–4.

3

Ishizuki Minoru, ‘Shikago koronbiahaku to kyōiku’, in Bankokuhakurankai no kenkyū, ed. Yoshida Mitsukuni (Kyoto: Shibunkakushuppan, 1986), 200.

4

Rinji Hakurankai Jimukyoku ed. Rinji hakurankai jimukyoku hōkoku (Tokyo: Rinji Hakurankai Jimukyoku, 1895), 92.

5

The Hō-ō-den was a reproduction of an Amitabha Buddha hall attached to Byōdō-in, a villa for Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028).

6

Okakura Kakudzo, ‘The Decoration of the Hō-Ō-Den’, The Decorator and Furnisher, 23.5 (February, 1894), 182.

7

Imperial Japanese Commission of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA, 1893 ed., History of the Empire of Japan (Tokyo: Dainippon tosho kabushikikwaisha, 1893).

8

Imperial Japanese Commission of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA, 1893 ed., History of the Empire of Japan. The authors were Shigeno Yasuyori (1827–1910), Hoshino Hisashi (1839–1917), Takatsu Kuwasaburo (1864–1921), Mikami Sanji (1865–1939), and Isoda Masaru (?–?). The book was translated into English by Francis Brinkley (1841–1912).

9

The Japanese Commission, Official Catalogue of the Japanese Section, and Descriptive Notes on the Industry and Agriculture of Japan (Philadelphia: W.

148

Notes P. Kildare, 1876), 107–8; La Commission Impériale du Japon, Le Japon a L’Exposition Universelle de 1878: Premiére Partie, Géographie et Histoire du Japon (Paris: Commission Impériale du Japon, 1878), p. 119; Le Japon a L’Exposition Universelle de 1878: Deuxiéme Partie, Art, Éducation et Enseignment, Industrie Productions, Agriculture et Horticulture (Paris: Commission Impériale du Japon, 1878), pp. 54–5.

10 Langlois, Exhibiting Japan: Gender and National identity at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, 134. 11 Langlois, Exhibiting Japan: Gender and National identity at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, 134. 12 History of the Empire of Japan, 252–3. 13 History of the Empire of Japan, 343–4. 14 Yomiuri shimbun, 20 August 1892. 15 The North Platte Tribune, 24 May 1893. 16 Yūbin hōchi, 12 January 1893; Tokyo nichinichi shimbun, 20 January 1893; The North Platte Tribune, 24 May 1893. 17 The North Platte Tribune, 24 May 1893. 18 The North Platte Tribune, 24 May 1893. 19 The North Platte Tribune, 24 May 1893. 20 Yomiuri shimbun, 31 August 1893; Rinji Hakurankai Jimukyoku, Rinji hakurankai jimukyoku hōkoku, 626. 21 Jiji shinpō, 11 June 1893. 22 Yomiuri shimbun, 12 July 1893. 23 Yomiuri shimbun, 12 July 1893. 24 The North Platte Tribune, 24 May 1893. 25 Nōshōmushō ed., Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku (Tokyo: Nōshōmushō, 1912), 6. 26 Zaimushō, Meiji shonendo ikō ippan kaikei sainyūsaishutsu yosankessan, http:// www.mof.go.jp/budget/reference/statistics/01.xls (accessed 20 August 2011). 27 Official Report of the Japan British Exhibition 1910, at the Great White City, Shepherd’s Bush (1911), 134. 28 Ayako Hotta-Lister, The Japan–British Exhibition 1910 (London: Routledge, 1999), 65–6. 29 The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 8 June 1907. 30 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 432. 31 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 432. 32 Official Report, 199. 33 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 454–5.

Notes

149

34 Official Report, 201. 35 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 453. 36 Official Report, 201; Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 431. 37 Official Report, 201. 38 Official Report, 240. 39 Official Report, 201. 40 Official Report, 199. 41 By 1910, a number of books explaining or referring to chanoyu had been published not only in English but also in other European languages. For example, Wenceslaus José de Sousa de Moraes, O Culto du Cha (Kobe: Kobe Herald, 1905). 42 Nōshōmushō¸ Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 427. The tea utensils on display had been provided by Count Matsura Atsushi, the heir of the deceased notable tea connoisseur Count Matsura Akira. 43 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 842. 44 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 845. 45 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 855. 46 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 844. 47 Times, 1 July 1910; Japan British Exhibition, Official Guide (1910), 109; Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 853. 48 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 862; Official Guide, 109. 49 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 846. Matcha and gyokuro cost one shilling (48 sen) per cup. 50 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 853–4. 51 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 854. 52 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 854. 53 Official Report, 248. 54 Official Report, 242; Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 678. 55 Official Guide, 109. 56 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 854. 57 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 486 and 678–9. 58 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 486. 59 Asahi Shimbun Kisha, Ōbei yūranki (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, 1910) 522. 60 Asahi Shimbun Kisha, Ōbei yūranki, 526. 61 Asahi Shimbun Kisha, Ōbei yūranki, 526. 62 Asahi Shimbun Kisha, Ōbei yūranki, 526.

150

Notes

63 Nōshōmushō, Nichiei hakurankai jimukyoku jimuhōkoku, 854 and 864. 64 Hotta-Lister, The Japan–British Exhibition of 1910, 156–7.

Chapter 7 1

Sen Sōshitsu, Chadō hamano masago (Osaka: Miyake Eikichi, 1903).

2

P.G. O’Neill, ‘Organisation and Authority in the Traditional Arts’, Modern Asian Studies, 18.4 (1984), 636.

3

Chadō hamano masago, vol. 2, 2.

4

Sen Sōshitsu and Genshitsu Sen, Chanoyu michishiruhe (Kyoto: Zuisōkan, 1908).

5

Sen Sōshitsu, Konaraigoto jūroku kajō denju (Kyoto: Fukuda Kinshodō, 1908).

6

Kumakura, Kindai chadōshi no kenkyū, 180.

7

Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1 (October, 1908), 1.

8

Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1, 1.

9

Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1, 1.

10 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1, 1. 11 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1, 1. 12 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1, 6. 13 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.1, 6. 14 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.11 (August 1909), 2.4 (December 1909), and 2.5 (January 1910). 15 See, for example, Masuda Katsunori’s anecdote in Yomiuri shinbun, 12 November 1902. Episodes in Takahashi Yoshio’s Tōto chakaiki also describe well the behaviour of modern industrialist tea connoisseurs. Takahashi Yoshio, Tōto chakaiki (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1989). 16 Chiba, Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony, 92. 17 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.2 (November, 1908), 1. 18 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.2, 1. 19 Kon’nichi-an geppō 1.2, 1–2. 20 Kon’nichi-an geppō, 1.2, 1–2. 21 Kon’nichi-an geppō, 1.2, 2. 22 For more on the iemoto system in the 1920s and 1930s, see, for example, Hirota Yoshitaka, Kingendai ni okeru chanoyu iemoto no kenkyū (Tokyo: Keibunsha, 2012), and Tim Cross, Ideologies of Japanese Tea (Kent: Global Oriental, 2009).

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Primary sources Unpublished Materials Moser, Michael. Fotoalbum mit japanischen Exponaten auf der Wiener Weltausstellung 1873. National Archives of Japan. Dajōruiten. _____. Kōbunroku Meiji 5. _____. Kyotofushiryō betsubu - Hakurankai.

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Index

An authentic Japanese decorative schema 78, 79 Basil Hall Chamberlain 69, 70, 100 Central Tea Trade Association 80, 97, 104, 105, 106 Chadō hamano masago 110 Chadō kyōkai 119 Chinshin-style chanoyu 47, 48 Chūo chagyō kaigisho 80. See also Central Tea Trade Association Daishi-kai 65, 66 daisu 31, 106 die Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 21, 30 diplomacy official, 60 public, 65, 69, 71, 72, 99, 109, 121 domain lord 20, 23, 41, 45–8, 50, 67, 111, 126 n.4, 137 n.3 Domestic Exhibition 15, 47, 51, 80, 84 elite culture 27 En’nō-sai 14, 62, 63, 85, 109–13, 116–19 Fujimura Yōken 81 Fujita Densaburō 58, 87, 143 n.44 Garter Mission of 1906, the 69, 100 Gengen-sai 41, 42, 63, 85, 112, 118, 119 Gion 39, 40, 83, 84 girls’ secondary school 7, 8, 43. See also Jogakkō girls’ vocational training school 40, 43 Great Tea Gathering at Kitano (Kitano ōchakai) 88, 89 gyokuro 80, 97, 98, 105, 149 n.49

hakurankai 35–8 Higashikuze Michitomi 12, 17, 45, 48–52, 54, 58, 67 high culture 18 History of the Empire of Japan 94–6 Hōkō Sanbyakunen-sai 86–9 Hoshigaoka charyō 60–4, 132 n.45 iemoto 9, 10, 18, 35, 36, 40, 41, 62, 63, 75, 87, 88, 90, 91, 110–16, 118, 119, 122, 123, 131 nn.37–8, 138 n.28 Imperial Household artist 78 the Ministry of 25, 50, 58, 78 Imperial Museum 49, 62, 87 Industrial Exhibition 17, 22, 75, 80, 81, 82, 84 institutional patronage 5, 6, 111 international exposition 21, 22, 33, 72, 93, 94, 95, 122. See also world’s fair Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 18, 71, 93, 99, 100, 101, 103, 106, 122 the History Palace 100, 101, 102, 105 the Women’s Pavilion 100, 103 Jogakkō 8, 43, 129 n.23. See also girls’ secondary school Jokōba 43. See also girls’ vocational training school kaigu 31 Kanamori Sōwa 140 n.20 Kitano Sen’nen-sai 89 Kitano Shrine 83, 84, 88–90 Kon’nichi-an geppō 112, 114, 115, 116 Kōyō-kan 59–61, 63, 68 Kūchū-an 70, 71 Kyoto Art Magazine 78

160

Index

Kyoto bijutsu kyōkai 77 Kyoto bijutsu zasshi. See Kyoto Art Magazine Kyoto Exhibition 14, 15, 17, 36–41, 43, 45, 73, 74, 76–9, 82, 88–91, 144 n.26 Kyoto-fu chūō chagyō kumiai 80 Kyoto Girls’ School 63, 85 Kyoto hakurankai 14, 15, 37, 39. See also Kyoto Exhibition Kyoto hakurankai enkakushi 14, 15, 38 Kyoto hakurankaisha 14, 17, 38 Kyoto Jogakkō 85. See also Kyoto Girls’ School Kyoto Tea Trade Association 80, 81 legitimate culture 6 Machida Hisanari 16, 22, 23, 25, 26, 30, 33, 62, 121, 134 nn.12–13, 135 n.27 Masuda Takashi 33, 54, 58, 65, 67, 68 Matsuda Sōtei 61, 64 Mitsui Hachirōemon 36, 38, 75, 88, 89 Mitsui Takayoshi 75. See also Mitsui Hachirōemon Mitsukoshi Dry Goods Store 69, 71 Miyako Odori Festival 39, 43, 45, 84, 87, 89 Mori Kansai 78 Mushanokōjisenke House 2, 35, 41 Nihon teikoku 30 Ninagawa Noritane 11, 16, 25–30, 121, 134 n.13, 135 n.27, 135 n.36, 136 n.46 Okakura Kakudzō (Kakuzō) 100 Omotesenke House 35, 37, 40–3, 49, 63, 75, 76, 87, 89, 90, 137 n.3 Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 32, 33 Prince Arthur of Connaught 69, 70–2 public display 5, 10, 35, 36, 38, 137–8 n.10 Rokumei-kan 59, 60 Rokuroku-sai 42, 43, 75 Rokusō-an 49, 62, 140 n.20 Ryūchikai 61 ryūrei 39, 118

Sanjō Sanetomi 46, 57–8, 61, 62 Sano Tsunetami 30, 58, 61 Seki Ashio 63, 64 sencha 49, 75, 80, 81, 82, 97, 105, 139 n.4 Sen no Rikyu 81, 87, 88, 91, 102, 110, 112, 116 Sen Sōshitsu 2, 38 Sen Sōtan 81, 112 Sen Sōza 49, 50 Sen Yukako 62, 85 Shiba Park 59, 63 Shimabara Pleasure Quarter 40, 84 Shōō chakaiki 12, 52 Sienkiewicz, Adam 64 sukiyabōzu 5, 20 sukiyagashira 5, 9, 14, 20–1, 35, 37, 41, 42, 47, 49, 61, 64, 72, 111, 137 n.3 Takahashi Yoshio 52, 68, 69 tea offering ceremony 49, 75, 87 tea producers 6, 16, 18, 79–81, 89, 90, 93, 97, 104, 106 Teishitsu gigei-in. See Imperial Household Artist Tokugawa authority 5, 6, 20 Tōto chakaiki 68, 150 n.15 Toyotomi Hideyoshi 29, 76, 86–9, 95, 96, 102, 103 Urasenke House 2, 14, 18, 35, 37, 40–2, 50, 62, 63, 76, 85, 89, 90, 107, 109–17, 119, 122, 131 n.36, 137 n.3 Viennese World Exhibition of 1873, the 15, 21–2, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 62. See also die Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 von Hellben, Theodor 64 von Siebold, Alexander 30, 33, 136 n.48 Wagner, Gottfried 30, 31, 136 n.48 Wakei-kai 13, 45, 65–9, 88, 132 n.44 Wakisaka Yasuaya 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 75 World’s Columbian Fair 1893 18, 33, 78, 80, 93–5, 97, 99, 104, 122 world’s fair 16, 72, 95. See also international exposition

Index Yabunouchi House 39–42, 81, 89, 90 Yabunouchi Jōchi 81, 82 Yabunouchi tea tradition 37, 136 n.46 Yamada Akiyoshi 57, 58, 62

161

Yamagata Tomoko 64 Yanagihara Naruko 64 Yasuda Zenjirō 12, 13, 17, 45, 51–5, 59, 67 Yodomi tea-hut 81