Lit. the hot water for tea. Also known as sadō 茶道 or chadō. The ritual art of preparing and drinking green tea.
Chanoyu has been an integral part of Japanese culture since the 15th century, an important well-spring of native aesthetics, and a major inspiration for the development of new styles of ceramics, architecture, garden design, decorative arts, and painting. Chanoyu has also been a dominant force in connoisseurship and collecting, and has come to be closely linked with the aesthetic concepts of, simple taste *wabi わび and *suki 数寄.
Tea drinking originated in China where it was associated with pharmacology and Daoist beliefs in alchemy and immortality. Lu Yu's 陸羽 (d. 804) Treatise on Tea (Ch: Chajing, Jp: Chakei 茶系, trans. F. R. Carpenter, The Classic of Tea, Boston: Little Brown, 1974) outlined the many virtues of tea as well as explaining its history, the proper method of preparation and the attendant aesthetic of drinking it. Although compressed tea dancha 団茶 was drunk in Japan for medical purposes since the Nara period it was in the 9th century that courtiers drank tea during social gatherings and priests drank it at the conclusion of sutra readings ceremonies. In the late 11th century, the priest Jōjin 成尋 (1011-81) brought back tea bowls *chawan 茶碗 from Song dynasty China, and shortly after that the first powdered tea matcha 抹茶 was imported. The priest Eisai 栄西 (1141-1215), after studying in China, returned to Japan with a new enthusiasm for tea drinking as an adjunct to Buddhist practice. In addition to planting tea, Eisai wrote Kissa yōjōki 喫茶養生記 in 1214, propagating the practice of tea because it preserves health, sharpens the mind, promotes ethical behavior, and leads to spiritual understanding. The book also explains the etiquette of tea preparation and drinking as Eisai learned it in China.
Although tea drinking was formalized as monastic practice in some Zen temples, reportedly as an aid against drowsiness during meditation, by the first-half of the 14th century, the aesthetic dimensions of tea began to emerge. The expansion in tea drinking was facilitated by tea gatherings chayoriai 茶寄合 in which the participants would attempt to distinguish the provenance of different teas based on taste and aroma. These tea-guessing contests, or tōcha 闘茶, were usually part of extravagant parties that featured alcohol, banqueting, music, dance, and poetry composition. The extravagant nature of these affairs earned them the name basara 婆裟羅, from the Sanshrit vajra or diamond, implying excess. Basara style tea gatherings featured the conspicuous display of Japanese and particularly Chinese treasures *karamono 唐物 in the formal reception rooms *zashiki 座敷. The decoration of the zashiki, called *zashikikazari 座敷飾 is illustrated in several painted handscrolls *emaki 絵巻 of the period such as Boki-e 幕帰絵 (1351; Nishi Honganji 西本願寺, Kyoto). The need for a room to hold literary and artistic gatherings led to the development of the gathering room *kaisho 会所.
The taste for Chinese artifacts fueled trade with Ming China and engendered the conspicuous collecting of Chinese and Korean ceramics and lacquer, particularly Song dynasty tenmoku 天目 (Ch: tianmu) tea bowls *tenmoku jawan 天目茶碗, as well as Song and Yuan paintings *sōgenga 宋元画 by artists such as Muqi (Jp: Mokkei 牧谿, late 13th century) and Liang Kai (Jp: Ryō Kai 梁楷, early 13th century). The basara type of tea party reached its height in the Kitayama cultural era *Kitayama bunka 北山文化. The large number of Chinese articles that flowed into Japan for display on the tea-utensil stand *daisu 台子 brought about the need to authenticate genuine works.
During the Higashiyama epoch *Higashiyama bunka 東山文化 connoisseurs known as *dōbōshū 同朋衆 decided on the proper arrangement of tea wares and made catalogs of famous collections, such as the Gyomotsu on'e mokuroku 御物御画目録. The taste for Chinese treasures, karamono suki 唐物数奇 also led to their copy by Japanese artists, stimulating domestic ceramic and painting production. Chanoyu of the Higashiyama period also engendered a new environment for its drinking: the *shoin 書院, a room fitted with *tatami 畳 mats, a decorative alcove *tokonoma 床間, staggered shelves *chigaidana 違い棚, and built-in table tsukeshoin 付書院. The Dōjinsai 同仁斎 shoin built for Ashikaga Yoshimasa 足利義政(1436-90) in the *Tōgudō 東求堂 at his Higashiyama retreat in 1486 is considered the prototype of the shoin.
The last decades of the 15th century saw the further development of chanoyu away from basara practices as the tea master Murata Jukō 村田珠光 (1422-1502) sought to integrate the taste for Chinese articles with the appreciation of more rustic native wares. This finding of beauty in things simple, austere, irregular, and imperfect, was termed wabi. Jukō's follower Murata Sōju 村田宗珠, who held his tea gatherings in a small thatched hermitage *sōan 草庵 in the center of Kyoto, created a new taste that was soon adopted by wealthy merchants in the port of Sakai 堺. Takeno Jōō 武野紹鴎 (1502-55), originally a practitioner of Japanese linked verse, renga 連歌, extended the concept of wabi along the ideals of eremitism long expressed in medieval literature by reducing his sōan tea room to 4 1/2 mats *yojōhan 四畳半 and leaving many of the building materials in their natural state.
Wabicha わび茶 or wabi-style tea reached its apogee in the late creations of another Sakai merchant, Sen no Rikyū 千利休 (1522-91), who eventually served as tea master and confidant to the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1536-98). Rikyū used his position to champion wabicha, further reducing the sōan in size and decor, patronizing new types of native ceramics such as *rakuyaki 楽焼, and making other kinds of tea implements out of unfinished bamboo. Rikyū also added a spiritual aspect to chanoyu, linking the practice of chanoyu with the practice of Zen.
In the Momoyama period chanoyu became increasingly popular with powerful military patrons, serving as proof of their cultural hegemony, a locus for political deal-making, and as an artistic retreat from a brutalized society. Furuta Oribe 古田織部 (1544-1615), a disciple of Rikyū altered the direction of chanoyu, expanding the size of the sōan, adding subsidiary rooms *kusari-no-ma 鎖の間 so it resembled a shoin, and utilizing new tea wares regarded as oddities hyōgemono ヒョウゲモノ because of their bold designs and asymmetrical, unique shapes. Oribe also employed foreign, nanban 南蛮 designs and objects, adding to the heterodox and radical character of his aesthetic. Often called daimyōcha 大名茶 because of its supposed popularity among military patrons, Oribe's taste more accurately reflects the highly mannered spirit of the early 17th century, epitomized by the word kabuku かぶく meaning not to stand straight.
The next major development in chanoyu was affected by Oribe's disciple Kobori Enshū 小堀遠州 (1579-1647), who furthered the concept of daimyōcha, allying it with Confucian ideals of loyalty, and synthesized it with elegant, literary taste of his *kireisabi 綺麗さび aesthetic. Like Oribe, Enshū was a daimyō who served as tea master to the Tokugawa shogunate, but Enshū's close connections with Zen priests, aristocrats, and his experience as a building and garden designer both broadened his approach to tea and helped disseminate his ideas in a variety of media. Enshū not only wrought a reevaluation of vast styles through his selection of new *meibutsu 名物, but significantly altered the design of the *chashitsu 茶室, the type and display of tea wares, the function and style of calligraphy and painting, as well as the appearance and role of garden. Enshū's innovations were borrowed and transformed by later tea masters such as Kanamori Sōwa 金森宗和 (1584-1656) and Katagiri Sekishū 片桐石州 (1605-73). Sen Sōtan 千宗旦 (1578-1658), although the reviver of Rikyū's wabicha and often described solely in terms of the harsh aesthetic of gokuwabi 極わび or wabi in the extreme, was also influenced by the kirei taste of Kan'ei culture. As heir to the Rikyū tradition of wabicha, Sōtan enjoyed great popularity, and after his death three of his sons founded their own lineages which continue to disseminate wabicha throughout Japan until the present day.