Hideyoshi and Rikyū

by Nogami Yaeko

  Rikyū had devoted his life to the study of chanoyu, the tea ceremony, and his name was well known among lords across Japan. Hideyoshi gave him the impressive salary of three thousand koku to serve as his tea teacher, and everyone knew he consulted Rikyū about politics as well.

  Whenever Hideyoshi came to visit, Rikyū wanted to appear as if he had been ready and waiting for him. Being ready meant a lot of preparation, so he had to wake up much earlier in the morning than the other residents of Jurakudai.

  Rikyū never let anyone else clean or arrange utensils in his tearooms. He had a three-and-three-quarter-tatami-mat room and a four-and-a-half-mat room at his residence in Jurakudai. The four-and-a-half-mat room was named Fushinan, the “Mysterious Hut,” inspired by a Zen proverb that ran, “Mysteriously the flowers open. Spring today.” The poem was from a scroll written by Kokei, an abbot from Daitokuji Temple in Kyōto. He taught Zen to Rikyū, but was a student of Rikyū’s in tea. He had been Rikyū’s closest friend ever since they had both been living in Sakai.

  Rikyū gave particular care to the preparation of the hiire, a small bowl of clay that held hot coals to light guests’ pipes. The coal sat on a bed of ash. Since the moisture in the air affected the quality of the ash, Rikyū changed the amount and the arrangement of the ash and the coal every day, whether it was sunny or cloudy, windy or still, winter or summer.

  Now that he was approaching the age of seventy, his hands were getting rough and wrinkled like a maidservant’s during cold weather. His hands were as big and sturdy as the rest of his body, but when he prepared tea for his guests, those hands moved delicately.

  For Rikyū, cleaning the tearoom required the same attention to detail as preparing tea for the guests. Did he do his chores each morning humbly, for the love of the pure discipline of tea? He did, and he didn’t.

  Hideyoshi existed in Rikyū’s consciousness; whether Hideyoshi was physically there or not, Rikyū was ready to serve him. Whenever Hideyoshi appeared, Rikyū wanted to welcome him as if he had been waiting for him. If Hideyoshi wanted to consult Rikyū, Rikyū wanted to answer as if he were expecting the question. Sometimes, when Hideyoshi came to the tearoom, he would ask to eat breakfast there. When that happened, Rikyū didn’t want to appear surprised.

  Hideyoshi made such requests abruptly, as the spirit took him. On those occasions, he would use the Owari dialect that he had spoken as a young man. This was meant to show his affection for Rikyū, but Rikyū knew he couldn’t let down his guard. Conversely, when Hideyoshi spoke to him in this manner, he knew he had to be more polite than ever.

  For Rikyū, returning to Sakai was an escape from the demands of his life at Jurakudai. This time, following Emperor Goyōzei’s visit to the palace, there had been two weeks of constant tea gatherings for the lords who had come from all over the country to attend the grand ceremony held in the emperor’s honor. Rikyū had been very busy coordinating those events, and now he wanted to relax at home.

  A typical town house, Rikyū’s home was built around a long, narrow garden with a storage shed at the far end. Now, part of the garden was filled with sunlight, and a thicket of bamboo created a black shadow on the white wall of the shed. There was a low garden gate made of branches and twigs; beyond that, around the back of the house, was the teahouse garden.

  After his bath, Rikyū stood on the veranda, his bare feet revealing distinctively thick toenails. His critical eyes passed over each stepping stone in the green moss and examined the old well in the corner of the garden. The well, which was covered with a bamboo grate, was called “Camellia Well” because it was close to a camellia tree that bloomed in the winter with simple but beautiful flowers.

  The quality of the water from this well was exceptionally good, especially for Sakai, where the soil was very rough. The well was nearly twenty feet deep, and it took a long time to draw the water from the bottom, but to Rikyū it was a gift from heaven.

  “We should change the well frame on the seventh of July, during the Tanabata festival,” he said to himself, noticing that the thick frame of the well had some green mold on one corner, and some other parts were rotten.

  Instead of stepping off the veranda to walk through the garden and into the tearoom, however, he continued walking along the veranda through a detached room and into the teahouse kitchen. Beyond that lay a two-and-three-quarter-tatami-mat tearoom. It was Rikyū’s first creation, and every curved oak pillar held a profound memory for him. On the opposite side of the room was the guests’ entrance, a sliding door only three feet high. North of the guests’ entrance there was a raised brazier that recently had replaced the sunken hearth used in the wintertime. A rounded tile was embedded in the ash in the window of the brazier. There was an iron kettle sitting quietly on the brazier, poised to start singing as soon as another piece of charcoal was added. It had a pattern of raised dots covering its surface, which represented hail. The lingering scent of incense filled the air. The arrangement of the ash in the brazier was skillfully done. In the alcove was a Chinese scroll with an ink brush painting of a peony by Sō Joshi. Although it was narrower than a typical scroll, it was one of Rikyū’s favorites.

  Rikyū left the tearoom and glanced at the guests’ waiting area and the water basin outside. His morning routine concluded, he went to the room where Riki had prepared breakfast for him.

  “Was it you who arranged the room today?” he asked her.

  “No, it was Kisaburō.”

  Kisaburō was their youngest son. Rikyū had another son, Dōan, from his first wife. After her death, he had married Riki, who had a son of her own, Shōan, from her previous marriage. Kisaburō was Rikyū and Riki’s child. They also had three daughters.

  Riki told him that earlier that morning, the master carpenter who worked for Rikyū had come to the house to talk about repairing one of the storehouses where the riverbank met the beach. Kisaburō had left with him. “Kisaburō was in a hurry, so the arrangement of the tearoom must have been done quickly,” Riki said.

  “If he practiced tea seriously, he would be the equal of his brothers.”

  “Well, you know what he’s like. I don’t know what he’s thinking—or what to do with him.”

  Riki was twenty years younger than Rikyū, a small and slender woman. She was wearing a delicately patterned indigo-blue kimono, the fashionable velvet lining of her under-kimono showing at the neckline. Every time Riki talked about her youngest son, her beautiful face clouded over.

  Putting the topic aside for the moment, Rikyū opened the top of the worn lacquer box that held his meal. He’d had the box since he was young, and still used it whenever he ate at home. After he’d taken the big rice bowl and ivory chopsticks out of the box, Riki served rice porridge cooked with seaweed stock from an earthen pot. Every morning Rikyū ate rice porridge served with a dish of seasonal cooked vegetables and pickles.

  “Will they finish fixing the storehouses on the beach soon?” he asked.

  “I wonder. I heard that the old foundations have to be replaced.”

  “It might take a while, then.”

  “And the master carpenter told me that a lot of the carpenters and plasterers want to go to Ōsaka, so it’s difficult to keep them.”

  “Hmm.” Rikyū slowly ate his rice porridge.

  The harbor at Sakai extended south from the mouth of the Yamato River. Sakai was built on Ōsaka Bay, where blue waves swelled gently. Trade ships came there not only from Shikoku, Chūgoku, and Kyūshū, but also from Ise and Owari, through the fast current of the Kitan Channel. Even though direct trade with Sung and Ming China had nearly stopped because of rampant Japanese piracy, big Chinese boats with brightly painted bows could still be spotted occasionally.

  Ever since the Christian feudal lords in the ports of Hakata and Nagasaki in Kyūshū had developed a special relationship with the European ships and their Jesuit missionaries, the prosperity of the older port of Sakai had been under threat. But European merchants also brought luxury items to Sakai: raw silk
, refined silk, twilled fabrics, damask silk, velvet, fur, precious stones, red sandalwood, ebony, exotic foods, lead to make bullets for the guns that were a necessity for the current battles, lacquerware, and other war supplies like saltpeter, and silver, which brought the highest profits.

  Despite the competition from other ports, Sakai’s merchants were still prosperous, taking advantage of demand for their goods in nearby Kyōto and Ōsaka. They traded with ships from Vietnam and the Philippines, and even with the Europeans, who came only once or twice a year. To keep these and other precious goods safe, the wealthy merchants of Sakai kept specially equipped storehouses. From these the merchants got their name—nayashū, the storage guild.

  The beach in Sakai was lined with warehouses. It was common to carve the crest of the family who owned the warehouse into the wood below the roof gables, but in this area the crests were painted on tile, showing the wealth and prestige of the families.

  Boats sailed to and from the port in an endless stream. At the end of the day, when the crews of the cargo boats had finished their work, the sails were pulled down, exposing the masts like bare trees in a winter field. Amid the forest of masts were the smaller rowboats, scurrying back and forth like naughty boys. Closer to the shore, crews of cargo handlers shouted back and forth to the sailors on the boats. The white walls of the storage houses formed a line on the sand, contrasting with the blue waves that lapped this old port city still humming with dignity and life.

  Rikyū was one of the nayashū. He came from a family of fish wholesalers. Unlike other fish merchants, his house owned their own nets and boats, and hired their own fishermen. Among other things they sold salted pickled fish, and they needed a good storage building to preserve it. Rikyū didn’t sell fresh fish, however, so he could not expect the same profits as the families that did.

  Hideyoshi was building a new castle in Ōsaka, and entire towns were springing up on the profits from the construction. Because of that, the local carpenters were all going to Ōsaka, where they could make more money. Because fish could be sold for a higher price in Ōsaka, the fishing boats that used to do business with Rikyū’s family had started to go there without stopping at Sakai. But that was not the only reason why the business wasn’t as successful as it had been in previous generations.

  Right now, Rikyū was more than the head of a wholesale business; he was a tea master, and Hideyoshi’s political advisor. Riki was an intelligent woman, the product of a family that practiced the Konparu school of Noh theater. She was very skilled in Noh dance and singing, and she was good enough at tea ceremony to practice with Hideyoshi’s wife and mother when she visited Kyōto with Rikyū. Riki could assist Rikyū with tea ceremony, but not with running the family business.

  Dōan and Shōan had both become professional tea ceremony teachers. The elder, Dōan, was receiving a salary of five hundred koku from one lord to teach tea ceremony and host official tea gatherings, just as his father did for Hideyoshi. However, he had chronic rheumatism in his feet, and often had to go to the Arima hot springs for treatment. Neither son could leave his position to take over the family business, so that left only Kisaburō.

  Kisaburō was a very handsome man, intelligent and unyielding, but at eighteen he seemed too unsettled to run a business. Kisaburō often commented that his father’s and brothers’ tea was too fanciful. And when Kisaburō first undertook the demanding practice of tea ceremony, Rikyū was amazed by his skill and his seriousness.

  Riki’s brother, Torigai Yahei—a Noh actor—suggested to Kisaburō once that with his good looks and fine voice, he could become a Noh performer. Depending on how quickly he learned, he might be very successful. But Kisaburō had answered that if he were going to be a performer, he’d rather do something more fashionable. Leaning up against the wall of the family room in the dim light, he had begun skillfully singing a tune that was popular in Kyōto and Ōsaka. He had learned the song by ear, and his voice was indeed very fine.

  Rikyū wasn’t even sure whether Kisaburō would be coming straight home from the construction area today. Riki had asked him to stay at home to spend time with his father, who had been away for so long. But Kisaburō had purposely gone to the construction site to avoid him. Riki saw her son with a mother’s eyes, but even she was aware that these last few years he was getting more and more difficult to handle. Rikyū had been close to fifty when he married Riki, and then Kisaburō was born. Kisaburō was precious to him, but Riki could see that Kisaburō rejected his father’s affection. Rikyū noticed it too, but told himself it was just because Kisaburō was young and didn’t know what to do with himself, or perhaps that he took his father’s love for granted.

  Rikyū took the last mouthful of his rice porridge. As he put down his chopsticks, he said casually, “He needs to be settled down.”

  Riki looked at him for a moment, her dark-dyed teeth showing through pink lips. Lately, he said something like that every time they spoke about Kisaburō, she thought. “If he were willing to do that, it would be nice. It would be a relief.”

  “Does he have any marriage prospects?”

  “He doesn’t seem to. My brother said something you won’t like.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Kisaburō is not the kind of person to get attached to the wrong type of woman. It would be good to let him do what he wants. Once he’s had a chance to fool around, he’ll be more responsible.”

  A crooked smile dented one of Rikyū’s firm, smooth cheeks. That suggestion for dealing with Kisaburō was typical of his brother-in-law. Torigai Yahei had come to Sakai from Nara, and had established himself as a Noh actor at a very young age. He was a disciple of Yoshikatsu, a master of the Konparu school of Noh. In that school, there were three prohibitions: lustful behavior, gambling, and drunkenness. Of the three, the second one was the only one Yahei didn’t indulge in to excess. But Rikyū didn’t want to bring that up today.

  Rikyū didn’t move after Riki called a servant to take the meal tray out. His shaved head was of a good round shape, and his eyes were equally round. Those round eyes were looking off into the distance, the left side of his thick-lipped mouth twisted up. That was his habit when he was thinking hard about something.

  He was thinking about the eighteen-year-old Kisaburō, comparing him to the dissolute youth his brother-in-law had been. Then he started to think about how very different his own teenage years had been.

  His childhood name had been Yoshirō. From his first lesson with the tea master called Dōchin, who taught tea in the Higashiyama style, Rikyū’s life had been devoted to learning. Later, he had studied with Takeno Jōō, a tea teacher and a master of linkedverse poetry. He had learned both the way of tea and the way of poetry, and that the path to enlightenment was to find a balance point between the old traditions of tea preparation from China and the new, more disciplined philosophy of tea ceremony as developed by Murata Jukō. Jukō, a disciple of the Buddhist monk Ikkyū, who guided Jōō in his tea practice, held that the same principles that apply to Buddhist practice also apply to tea ceremony. As a young student of tea ceremony, decades after Jukō’s death, Rikyū had understood the truth of Jukō’s realization in a way that took him beyond his teachers.

  Young Yoshirō grew and took the name Sen no Sōeki, and then he became Rikyū. One of Jukō’s most famous teachings was that “Wabi is to have a fine horse in a grass hut.” By taking those words to heart and following them strictly in his own practice, Rikyū had developed the discipline that made him a true tea master. But while he had believed those words, his intention had been to create a new way of tea.

  Before Hideyoshi, the military leader of Japan had been Lord Oda Nobunaga. Rikyū had served Nobunaga first, and after Nobunaga’s death he had served Hideyoshi. He had built a tearoom named Taian in Myōkian Temple in the town of Yamazaki for Hideyoshi, and the philosophy behind it was not Jōō’s or Jukō’s. It was Rikyū’s, and it was an example of wabi.

  Jukō had rejected the frivolity o
f tea gambling, in which participants would bet on their ability to identify where a particular tea was grown. He had shifted tea ceremony away from the formal Chinese style to a new wabi style. One of his direct disciples, Awataguchi Zenpō, had gone beyond even the idea of the fine horse and the straw hut: he had used the same cooking pot for tea ceremony that he used to prepare his meals. Rikyū wasn’t yet as extreme as Zenpō. But it wasn’t because he was lazy or lacked discipline; it was because of his aggressive creativity. Rikyū’s deeply rooted internal conflict—his attraction both to wabi and the ostentatious display that Hideyoshi loved so much—was hidden.

  In Taian, Rikyū had reduced the size of the tearoom from six or four-and-a-half tatami mats to a bare minimum of two. He was the one who had created the nijiriguchi, a tearoom entrance modeled on a fisherman’s side door, which was so small that it required people to enter and exit on their knees. And it was Rikyū who had developed walls made from a harmonious mixture of clay and exposed straw.

  Later, in sharp contrast, he had designed a golden tearoom, where the ceiling, walls, alcove, pillar, and even the frames of the paper window screens were made of gold. The room was three tatami mats in size. The mats were dyed cardinal red, with borders of dark blue with gold brocade, and even the tea utensils—the tea container, tea scoop, tea bowl, tray, lid-rest, waste-water bowl, and the metal chopsticks used to arrange charcoal—were gold. The utensils were wiped with a silk cloth of gold brocade. This room was the one that had caused a public sensation.

  The golden tearoom was ordinarily kept in Ōsaka Castle, but because it was made in a portable style, Hideyoshi could bring it to the Imperial Palace. In 1584, on September 7, he had invited Emperor Ōgimachi and other nobles to be his tea guests. In order for Rikyū, a commoner, to attend this special tea ceremony, he had received the name Rikyū with the title koji. He had used that name ever since.