侘び茶：日本のホスピタリティの技術Wabi-cha: Japan’s Techniques of Hospitality

This time, the focus is on wabi-cha, one of the origins of Japan’s hospitality techniques.

Hospitality involves a relationship between host and guest. As the etymology of “hospitality” contains an implication of “hostile,” inserting this element creates a certain tension between the two parties. Read through a Japanese lens, this becomes the concept of “marebito” as proposed by the folklorist Shinobu Orikuchi.

Marebito refers to “strangers” or “otherworldly visitors.” These strangers are other beings who possess abilities and techniques that the host does not. They are not gods (god) but kami, beings that bring the “absence of the host” into the host’s world, thereby introducing an inevitable tension.

In ancient times, marebito were thought to be foreign visitors who came from the distant edges of the sea or the mountains—realms considered “otherworlds” beyond the village community.

These marebito, who represented what was absent in the community, would visit at certain predetermined times. The villagers, as their hosts, were obliged to welcome them. There was an implicit norm that, after their appointed time had passed, the marebito would always depart.

In exchange for their hospitality, marebito would employ techniques that the villagers did not have, performing roles in rituals—such as calming the forces of nature—that the local people could not fulfill themselves. Although these customs have died out, until around the 1960s, various marebito traditions still remained across Japan.

During the samurai era, diverse hospitality techniques were practiced, one of which was wabi-cha. Today, the Way of Tea is often regarded as a mere traditional cultural practice of preparing and drinking tea.

However, the true essence of the Way of Tea lies in a sophisticated hospitality technique of spatial design and atmosphere creation, not simply in the tea itself.

The leading figures in this were the tea masters of the samurai era.

The custom of drinking tea in Japan began in the Kamakura period, when the Chinese monk Eisai (1141-1215) introduced tea. Later, the monk Murata Juko (1422–1502) applied a Japanized Buddhist philosophy to tea, giving rise to the concepts of the tearoom and tea utensils. This process created the highly refined culture of wabi-cha.

What Juko emphasized was the equal relationship between host and guest—this was precisely hospitality. In fact, the essence of wabi-cha is a hospitality technique, not inherent in the tea itself. This point is often misunderstood even today.

It was Takeno Joo (1502–1555) who elevated wabi-cha, this form of Japanese hospitality, to the level of a cultural art.

At that time, Japan was in the Sengoku Period, an age of warring states where various warlords rose and vied for power. Among the many places drawing attention was Sakai in Osaka, a major hub of arms trade and weapons manufacturing.

In fact, during the Sengoku Period, the only self-governing cities in Japan were Sakai and Hirano.

In particular, Sakai, as a thriving trading port, was home to merchants whose powers of commerce—such as the buying and selling of weapons—held real sway over warlords who aimed to unify the country. To put it plainly, a warlord who could not bring the merchants of Sakai to his side had no future.

As Sakai developed into a prosperous commercial city, its merchants became a pivotal point influencing political developments. They adapted the tea culture, originally rooted in Buddhism, for the purpose of entertaining guests during negotiations and business dealings. Born into a family of arms merchants in Sakai, Joo stood at this intersection.

Joo reformed the tearoom, where secret meetings such as arms deals took place. He decorated the interior with ink paintings and collected Chinese masterpieces, thereby creating a new spatial environment free from direct Buddhist influences.

As a leader of wabi-cha, he is said to have drawn close even to the shogun, and through wabi-cha (and the private meetings held through it) he gained considerable political influence.

The new era of the Way of Tea that Joo opened was inherited and further developed by Sen no Rikyu (1522–1591), revered as the founder of the Way of Tea.

By the time of Rikyu, Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) of Owari Province was rapidly conquering neighboring territories, nearly achieving the dream of national unification. With his overwhelming power, Nobunaga exerted pressure on Sakai, the autonomous city, eventually stripping it of its self-governance in 1569 and bringing it under his control.

Having secured the heart of weapons manufacturing, Nobunaga ordered Sakai to produce firearms on a large scale in order to build the strongest corps of gunners. During this period, Rikyu won the trust of warlords through successive secret negotiations among Sakai’s arms merchants, Portuguese missionaries (who effectively held weapons privileges), and the military leaders.

If one was born into a merchant family in Sakai at that time, mastering wabi-cha was essential. Moreover, since one had to obtain Chinese and Japanese ceramics, a command of the arts was needed as well.

Rikyu, also born into a merchant family in Sakai, drew on his many connections, caught Nobunaga’s eye, was appointed his tea master, and rose to prominence at once.

Bringing together samurai, merchants, and missionaries for negotiations both open and hidden, Rikyu gradually became a political fixer.

After Nobunaga’s death, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), who had risen from the peasantry, succeeded him, and Rikyu became more valued still.

Where his predecessor had dealt with warlords born into samurai houses, Rikyu now dealt with a new ruler who had risen from the peasantry, and Hideyoshi reshaped the samurai-style wabi-cha one step after another.

For example, Hideyoshi drastically reduced the size of tearooms. This closed the distance between him and the people he met in private and arranged the gathering to suit his own intentions. At times he also had tea utensils and tearooms made with gold in abundance.

In the end, Rikyu clashed with Hideyoshi and, by Hideyoshi’s order, was forced to commit seppuku. Thus ended Rikyu’s life. Where, then, did the essence of Rikyu, the one who brought wabi-cha to its fullest, lie, tossed about as he was by politics?

It lay in the technique of “shitsurae”—arranging the tearoom’s environment so as to place even opposing guests in an equal relationship, preventing them from going to war. It was a sophisticated form of hospitality.

In fact, the original tearoom was a space where people were not viewed hierarchically but placed in an equal, tense relationship. It truly embodied the essence of Japanese hospitality.