Cultivating Femininity

Front matter

239 BATS BIC Ie ne p Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan a j Rebecca Corbett

Cultivating Femininity

Cultivating Femininity

Contents

Acknowledgments | wi

Introduction. / 1 Chapter 1: Women and Tea Culture in Early Modern Japan / 25 Chapter 2: A Handbook for Elite Women's Tea in the Eighteenth Century / 56 Chapter 3: A Handbook for Women’s Tea in the Nineteenth Century / 74 Chapter 4: Guides for Cultivating Femininity / 98 Chapter 5: Guides for Modern Life / 122 Epilogue / 141

Notes / 145 Bibliography / 169

Chapter 1

Uomen and Tea Culture in Early Modern Japan he landscape of tea culture in the Edo period can be

divided into two spheres: a highly codified and institu-

tionalized sphere of elite tea practice for the heads of tea schools; and a popular world of practice in which tea culture was one cultural pursuit among many for the increasing number of people with the time and means to engage in it. The history of tea culture in the Edo period is most often told from the perspective of the elite sphere. In contrast, this chapter maps the entire tea culture landscape, examining both spheres and the overlap between the two. Two developments in particular are highlighted. One is the iemoto system, which led to greater control over the dissemination of information by the institutions of tea culture. Second is the commercial publication boom, which led to widespread dissemination of information about tea culture outside the control of those institutions.

Women were part of the audience for information on tea culture at both the elite and popular levels. But if there were both private and mass-market writings about tea culture that targeted a female audience, to what extent could women of different social backgrounds read these texts? Here women’s education and literacy are examined in order to address this question. Further, what do we know about women’s engagement in tea practice beyond what was written in these texts? Evidence from records of tea gatherings allows us to draw some conclusions about the context of women’s practice, which appears to have been family or household based at the elite level. Finally, who were the women who participated in tea culture during the Edo period? Records of tea gatherings tell us very little beyond their name and family background, but examples from theatre can help flesh out a characterization. The chapter concludes with two such examples from the puppet theater and kabuki that help us imagine what types of women practiced tea and to what ends.

Tea Culture in Early Modern Japan

The practice of drinking tea had come to Japan from China in the Heian period (794-1185) through Buddhist monks who used it as an aid to meditation. It became popular when it was reintroduced by the monk Eisai in the Kamakura period (1185-1333). As tea drinking spread from the priesthood to the nobility in the Muromachi period (1336-1573), it became a form of leisure involving gambling and games in which different types of tea were classified and compared. During the later part of this period, and in the subsequent Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573-1603), tea culture became codified into the form we know today as chanoyu. Although tea culture emerged in Kyoto and its environs, the practice spread throughout the archipelago, especially to the newly established shogunal capital of Edo after 1603, as well as to provincial castle towns and cities. By the nineteenth century, tea culture was practiced in urban and rural areas throughout the Japanese islands by learned and cultured people of all social levels.

Tea culture was closely tied to the world of politics and war from the outset. At roughly the same time that Japan was emerging from decades of domestic warfare among rival warlords in the late sixteenth century, the basic structures of chanoyu as we know them today were codified and institutionalized. Over the course of this thirty-year period and into the first decades of the Edo period (1603-1868), a succession of powerful warrior leaders gradually pacified and unified other warlords under their hegemony. This process began with Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), followed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) and finally Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), who established the Tokugawa shogunate. Among the earliest influential tea masters were merchants from the port city of Sakai—men such as Takeno Joo (1502-1555) and Sen no Rikyü (1522-1591). These merchant tea masters were also political and aesthetic advisers to warlords such as Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Later tea masters took up positions as advisers to the various daimyo and shoguns of the Tokugawa period. Some, such as Ii Naosuke (discussed in chapter 3), combined a career as a tea master with that of a politician and statesman. For their part, warlords like Hideyoshi, Nobunaga, and Ieyasu utilized tea culture as a way of gaining legitimacy in the cultural realm, and they forged political ties through the gifting and exchange of tea utensils.!

Through the patronage of military and political leaders, as well as the efforts of the early chanoyu masters, tea culture became an established and institutionalized part of aesthetic culture. Tea culture encompassed a range of art forms such as calligraphy, painting, ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork, woodwork, architecture, and gardening. It provided one of the main contexts for the patronage, creation, consumption, and display of art in the Edo period. This occurred through the collecting and commissioning of tea utensils by practitioners, the practice of exchanging tea utensils as gifts, and the display of utensils at tea gatherings. The practice of displaying utensils during a tea gathering after the preparation of tea allows for the guest to view them up close (baiken) and enter into a conversation with the host about them. For example, a guest may inquire about the shape and origin of a tea container or about any patterning on the lacquerware. The bamboo tea scoop typically has a poetic name (gornei), which the guests learn from the host during this exchange. The arrangement of utensils (toriawase) forms a story the host is telling to the guests. When both the hosts and guests are knowledgeable in tea and its material culture, the display of utensils functions as a way of conveying that knowledge, as well as the hosts' level of taste and wealth. The utensils used for a tea gathering are noted in a record (chakaiki) kept by the host, along with information about their maker, the materials used, and their names. Tea utensils such as tea bowls, tea caddies, and silk pouches became valued as art objects. Their provenance, history of ownership and use, and aesthetic value all contributed to the high monetary value placed on them. The act of participating in a tea gathering was also seen as an artistic or aesthetic practice, in the same way as a poetry gathering.?

The codification of tea culture as an aesthetic practice began with Joo and Rikya, but this process intensified with subsequent generations of tea masters. Institutionalization occurred as structures were set in place to ensure that the teachings and lineages of early tea masters continued on. A whole range of tea schools emerged in the seventeenth century, broadly divisible into two categories. First were those that were founded by and mainly served commoners. Second were those established by, and catering primarily to, warriors. All tea schools either traced themselves back to or in some way claimed to be the legitimate heirs of the early tea masters who “founded” tea culture, whether by blood descent or through connection to specific teachers and secret teachings. The Sen schools, which dominate the contemporary tea landscape, were established by the great-grandsons of the early tea master Sen no Rikyū. Their father, Sen Sotan (1578-1658), wanted to ensure the stability and longevity of the Sen lineage. He did this by dividing the estate and property in Kyoto among his three sons and aligning each of them with a daimyo household as their tea adviser? Koshin Sosa (1613- 1672) was given the front of the Sen family property, thereby giving his lineage the name *Omotesenke" (omote, meaning “front”). He was employed by the Kii branch of the Tokugawa House. Senso Soshitsu (1622- 1697) inherited the rear, or ura, of the property, thus establishing the Urasenke lineage. He found employment with the Maeda domain. The part of the property bordering Mushanokoji street was inherited by Ichio Soshu (1605-1676), who served the Takamatsu domain and founded the Mushanokojisenke school.

Aside from the Sen tea schools, which traced their lineage back to Rikyū, the other major tea schools established in the seventeenth century were founded by men who also claimed to be heirs to the traditions and teachings of the early masters but were not direct descendants. Many of these schools were founded by daimyo who were also tea masters in their own right, giving rise to the term daimyo cha (warlord tea).* Among these were the Sekishü, Enshü, Oribe, Horinouchi, and Yabunouchi schools. The term “warlord tea” is used because their style of tea practice is said to have been more ostentatious and therefore suited to the lifestyles of military and political leaders, as opposed to the simple, austere style of tea (known as wabi cha) practiced by the Sen schools.

Regardless of the school, the practice of tea was (and is) based in codified procedures for making tea (temae), of which there are numerous varieties. Slight differences between schools exist in manners, ways of moving, and the handling of utensils. With the same basic elements at their core, the procedures change according to the season and the types of utensils being used. The status of the guest, setting (indoor or outdoor, the size and layout of the tearoom), level of formality, and many other factors can go into determining which procedure is followed. Irrespective of the procedure followed for tea preparation, a formal tea gathering has some basic elements: the host lays charcoal; serves a meal (kaiseki); prepares a bowl of thick tea (koicha), shared by all the guests; and a bowl of thin tea (usucha) for each guest.

Today most tea practitioners experience chanoyu through classes first and foremost, with tea gatherings typically held for important events or celebrations. Such tea gatherings are usually large, public or semipublic affairs, and the tea preparation can amount to a performance, with the guests becoming more of an audience than actual participants in the proceedings. In the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, by contrast, tea gatherings were typically small affairs, with a host and up to five guests. The large-scale tea gatherings that feature prominently on the tea calendar today were rare. Classes were held, but it is difficult to know the actual details of how classes were run and what exactly was taught. Certainly, without the same means of mass communication and dissemination of information, it is unlikely that there was as much consistency among teachers as is found today.

That said, a major development in the seventeenth century was the emergence of a system to control the dissemination of information, license practitioners, and authenticate utensils: the iemoto system, as it has come to be known. By the late seventeenth century, tea culture had become popular in both senses of the word: it was practiced by many people and was part of the culture of the majority. In response to the increasing interest in studying tea among an ever-growing section of society, many of the large tea schools developed a new structure.” The iemoto system placed the head of the school (iemoto) in the position of a family patriarch who controlled the licensing system allowing people to practice tea, with licenses being awarded progressively through a structured curriculum. The head also set the standards on matters of taste and connoisseurship for the school, for example, by setting up patronage relationships with particular ateliers.ó Under the head of each school were a number of high-ranking disciples, who in turn had their own students, and the pattern continued down the pyramid to the lowest level of students and teachers. Students and teachers all paid fees to the head according to rank, so the system gave the schools a measure of financial stability as well as allowing for continued growth in the number of practitioners while limiting power to the head at the top of each school. This prevented the establishment of new branch schools by each disciple, as had been occurring previously.

At this time, information on tea culture was disseminated orally, from teacher to student, or in writing." Written texts on tea culture contained the teachings of one tea master and were for a select readership of disciples. They were circulated through private networks in manuscript form. Manuscript culture was central to many artistic, cultural, and intellectual pursuits in the Edo period.? Despite the rise of woodblock printing and a commercial publishing industry, manuscripts continued to be produced and circulated precisely because they ensured a limited audience for secret or restricted knowledge—for example, those who had attained appropriate licenses within a particular school of tea or poetry. Furuta Oribe's Transmitted Secrets of the Way of Tea (Cbado hiden, 1615) is one example of a privately circulated manuscript on tea culture.? By reading it, one gained access to the knowledge of the tea master himself. Thus, dissemination of such texts was purposely limited. Within the structure of tea schools that developed under the iemoto system, information about tea culture and who had access to it could be tightly controlled. As in other art forms or cultural practices, such as haikai or waka poetry composition,!? among the minutiae of differences between the schools the secrecy of such information often mattered more than what the information was.!! Being admitted to the small circle of those who held such knowledge was a marker of status within that cultural sphere.

One tea school that did not follow the trend for consolidation and central control was the Sekishü school, out of which came the only extant text entirely devoted to the subject of tea practice for women: A Woman's Handbook (Toji no tamoto, 1721). The Sekishü school is therefore of particular interest for this study. Founded by Katagiri Sekishü (1605-1673), it was one of the major tea schools of the Edo period. Sekishü set himself up in opposition to the then head of the Sen family, Rikyü's grandson Sen Sotan. Sekishü did not acknowledge the tradition of blood descent but instead stressed the importance of transmission from teacher to disciple. The school was popular among daimyo in particular, and Sekishü served the fourth shogun, Tokugawa Ietsuna (1639-1680), as official tea master from 1665. Because of Sekishü's opposition to transmission through blood lineage, the school proliferated into many branches. Many daimyo adherents did not wish to submit themselves to the authority of a teacher and established their own lines.??

A Woman's Handbook (discussed at length in chapter 2), authored by a tea master in the Sekishü school, was a privately circulated manuscript. Like other manuscripts, it was intended not to be read widely but to be shared among like-minded practitioners within the same school. Several references in the text make it clear that the author, Oguchi Shoo (1689-1764; also known as Gansui), was writing his instructions for women of samurai status, which was the status of most adherents of the Sekishü school. Therefore this manual on tea practice for women was meant not for women in general but for a specific group of women, those of samurai status who practiced the Sekishü style of tea.

Because adherents of the Sekishü style of tea practice were able to operate without control from a centralized hierarchy, they may have been more willing, receptive, or able to promote tea practice among women than practitioners in other schools were. However, the Sekishü school was not the only school in which women practiced tea. Records of women attending tea gatherings (discussed in more detail below) come from a variety of schools, including the Sen schools.!^ In eighteenthand nineteenth-century commercially published guides for women's edification (the subject of chapter 4), authors advocate that women learn tea. However, there is no mention of any particular school of tea or any suggestion that one must necessarily study with a licensed teacher. It is therefore difficult to say with any certainty what the tea school landscape looked like for women during the Edo period. It would appear that women tea practitioners, though limited in number, were associated with most, if not all, of the tea schools at this time. It is also quite likely that many women engaged in tea practice without having any formal ties to a tea school.

Popularization of Tea Culture

The practice of tea was one of a number of “polite arts” or “arts of play” (yigei) that formed part of both the elite and popular cultures of the Edo period. At the same time that tea culture became institutionalized through the establishment of tea schools and the iemoto system, it also became popularized as knowledge about tea culture spread beyond the sphere controlled by tea school heads. This popularization was made possible by the publication of texts on tea, which were not necessarily sanctioned or produced by the tea schools. These texts targeted a wealthy commoner audience who increasingly had the means to participate in activities like tea and had the desire to do so because of its important place in aesthetic and political culture.

During the seventeenth century Japan experienced a period of major economic growth, including both agricultural and commercial expansion, resulting in population growth and urbanization. Over the course of the Edo period, long-term economic growth led to rising standards of living, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Increases in agricultural productivity, for example, meant that farmers could accumulate surpluses that they could use to invest further in agriculture, particularly new technologies or techniques, or to engage in commerce. While samurai were on fixed stipends, commoners derived their income from this agricultural and commercial activity and could thus accrue profit. In the cities a new stratum of wealthy merchants emerged, while in the countryside there was a new stratum of rural elite.? This new elite was able to invest time and money into education and leisure activities, once the preserve of the court aristocracy and samurai.

Wealth and status (that is, one's position in the official social hierarchy), which theoretically went hand in hand, thus became disconnected. Confucian scholar Ogyü Sorai (1666-1728) noted this problem, as he saw it, several times in A Discourse on Government (Seidan, ca. 1726):

The profits of merchants in the last hundred years are quite unprecedented since the world began. . . . The military class, no longer thinking highly of rice and valuing only money, are being deprived of their wealth. They are being sucked dry by the merchants and forced day by day into greater poverty... .16

The fact is, if only they have the money, even the lower classes can imitate the daimyo with impunity. It is very sad to notice how in today's world those who are without money feel of no account and how even men of high rank and virtue are, as a matter of course, humbled and treated with contempt.!”

Although Sorai may have exaggerated his claims for rhetorical effect, given that he was promoting his own moral code for society, there is no doubt that samurai impoverishment vis-à-vis commoners was a real and increasing trend over the course of the Edo period.

A new, wealthy stratum thus emerged within the commoner status group. These wealthy commoners looked for ways they could live the lifestyle afforded by their wealth, a lifestyle above what was deemed appropriate to their sociopolitical position. Adopting a lifestyle associated with higher status was made possible by the commercialization of cultural activities such as tea. Participation was no longer limited to those who had the right status or connections but was open to anyone of financial means; they could purchase guides that detailed all aspects of elite culture, and they could pay for lessons and licenses.

Attempts at overturning the status quo by commoners living above their station were unsurprisingly condemned by the old elite. An adviser to the Maeda domain said of the situation in 1835: “Among the households of urban commoners... are many... who do not preserve their status. . . . [They] coveted the houses of those of higher status . . . . There are many who no longer observe the status regulations, who spend too much money, who have a poor sense of social responsibility.” 18

To limit the blurring of established social lines, the Tokugawa shogunate periodically issued sumptuary regulations, relating to what clothing members of each status group could wear and how they could decorate their houses, for example.!? The shogunate's attempts to maintain social distinction in this way was symptomatic of the threat posed to the social and political order by the rise of wealthy commoners.?? While commoners were, in many cases, becoming wealthier than their superiors, moving up the social ladder was still blocked by the official status hierarchy. A wealthy commoner could take on the lifestyle of an aristocrat or a samurai yet could not so easily become an aristocrat or a samurai in official terms. The trappings of success, such as clothing, cultural attributes, and manners, therefore became important markers of an alternative status hierarchy in which wealth and not sociopolitical rank defined one's position.?! With economic growth came new and ever-increasing opportunities for communication across status boundaries, particularly as commoners began to engage in cultural arts that had once been the preserve of the elite. Commoners found it increasingly important to learn the appropriate modes of communication, both verbal and nonverbal, with which to communicate with their social superiors.

The world of aesthetic pastimes associated with the court aristocracy and samurai was particularly attractive to the upwardly mobile as an area in which their wealth and cultural learning could be displayed and as a means of learning elite manners and modes of communication. By the end of the seventeenth century, wealthy commoners had come to embrace cultural arts such as tea. The formal structure of a cultural or aesthetic gathering, such as for tea or poetry, was important because it regulated how social interaction occurred. Within this environment, contact across status lines became more common. Popular comic fiction author Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) described this connection between upwardly mobile commoners and cultural arts associated with the elite:

In general, the Osaka rich were not descendants of old families that had prospered for many generations. Most of them were the type of person who was formerly called *Kichizo" or *Sansuke" [typical *redneck" names] but now they strive to enrich themselves. They have learned to socialize with people from *good" families while learning poetry-making, playing kemari [a ball game], archery, koto-harp, flute, or drum music, the perfume game, or the tea-ceremony. By that time they have lost their countrified accents.”

Another popular author, Nishikawa Joken (1648-1724), also described the links between economic growth, status, and accomplishment in cultural arts:

Now that the townspeople have piled up a lot of money, they proudly attempt to raise their status by aping the manners of the aristocracy and the samurai. When the rest of the people, whether educated or not, look at these newly refined city folk, they are consumed with envy and push themselves to the limit in order to imitate [their polite arts]. In this way, the behaviors associated with the polite arts became the custom of the country as a whole.?

Nishikawa also noted that an increasing number of masters of these arts came from commoner stock. Thus, artistic pursuits became popular as a way for upwardly mobile commoners to increase their social standing and have contact with others of higher status.

Tea culture was particularly suitable to those wishing to heighten their status through appearing refined and graceful. In an examination of the popular Ogasawara school of etiquette and manners, Eiko Ikegami notes that “the deployment of the body in acknowledging and expressing status differences was the most basic principle in Tokugawa manners."? Tea was one way of training the body because the procedures for making tea were learned through repetition of set body movements. Students would learn to control their body so as to appear graceful and elegant in each action they undertook. Students would also learn how to deploy their body to express status difference through actions such as bowing. Though in the popular image of tea culture promoted today it is said that status distinctions have no place inside the tearoom, preserving status distinctions was very much a part of tea culture in the Edo period. Thus, two purposes were achieved through studying tea: learning to appear elegant and graceful by controlling one's body movements, and learning to express status differences in interactions with others. It was therefore an appealing pastime to take up for upwardly mobile commoners wishing to increase their social cachet through their appearance. Indeed, tea had long been an art used by social climbers to demonstrate their new standing in society. One of the great unifiers, Hideyoshi, who rose from humble origins as the son of a farmer, famously employed tea culture in his quest to become cultured and “pursue legitimacy.”*>

Tea practice can be understood as what Pierre Bourdieu called symbolic capital and cultural capital.*° Symbolic capital arises from the prestige that tea has as an activity of the social elite; cultural capital arises from the tea practitioner's acquired knowledge and skills, which allow the practitioner to communicate and interact through a specific code rendered meaningless and unintelligible to outsiders. As Bourdieu has suggested, symbolic capital becomes particularly important when economic capital is not recognized.”’ In the Edo period, economic capital, though significant, was not recognized formally or institutionally as the most important form of capital accumulation. Symbolic capital thus took on particular significance for those who wished to deny the importance of others’ economic capital—for example, samurai who became increasingly impoverished during the period but remained above commoners in terms of official status. Symbolic capital also served as a form of capital accumulation for those whose economic capital went unrecognized—for example, commoners who could amass significant wealth but remained at the bottom of the four-tier status system. As Etsuko Kato puts it, “temae has always been a means for nondominant groups to obtain symbolic-cultural capital, because temae enabled relatively disadvantaged but ambitious groups to acquire a type of selfdiscipline [of the body and mind] . . . usually associated with socially superordinate groups."?5

Rather than raising their official status, commoners generally heightened their standing within the group to which they already belonged. That is to say, upward social mobility in the sense of actually crossing the boundaries from one status to another was rare. A distinction was made between material and social mobility, with the accumulation of material wealth not having the same impact on social status that it would in a society not bound by officially prescribed status distinctions. Thus, within the status group of commoners, a new stratum of a wealthy, cultured elite arose, who through the deployment of their economic capital were able to acquire the sort of symbolic and cultural capital that had previously been the sole preserve of the court aristocracy and the samurai. They could literally buy access to learning arts that taught them the manners, tastes, and skills that were invested with symbolic and cultural capital.

As tea gained popularity among commoners seeking to acquire cultural capital, the demand for information increased. This resulted in the publication of woodblock-printed texts detailing information about tea culture that had previously been passed down orally or in privately circulated manuscripts. The context for this change was a commercial publishing boom from the seventeenth century, along with a rise and spread of literacy among the population? Certain features of Edo-period publishing—such as the use of woodblock printing, which allowed for phonetic glossing of kanji in the text, and extensive illustrations accompanying the text—meant that most books were suitable for popular consumption.? And with approximately ten thousand books in print, *being sold or lent in more than seven hundred bookstores nationwide" by the late seventeenth century, popularly consumed they were.?! The numbers of bookstores continued to grow, while lending libraries, sometimes consisting of a stack of books being carried around on a person's back, and credit systems operating in bookshops also made books available to a wider market.??

The market included a wide variety of books on assorted topics, from specialized works on tea culture (like those described below) and works dealing with the latest scientific and medical information coming from Europe, to guides to travel and the pleasure quarters, military handbooks and rosters of the shogunate, household encyclopedias, and various genres of popular fiction.?? The plethora of genres and the seemingly insatiable appetite of the early modern reading public have led historian Mary Elizabeth Berry to describe the book market as a “library of public information."?*^ One part of this library consisted of how-to books and guides to popular arts. That men were among the readership for new texts on tea culture, and therefore also likely participating in the practice of tea, has been well understood.? Female consumers and producers of tea culture have yet to figure in the analysis.

The first mass-market text dealing with tea culture was Grass, Person, Tree (Sojinboku, 1626), which, in three volumes, detailed the procedures for making and serving tea and for handling the utensils, as well as the layout of the tearoom.?6 By making access to information on tea-making procedures available to anyone, Grass, Person, Tree departed markedly from the tradition of oral or manuscript transmission of information to a select group of adherents. In the late seventeenth century, more commercially produced books, such as Complete Writings on the Way of Tea (Chad6é zenshd, 1693) and A Collection of Tea Commentary (Chanoyu byorin taisei, 1697), entered the market.?" Complete Writings on the Way of Tea, carrying on from Grass, Person, Tree, represents a significant shift in the way information about tea culture was presented. The author of this encyclopedic text aimed to *bring together the secrets of every house, including . . . [Takeno] Joo, Rikyü, Furuta [Oribe], Kobori [Enshü], Hosokawa [Sansai], Katagiri [Sekishü], and more."?* It thus exposed the secret teachings of these famous tea masters to an anonymous reading public. No longer was information about tea culture limited by school affiliation; now consumers could purchase knowledge from a range of tea masters.