Greetings from Iemoto Greetings from Iemoto
Iemoto SEN Soshitsu XVI
SEN Soshitsu XVI, Zabosai, was born in Kyoto on June 7, 1956, as the first-born son of SEN Soshitsu XV, Hounsai. The name he was given at birth is Masayuki. He is a graduate of the Department of Letters at Doshisha University, located in Kyoto. In 1982, on his twenty-sixth birthday, he was ordained as a Buddhist clergyman by Zen master NAKAMURA Sojun, chief abbot and master at the monks’ training hall of Daitokuji temple, and received from him the Buddhist name Zabosai.
SEN Soshitsu XVI, Zabosai, was born in Kyoto on June 7, 1956, as the first-born son of SEN Soshitsu XV, Hounsai. The name he was given at birth is Masayuki. He is a graduate of the Department of Letters at Doshisha University, located in Kyoto. In 1982, on his twenty-sixth birthday, he was ordained as a Buddhist clergyman by Zen master NAKAMURA Sojun, chief abbot and master at the monks’ training hall of Daitokuji temple, and received from him the Buddhist name Zabosai.
On October 28th of that year, he was confirmed as heir apparent (wakasosho) of the Urasenke grand master (iemoto). Later, he undertook training under Zen master MORINAGA Soko of Myoshinji temple, and he has now become the resident abbot of Kyoshin’an, a temple of the Myoshinji branch of the Rinzai Zen sect.
He officially succeeded his father as lord of the Konnichian estate, and became the 16th-generation grand master of the Urasenke chado tradition, on the 22nd of December, 2002. As the Urasenke grand master, he acquired the hereditary name Soshitsu.
Grand Master SEN Soshitsu XVI exercises authority within the Urasenke organization as chairman of the Urasenke Foundation (Ippan Zaidan Hojin Konnichian) and president of the Urasenke Tankokai Federation (Ippan Shadan Hojin Chado Urasenke Tankokai). Through his roles in these posts, he is striving to nurture able chado followers and teachers. In the field of education, he also holds a professorial post at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, teaching in the Department of Historical Heritage, and is a visiting colleague at Nankai University and Beijing Foreign Studies University, China.
Chanoyu, the Japan-based art of preparing matcha tea for one’s guests, and of partaking of that tea as a guest, covers a broad spectrum of culture. One might think of it as a desk having many drawers packed with a great variety of enjoyments.
First of all, there is the enjoyment of whisking a bowl of tea and savoring it. Then there is the spirit of hospitality expressed in the confections and other foods, and the enjoyment derived from how the flowers, the charcoal-laying, and the incense-burning have been thought out. There are its connections with Zen, with painting and calligraphy, and with many crafts such as ceramics, kettle-casting, and lacquerware. Tea-house architecture, landscape gardening, and etiquette are also part and parcel of this cultural realm. What is more, chanoyu provides us with the time and place where we can sense and appreciate the subtle signs of nature’s changes through the annual cycle of its seasons. Considering all of this, I see chanoyu, or Japan’s “way of tea,” called “chado” in Japanese, as a portal to Japanese culture.
The fundamental spirit underlying the practice of chanoyu was expressed by Sen Rikyu as Wa Kei Sei Jaku, or “Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquility,” and this spirit remains unchanged to this day. This, however, does not mean that chanoyu has simply been lodged in the ways of the past. Each successive generation has diligently sought a chanoyu suited to that particular time and era, and it owes to this that the legacy of chanoyu, with its unchanged fundamental spirit, has been carried forward to the present.
The attitude that any particular set of circumstances is a singular occurrence in one’s lifetime is expressed in the phrase ichigo-ichie, or literally, “one time, one meeting,” which runs through the fundamental spirit of chanoyu and can be seen to exude from the records of Sen Rikyu’s approach to chanoyu. Over time, this mindset was recognized among tea practitioners and enthusiasts as something indispensable to the practice of chanoyu, and so it has been passed, heart to heart, generation to generation, to the present day. This phrase can have a rather burdensome image, as it is often interpreted as, “… being fully prepared to confront situations, aware that they are once in a lifetime.” In reality, however, we can all easily live in a cycle of ichigo-ichie experiences as part of our daily routine without special preparations. It is simply a matter of taking in everything we encounter, touch, hear, see, and feel around us, moment to moment, without pretense.
The Urasenke Konnichian website has been designed to provide lots of information to anyone interested in discovering about chado and the heart of Japan which it represents. I hope that each and every one of you can feel a personal connection with chado after accessing this website.
