The Tea Ceremony

He entered the Shomyo-ji subtemple of the Horin-ji at the age of 11. From his youth he loved tea, and followed the tocha style then popular, even to the neglect of his temple duties. The result was his expulsion. After this, he began to study Zen at the Daitoku-ji under Ikkyu Sojun, and invented the phrase ﾔZen and tea have the same tasteﾕ. He perfected his wabi tea style, and is now regarded as the founder of Japanese tea drinking. He held that in tea there must be no social hierarchy, and established cross-class norms of behaviour for both host and guest. He banned alcohol from tea meetings, and removed the secular and playful elements; he raised the standard of utensils and innovated in diverse ways. He took tea out of the shoin (study room) and advocated a free-standing, independent teahut; his preferred size was 4.5 mats. He also standardised teahut decoration, shifting from fine imported items to local ones, and notably favouring hanging scrolls with the calligraphy of Zen monks. He got rid of tea scoops of ivory or silver, and replaced them with simple bamboo. In short, he moved from a Chinese to a Japanese style of tea.