SENCHA AND JAPANESE LITERATI
By Ogawa Koraku
Ogawa School of Sencha (Tokyo)

I. Sencha and Matcha
Today, I would like to discuss not "sencha", the green tea typically favored by contemporary Japanese as a daily beverage, but "Sencha", the refined tea-drinking pastime that has been handed down with a tradition, a manner of tea-preparation, and an etiquette all its own. Perhaps I should point out here that "sencha" is an old word, and its usage has varied. Firstly, there is the verb"senjiru", meaning "to boil or decoct". Then there is the word sencha" referring simply to a type of leaf tea. Finally, the proper noun Sencha" evolved to indicate the world peculiar to a new tea drinking culture.
In Japan today, the expression, "the way of tea", actually encompasses two contrasting schools: chanoyu (centered on matcha) and Sencha (the way of sencha). They employ different forms of tea, and different methods of tea preparation. Chanoyu involves dispensing tea powder into a tea bowl, pouring in hot water, then stirring and drinking the mixture. Sencha, however, involves dispensing tea leaves into a teapot, pouring hot water over them and allowing them to steep, then pouring the infusion into small cups. (This method is similar to the usual preparation of ordinary loose tea such as black tea and oolong tea.) The two schools are clearly differentiated as to their methods, aesthetics and adherents. Where chanoyu is grounded in the severely disciplined world of Buddhism, especially Zen, Sencha maintains a deep connection with Taoism, particularly Lao-Tze's philosophy of living at ease in the idleness of nature.
The Edo period writer and Native Studies scholar Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) is best-known for his collection of short stories, Ugetsu Monogatari (1768), but he also wrote a book on tea entitled, A Few Words on the Gentle Breeze (Seifu Sagen, 1794). Rather than offering an exploration of chanoyu, it unexpectedly presents a discussion of Sencha. In his last years, Akinari wrote another small but profoundly spiritual work, Seburi no Okina Monogatari, also known by the title, Chajin no Monogatari (The Tale of the Tea Gods.) In this work, he personifies tea as two brothers in order to demonstrate the two directions that the schools of tea took in Japan. According to the story, two brothers had earned the deep affection of the emperor of China, but when the empire fell into ruin and a foreign people conquered the land, the brothers fled to Nagasaki. One brother sought glory and renown, and proceeded with the high-ranking priest Eisai to the capital in Kamakura. The other went to live as a recluse deep in the mountains of Kyushu. Akinari does not make clear which is the elder brother and which the younger, but there is no doubt that the first personifies matcha and the second Sencha.
Akinari's Sencha exists on a different plane from the sencha leaf-tea ordinarily familiar to Japanese today. A Sencha tea ceremony proceeds this way: an unglazed white brazier (ryoro) is filled with hot ash, and a water pot (bofura) is set on top to heat the water. When steam is bursting energetically from the small spout, the pot is quietly removed and the water poured over the leaves placed in the bottom of a red pottery Yixing teapot (a type regularly used in Sencha). Then, at just the right time, a small amount of tea is poured into each of a set of small blue-and-white porcelain Sencha tea cups. The last step is to savor the sweet, thick tea as it spreads over the tip of the tongue. This is the world of true Sencha, which has not varied since days of old.
Beginners may wonder at the small amount they find poured into the cup, but once they have taken a sip, there is no doubting their even greater wonder at the excellent flavor. The well-known writer Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) beautifully expressed the marvel of this flavor in a famous passage from his short story, The Three-Cornered World (Kusamakura, 1908), which takes artistic beauty as its theme:
For the man of leisure there is no more refined nor delightful pursuit than savouring this thick delicious nectar drop by drop on the tip of the tongue. The average person talks of "drinking" tea, but this is a mistake. Once you have felt a little of the pure liquid spread slowly over your tongue, there is scarcely any need to swallow it. It is merely a question of letting the fragrance penetrate from your throat right down to your stomach. [Translation by Alan Turney]

As this passage demonstrates, the way of tea that retained its vigor from the late Edo period down into modern times was not chanoyu but Sencha. Surprisingly few people know this historical fact. Okakura Tenshin, however, made it plain in The Book of Tea (1906), although he worked to introduce chanoyu to the international community. In Chapter II, "The Schools of Tea", he writes, "Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea. We moderns belong to the last school." Here, "Steeped Tea" indicates Sencha. Okakura continues,
The Cake-tea which was boiled, the Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang, the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China. If we were inclined to borrow the much-abused terminology of art-classification, we might designate them respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.

Okakura's larger aim in this book was to evoke "the spirit of Japan", so he ultimately came to emphasize chanoyu, with its distinctly Japanese aesthetic, over Sencha, heavily colored with Chinese influence. Nevertheless, he wrote the book around the same time that Noguchi Shohin (1847-1917), a distinguished woman painter in the Nanga style, produced this work, Feminine Accomplishments, which depicts five beautiful upper-class girls - including a child, a young woman, and a bride practicing flower arrangement, studying calligraphy, training a bonsai, and enjoying Sencha.
Shohin was active from the end of Edo, through Meiji, and into Taisho. In 1871, she painted the sliding door panels and folding screens decorating the Empress's bedroom. She also painted before the Empress, and held a position as lecturer at a school for the daughters of the nobility, so she seems to have been well regarded and rather influential. The Sencha depicted here as a feminine accomplishment must therefore have had an import far beyond that of ordinary tea. Shohin's career spans just the period when Sencha, not chanoyu, stood among the feminine accomplishments, and this work would doubtless have had a somewhat different composition, had she painted it a little earlier or a little later. The painting offers an enlightening glimpse into the world of Sencha as a feminine accomplishment, even to the depiction of a rather poorly composed bonsai, and it houses a rich store of detail on Sencha in the Meiji and Taisho periods.
Tea, flower arrangements, incense, calligraphy, bonsai and bonseki originally formed part of the life of refined pleasure that the Chinese literatus enjoyed in the scholar's studio. This reclusive life is well known to have had a deep hold on the imagination of the Japanese intellectual, who noted the way that Ming poets, moved by the T'ang writer Li Po (701-762), and the Sung writers Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) and Lu Yu (1125-1210), made tea a companion and passed their days in the enjoyment of tea. Yet, while Sencha traces its direct origin to the literati tea of Ming and Ching China, its spiritual ancestry reaches back to the refined literary tea of China's T'ang period, to Lu Yu (J: Riku U, d. 804), author of The Classic of Tea (C: Cha jing, J: Chakyo), the world's first book on tea, and above all to Lu Tong (J: Ro Do, d. 835), renowned as the author of the "Tea Song" (C: Cha-ko, J: Cha-ka).
In practical terms, the great differences between Ming and earlier ways of drinking tea are a change to the use of heicha and matcha in preparing tea for the tea ceremony, the use of leaf tea, and the spread of the teapot. Reliable documents on the production of the extraordinary red pottery Yixing tea jars also date back to the Ming period. Many Japanese literati were drawn to Sencha through the fascinating appearance of these jars, which are still held in high esteem. As will be discussed later, however, it is the idea of a life of refined pleasure in the scholar's studio that may be the most important of the Ming influences on early modern Japanese intellectuals, and by extension on the world of Sencha.

II. Koyugai Baisao
Sencha as a tea-drinking pastime, and as a way of tea, owes its development particularly to the Kyoto eccentric Baisao (the Old Tea Seller) (1675-1763). Sometimes called the founder of Sencha, he was featured in Ban Kokei's widely read book, Modern Eccentrics (Kinsei Kijinden, 1788). Baisao astonished people not only because he offered a kind of tea unlike the established chanoyu, but also because he traveled to the various historic sites and picturesque natural places around Kyoto and sold sencha on the street. The city's fashionable set naturally took delight in the novel sencha utensils and method of tea-preparation, but Baisao also won acclaim for the sign to his tea pavilion which communicated a true ease, "You may give me any amount you like for my tea, from a hundred in gold to half a mon. It's up to you. Have it free if you wish. I'm sorry I can't let you have it for less" [translation by Norman Waddell].
Yet, he was not selling what used to be called "penny-a-cup", nor was he in business simply to keep rice in the rice bowl. Kokei perceptively wrote, "In general, people called him odd for selling tea, yet he made tea a part of his name because his purpose lay elsewhere. People seldom conduct themselves with his kind of serenity and care." Kokei did not simply brush Baisao's sencha aside as the odd behavior of an eccentric, because Baisao's true aim when he began selling tea was to raise a furious alarm against the slide into corruption and decadence by the Zen monastic community, a community of which Baisao himself was a part.
In those early days, Baisao wrote a small volume entitled Taikyakugenshi, which includes the following sharp criticism,"Take eight or nine out of every ten Zen monks today, and you'll find that the body is inside the monastery, but the soul is racing with the cares of the secular world." His sencha served "to lament the decline of the Zen sect through tea". Much later, in 1742, he would leave the priesthood, change his name to Koyugai, and set out on a new life that "transcended worldly success" and followed the rules of "neither the monk, nor the Way, nor Confucianism". Yet, his Sencha never broke completely from the world of Zen.
Of course, his dealing in tea did not directly attack the established Zen community, and it remained to the end something refined and elegant. Thus, with each cup of sencha sold he would measure out a bit of spiritual instruction:"Boiling tea at the stone hearth, trading in comings and goings", "The wise traveler does well to know this half-penny worth", "A single sip washes clean the spirit", "Delight and repose at "Pathway to the Immortals'". Such poetic aphorisms suggest that a deep spirituality, not mere eccentric display, stood behind his selling of tea.
As might be expected, Baisao's Sencha gradually began to walk an independent path. Although it served at first "to lament the decline of the Zen sect through tea", it gained acceptance and a sympathetic hearing not from those in the Zen community, but from Kyoto's literati society, where the lyricism evident in his poetic aphorisms found a warm welcome. One can find no better proof than in a review of those who were drawn to his Sencha, including, on the one hand, Kyoto's authors, writers of Chinese and Japanese poetry, scholars and others active with a writing brush; and, on the other hand, painters, sculptors, master potters and those connected with the arts. There was the writer Kameda Kyuraku, the physician Yamashina Rikei, the Confucian scholars Kuwabara Kudo (1673-1744) and Uno Shishin (1698-1745, and the wealthy Osaka merchant and naturalist Kimura Kenkado (1736-1802). There was also Daiten Kenjo (1717-1801), who wrote a commentary on Baisao's own biography, A Classic of Tea, as well as the young Ike no Taiga (1723-76), who would later be counted among Japan's greatest artists, and the strange and original painter Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800). His close association with Sakaki Hyakusen (1698-1753), a pioneer of literati painting, meant that Sencha did not end up as yet another Zen practice, but instead developed a strong coloration of literary grace and the strength to progress on its own.
In the 8th month of 1748, more than twelve years after setting up a business selling refined sencha from a tea pavilion he called "Pathway to the Immortals" (Tsusentei), Baisao wrote A Collection of Tea Documents from the Plum Mountain (Baizan Shucha Furoku), which includes this passage: "During the T'ang period, Lu Yu wrote his Classic of Tea, and Lu Tong composed his "Tea Song", treating tea as a profound matter. Learned scholars of that time wrote odes and prose poems all in praise of tea. But such things have been rare in our land since ancient times." His thinking has clearly undergone a steady change. No longer aiming "to lament the decline of the Zen sect through tea", he is setting a new course for tea as an expression of literary refinement. The book conveys strong misgivings about the state of tea-drinking in Japan up to his time, and demonstrates a longing for the refined tea culture of the Chinese literati, in this way offering a guide to a new way of Sencha. Although Baisao never completely abandoned Zen, his conception of a refined literary style of tea remained constant through his last years.
When he set up his tea pavilion, "Pathway to the Immortals", raised a banner inscribed with the words, "A Gentle Breeze", and began to sell sencha, Baisao became the first to practice the way of Sencha in early modern Japan. Needless to say, the phrases "pathway to the immortals" and " gentle breeze" are taken from the T'ang poet Lu Tong's famous "Tea Song".i Baisao's purpose, though, was not simply poetic quotation. He was deeply drawn to Lu Tong's philosophy and way of life, or one could also say that his Sencha was profoundly influenced by the spirit of tea-drinking suggested in Lu Tong's writings. It seems likely that the members of Kyoto's literati community were not a little influenced by this change in direction. At one time, he had called himself someone who "dealt with the world, but knew it not; studied Zen, but turned it aside". In The Verses of the Old Tea Seller (Baisao Gego), published the month of his death in 1763, though, he positioned himself as "of the true school of Lu Tong, and 45th generation in the sect of Daruma" (Rodo seiryu ken Darumashu yonjugo den). The phrase "true school of Lu Tong" surely indicates the freshness of Sencha in its literary refinement.
The "Tea Song" by Lu Tong captures in verse a Sencha-like spirit. It has been a favorite of readers for many centuries, and the phrase "gentle breeze" even today symbolizes the world of Sencha. In Lu Tong, one finds the point of connection between Baisao and the previously mentioned literati. Baisao's Sencha would in fact come to be accepted by great numbers of literati.

III. Followers of Baisao's Sencha
The life of refined pleasure that the Chinese literati enjoyed in the scholar's studio originated in the epochal changes of the late Ming and early Ching period. With the collapse of a nation governed by Han people and the advent of rule by a foreign race, great numbers of gifted Han intellectuals were driven from their positions in society. They took an anti-foreign stance, and moved to escape reality by living as the foundlings of the age in the elegant and refined world of the scholar's studio.
This picture met with sympathetic recognition in Japan, in the decades after Baisao's activity, when the decline of the Edo government, the inflexibility of the feudal lords, and the contradictions in feudal society all were becoming apparent. In the despair born of a severely restricted class system that disregarded true ability, Japanese literati of this period lost their political and social aspirations, turned their backs on a feudal society now sapped of vitality, and immersed themselves in the world of arts and letters. The Chinese literatus, free from worldly care, provided an ideal model of transcendence, while paintings of poets boiling tea in the mountains offered hints for a way of living. Through reverence for, and imitation of, China's tea-loving literati, late Edo-period literati sought to renew their own understanding of an anti-worldly, anti-authoritarian consciousness. They found their closest direct models in Koyugai Baisao and the other Japanese literati who had lived isolated from the world in the refined pleasure of the scholar's studio. The banishment of many promising individuals to the countryside also served as a stimulus to the explosive rise in the popularity of late-Edo literati Sencha. In these ways, Sencha entered ever more deeply into the lives of the literati.
Japanese Sencha entered a period of prosperity in the hundred years between Kansei (1789-1801), Bunka-Bunsei (1804-30), the end of Edo, and early Meiji. Exceptionally gifted literati appeared one after another in great numbers. For example, in the world of ceramics Aoki Mokubei (1767-1833) produced superior Sencha vessels and cleared the way for a new age of Kyoyaki more than a century after Ninsei and Kenzan. He also displayed excellent abilities in writing Chinese poetry and in painting. The rather high-browed Tanomura Chikuden (1777-1835) is a Nanga literati artist who has received international acclaim. He admired the serene, high-styled, refined world of Sencha, and was one of the most earnest of the late Edo literati in his reverence for Lu Tong, and in his efforts to establish the utopia of tea evoked in Lu Tong's verses. It is no exaggeration to say that Chikuden sought out the world of Sencha as an ideal world of the trinity of poetry, calligraphy and painting.
Even among the late Edo patriots who played a dramatic role in the birth of modern Japan, not a few were admirers of Sencha. To judge solely by the externals of their violent and armed social activism seems a misinterpretation of reality. As suggested by the way that Lu Tong's "countless masses" stirred the hearts of people across time and place, the majority of the patriots had great gentleness and warmth of feeling.
It is true that during a famine in the countryside, Tanomura Chikuden, at the risk of his life, sent a petition to the lord of the domain criticizing the government. Rai Sanyo (1780-1832), meanwhile, fired the blood of the patriots with a sense of righteousness through his historical writings, The Extra History of Japan (Nihon Gaishi, preface dated 1827) and A Record of Japanese Government (Nihon Seiki, 1838). Then, the Confucian scholar Oshio Chusai (1793-1837) and the patriot Fujimoto Tesseki (1816-63) carried out direct action critical of the government. Yet, these men were making inescapable choices in a moment of upheaval. They stood squarely to face the epochal changes that culminated in the Meiji Restoration (1868) in order to realize the ideal world evoked by Lu Tong's phrase, "the rustling of a gentle breeze". It is for us, in times of peace, in these very days living closely with Sencha, to see these men as they truly were, filled with a gentle humanity.
The historical background just discussed in connection with Edo period literati society led to the golden age of Sencha, when the old Tokugawa order fell and a new era dawned under the Meiji government.

Suggested Reading
Patricia J. Graham, Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998)

Norman Waddell, "The Old Tea Seller: The Life and Poetry of Baisao", in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. XVII, no. 2 (Autumn 1984): 93-123.

i Norman Waddell and Patricia Graham both translate the most famous stanza (see "Suggested Reading"). The complete poem may be found in The Chinese Art of Tea by John Blofeld (1985).