Kobori Enshu School of Tea
Tea Ceremony, codified in its present form in the late 16th century, is a “path”, both spiritual and aesthetic. It has been passed down the centuries via hereditary “Iemoto,” a system unique to Japanese arts. Iemoto, which means “House at the Source,” are families, headed by a Grand Master, who preserve and teach arts such as Noh Drama and Tea Ceremony. In English an Iemoto is usually called a “School,” although the word means more a “school” in terms of style and tradition, than a physical place. “Iemoto” can be used to refer to the School in general, also in particular to the Grand Master.
There are presently about 200 schools of Tea Ceremony in Japan, but only a handful that trace back to the founding years in the late 1500s and early 1600s. One of these is the Kobori Enshu School.
Kobori Enshu
Kobori Enshu (1579-1647) was a feudal lord active in culture and administration as a senior vassal of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the early years of the Edo period. He was involved in the construction of buildings, tea rooms, and gardens for the Tokugawa Shogunate and the court. Lord Enshu served as a tea ceremony instructor under three Tokugawa shoguns. In his teachings, he added his own samurai sensibility to the wabi-sabi of previous tea masters. (Wabi-sabi is rustic simplicity, the appeal of simple, worn things). To this he added a focus on aristocratic elegance. In addition to tea ceremony, Enshu’s aesthetics continue to influence Japanese art, calligraphy, and architecture today.
Kobori Enshu School of Tea Ceremony:
The larger Iemoto schools surviving today mostly descend from Sen-no-Rikyu, early founder of the tea ceremony. Rikyu came from the merchant class and was not a samurai. However, there are a few Iemoto with old lineages that were founded by feudal lords, and incorporate samurai values. The Kobori Enshu School is one of these “samurai tea” traditions.
After Enshu’s death in 1647, the family split into two lines, one headed by Enshu’s son, the other by Masayuki Kobori, Enshu’s younger brother. Kobori Masayuki served as a senior official to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the shogun responsible for unifying Japan.
A scandal in the 1780s disrupted the Enshu family lineage, which cut the senior line of the family off from their lordly status and the warrior class. Only the Masayuki branch of the family continued to serve the shogunate as a direct vassal until the end of the Edo period. During the Edo period, the samurai tea ceremony was restricted to samurai and was not accessible to the general public, but after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the 12th Iemoto, Soshu, opened the practice to reach broader audiences.
Today, there are Kobori Enshu branches all over Japan, from Iwate Prefecture in the north to Fukuoka in the south. In addition to regular lessons and tea ceremonies, tea masters associated with the school hold workshops throughout the country to improve their practice.
Tea gatherings are an important part of international outreach as well; tea masters use their practice to share Japanese culture in settings such as the United States and Europe. The Kobori Enshu School of Tea Ceremony continues to play a role in generating appreciation for traditional Japanese culture at home and abroad.
