Tea and the Art of Social Climbing
An Early Modern History of Women in Japanese Tea Ceremony
Historically, women have often been excluded from public activities and official records. This is also true for tea ceremony, as Japanese traditional arts have been largely dominated by men until the last century. This doesn’t mean that women didn’t participate in tea ceremony at all—on the contrary, there is evidence that they did so as far back as the early modern Edo period!
From Zen to the Cultured Lady
Why is Japanese tea in particular dominated by men? Like its written characters and Buddhism, powdered green tea was first introduced to Japan from China. From the early 9th century, it spread first in temples and the court, then among the warrior class1. Early tea gatherings were focused on tasting different teas and appreciating luxurious utensils.
Starting from the 15th century, however, tea was simplified and the connection with zen strengthened again. This trend culminated with Sen no Rikyū (1522-1591): Son of a merchant, he studied zen and tea ceremony from a young age before becoming tea master and adviser to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. A replica of the famous golden tea room Rikyū built for Hideyoshi can be viewed at Osaka Castle. Even though he had to satisfy Hideyoshi’s lavish tastes, Rikyū’s personal preference was the simple “grass hut” style of making tea that had been refined by his teachers and that he would pass on to his students. Today he is revered as founding father of the three most prominent tea schools in Japan2. The connection to zen, merchants, and the nobility also meant that tea was dominated by men for much of its recorded history.
After the Second World War, tea ceremony experienced a boom in popularity especially among women. Female tea is showcased in print media of the era, such as this photo book digitised and explained by
of Old Photos Japan.These changes culminated with a boom in the popularity of the Japanese tea ceremony after the end of the Second World War in 1945 (Showa 20). The tea ceremony schools attracted a growing number of students during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth.
In the late Showa period (1926–1989), several important collections of tea ceremony masters were acquired by art museums, while the publishing industry put out an increasing number of books about sadō. The growing number of students, and the interest by museums and publishers lead to the tea ceremony being widely recognized as a cultured hobby, which in turn fanned its popularity.
As seen in the photo book, tea came to be viewed as a cultured and elegant hobby for the young lady, an image that persists to this day.
Handbooks of Tea
However, women practised tea ceremony even in the Edo period, although more covertly. As Rebecca Corbett argues in her book Cultivating Femininity, Edo women were more socially mobile than men and tea was a useful skill to climb the social ladder, either to find a marriage partner or to serve in an elite household.
Commoner girls learned “refined arts” and served in elite households. This contributed to the merging of elite and popular culture that was already happening in other places, most notably in kabuki. The play Mirror Mountain. A Woman’s Treasury of Loyalty3, for example, describes the tension between two attendants at a daimyō mansion, one a samurai daughter with martial arts training and the other a commoner. Even the fact that these tensions could exist proves that attendants served as “bridging class” between town and village, commoners and samurai4.
Marriage provided another opportunity for commoners to move up in society. Unlike service, this was a way to truly leave one status group and enter another. It was also a path uniquely available to women. Men could achieve the same by being adopted as sons-in-law, perhaps a less common practice. Needless to say, parents were willing to invest in their daughters’ education in hopes that she might score a good marriage.
Tea was a significant part of that education. How would commoner girls have learned it? In the Edo period, tea culture circulated not only through oral transmission but also through written manuscripts. Tea masters compiled their teachings that were then circulated among disciples and private networks.
And why manuscripts? Despite the rise of woodblock printing and a commercial publishing industry, manuscripts continued to be produced to transmit secret or restricted knowledge precisely because their reach was limited compared to more modern production methods. Tea handbooks were probably circulated through lending libraries5. Most Edo period women were literate. Some were even involved in the publishing industry as copyists, publishers, and booksellers, where they would have had access to those tea handbooks as well.
Was tea alone useful enough for a women to rise in rank though? Corbett cites one example that seems too good to be true, of a woman who married into the highest echelons of society.
The Greengrocer’s Daughter
She is known as Keishōin (1627-1705), as described by Susanne Formanek:
The daughter of a Kyoto-based greengrocer who, via her getting appointed to the service of a lord who had access to the shogunal residence, managed to enter service in the shogun’s palace itself, became the lesser wife of the third shogun Iemitsu and upon her son Tsunayoshi being appointed to the fifth shogun, became one of the most influential female figures in the realm.
Talk about climbing the social ladder! Imamiya Shrine in Kyoto still has a plaque dedicated to her.
Other women, too, rose after finding employment as attendants in elite households. Nishimiya Hide, daughter of a low-ranking samurai, became attendant to Yoshiko, wife of Mito domain lord Tokugawa Nariaki, because she was trained in tea. When she interviewed for the position, her personal appearance, ability to compose poems, and skill at tea were inspected by Yoshiko herself. Skills such as flower arrangement and playing music were highly valued as well.
How were tea skills put to use? At Edo Castle, secondary attendants and antechamber attendants were responsible for selecting and arranging utensils for tea gatherings. Women of secondary attendant rank hailed from high-ranking samurai families and were highly accomplished in the mentioned cultural skills.
The Precocious Hostess
The household of Ii Naosuke (daimyō of Hikone, 1815-1860) was yet another environment where tea skills would have been put to good use. An ardent and accomplished tea practitioner, he frequently included women in his tea gatherings and writings on tea culture. His tea gatherings involving women were of an intimate, familial nature. In his transcriptions of other contemporary tea texts, he didn’t hesitate editing the parts he didn’t agree with.
For example, these sources state that the order of seating among guests of a tea gathering should be determined by the man’s social position. Naosuke, however, commented: “This is not the Way of Tea; social position has no place in the tearoom; the positions are determined by that day’s main guest.” He also had no qualms with male or female hosts inviting a member of the opposite sex to a tea gathering.
In fact, his daughter Yachiyo is another well-known female practitioner. She studied tea ceremony from a young age and allegedly hosted her first tea gathering at age nine. She is frequently mentioned as formal guest in Ii household tea gatherings and occasionally hosted them too, with her mother, tea instructor Katagiri Sōtetsu or prominent family retainers as guests.
In 1858, she was married to Matsudaira Yoritoshi, after which there is no more record of her tea activities. However, she likely continued practicing tea, serving as host or honoured guest for tea gatherings in her husband’s household.
Tea as a Female Art
Overall, tea seems to have been a space of surprising equality within the class-based society of the Edo period, a space where nobles and retainers, men and women were able to enjoy tea together.
The majority of women who participated in the gatherings were attendants, women we know only by their first names, such as Tase and Makio. These attendants were not merely studying tea and attending gatherings as companions to the women they served; they were listed as guests in their own right, and some were even hosts on occasion. Thus, they sat alongside the daimyo and his retainers (some of whom were accomplished practitioners with tea names) as equal participants in the social network.
Today, over 80% of tea ceremony practitioners in Japan are women6. Tea is seen as a desirable skill for the young woman and wife. Yet out of the three most prominent tea schools, Urasenke continues its tradition of appointing male iemoto while Omotesenke does not allow women to achieve the highest rank7.
It is my hope that women will increasingly receive the recognition and rank they deserve in the future, honouring the fact that they have practiced tea alongside men and formed their own styles for much of its recorded history.
Urasenke, Omotesenke, and Mushakōjisenke, although there are many other schools in Japan. Urasenke also has a large overseas presence, Omotesenke to a lesser degree.
鏡山旧錦繪 Kagamiyama kokyō no nishiki-e, 1782
Leupp in Servants, Shophands, and Laborers, via Corbett
So-called 貸本屋 kashihon’ya, often consisting of a stack of books being carried on a person’s back.
I suspect that there are more male practitioners in overseas tea groups, evening out the gender ratio.
Thanks for the interesting and informative post - I know text is all we have but it would be really interesting to know how lessons themselves were conducted back then and how the nonverbal stuff transferred from teacher to student (and which teachers and students learned from male/female perspectives and how that shifted), overall I loved the 9 year old hosting a gathering and this line: “This is not the Way of Tea; social position has no place in the tearoom; the positions are determined by that day’s main guest.” Which rings true in the worlds of tea I’ve felt most fully. 🙏
Really interesting post, Vanessa. Lots of history here, and you've no doubt done a lot of research to put it together.
Have you ever read David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet? I don't recall if tea ceremonies featured in it, but reading this made me think of that book. It's a strange one, but I loved it and the historical detail of 18th century Japan was fascinating. Certainly one of my favourite books that I've read in the last five years or so.