I believe substantial evidence can be cited to support the position that the origination of the Japanese tea ceremony resulted from the collaboration of Sen no Rikyu and his seven closest followers who were all either baptized Christians or, for political, religious and/or familial reasons, maintained their neutrality by remaining either undeclared Christians or strongly pro-Christian supporters. In fact, I believe all seven were either baptized or unbaptized Christians.
I believe a strong argument can be made that Rikyu and his collaborators had sufficient biblical and theological understanding to create the Japanese tea ceremony based upon a Christian worldview, philosophy, principles and practices. Such a Christian foundation was provided by not only Jesuit missionaries and Japanese in the process of seeking Catholic ordination, but, more importantly, by a closely organized network of highly educated, aristocratic female Christian catechists intimately related to Rikyu and his key inner circle of Christian disciples. Much of current opinion, if Christian influence is acknowledged at all, is that the Japanese tea ceremony started off as fundamentally Buddhist with a few elements and practices from Catholicism being adopted and adapted along the way—more broadly from the Mass and more specifically from the Eucharist (Holy Communion). While I don’t contest that early predecessors of Rikyu were Zen priests at Daitokoji Temple in Kyoto where Rikyu studied the then current form of Zen tea, the form and style Rikyu’s subsequent serving of tea was a radical departure from how tea was served before him. It was Rikyu’s wife who was among the earliest Christians in Sakai that introduced him to the Christianity and the Catholic Mass.
I am even willing to speculate that one of the earliest forms of what became the Japanese tea ceremony was used for Christian purposes before it was conducted diplomatically to bring about peace and reconciliation between warring warlords (daimyo). One reason that supports this idea is in answer to the question of how the daimyo and military leaders who comprised Rikyu’s united core of disciples became Christians themselves and subsequently joined him in the collaborative effort to further develop the Japanese tea ceremony for personal meditation, worship and evangelism as well as a means of facilitating secular national unification efforts. An embryonic version of the Japanese tea ceremony might well have been the means by which they came to understand the Gospel and became Christians.
When Japan made being a Christian a crime punishable by death and closed its doors to the rest of the world due to the increasing threat Christianity posed to the national leadership because of the rapidly growing number of Christians throughout Japan, especially at national and regional levels of leadership, 24 percent of the warlords in Japan had already become Christians. It is possible that many of them had become Christians by being taught the Gospel by Christian daimyo such as Rikyu’s seven key disciples through the use of a biblically based tea ceremony. The Japanese tea ceremony may also have been used by newly converted Christian warlords to share their new found faith with their own families and ranks of people under their leadership. Perhaps this is the reason Japanese Christians who went underground to survive persecution and death (Hidden Christians or Kakure Kirishitans) secretly used the Japanese tea ceremony to observe Holy Communion. It was not a new idea brought on by persecution, but rather something they already observed prior to the criminalization of Christianity. I am in the process of discovering countless parallels to the Bible reflected in the Japanese garden, tea house, tea room, tea ware and the entirety of the Japanese tea ceremony including what strongly resembles the sequence of events leading up to and including the Last Supper.
Bottom line, I am now in the process of studying the Japanese tea ceremony during the Christian Century as an accurate reflection of Christian theology based upon the Bible. In other words, the Japanese tea ceremony was Christian before credit for its development was usurped by the Buddhist leadership who were responsible for ferreting out underground Christians so they could be tortured and put to death. It was the Tokugawa Shogunate who issued and enforced the Edict of Annihilation of all Christians for over seven generations and two hundred years, reshaping the Japanese tea ceremony so, in addition to it becoming reputedly Buddhist, it became a means of promoting and maintaining cultural conformity and societal structure by infusing it with Confucianism. As a result of long isolation from the entire world, Japan became a homogenous island nation that viewed Christianity as being alien to being Japanese and a threat when in reality the Japanese tea ceremony, which is often pointed to as epitomizing Japanese culture, is Christian at its very core.
Up until Japan opened its doors once again to the world in the mid-nineteenth century, it was still illegal to be a Christian and continued to be punishable by death. Up until then, the Japanese tea ceremony was strictly observed by only males. It wasn’t until the feudal system of the Edo period ended and the westernization of the Meiji era began that women were allowed to teach the tea ceremony and the Japanese tea ceremony became standard in the educational curriculum exclusively for girls in Japan, like Home Economics used to be in the United States. Today the vast majority of teachers of tea and their students are female. As a result, the Japanese tea ceremony was neutered and became a benign form of performance art providing the viewer with an aesthetically beautiful impression of Japanese art and culture.
How might this understanding increase the openness of Japanese people to the Gospel?
1. Help Japanese understand why many of them experience an unexplainable visceral fear and resistance when they are confronted with anything symbolizing or having to do with Christianity.
2. Help Japanese who are Christians have a positive rather than an apologetic view of themselves as Christians—that they can, not only be both Christian and Japanese, but actually be more fully Japanese by being Christian.
3. The Japanese tea ceremony as it was observed during the Christian Century can be embraced and observed as a truly indigenous form of Japanese Christian worship and an effective means of evangelism to people of Japanese ancestry, whether in Japan or around the world.
4. That the Japanese tea ceremony of the Christian Century is not only useful, meaningful and effective when used now as a means of ministry as it was observed then, but that the world view, philosophy, principles and values underlying the Japanese tea ceremony that were effectively applied during the Christian Century then can be relevantly reapplied today in the development of new forms of contextualized ministry and evangelism for people of Japanese ancestry.
5. Appreciating the key role Christianity played in the shaping of uniquely Japanese forms of art, architecture and culture, a new, positive and integrated Japanese Christian identity can develop within and among people of Japanese ancestry and their churches.
As a result of all this, I hope you can now see, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, why I believe so many things in my life are converging and being interwoven, into one complete tapestry that fulfills so much of what the ministry of Iwa was originally called by God to pursue. Of course, the practical implications of what I have shared need to be to put into practice so we can see if what made the Japanese tea ceremony so effective for worship and evangelism then is still true today. We need to conduct the Japanese tea ceremony as it was then as well as transform it into something new and different but based upon the same essential biblical and cultural foundations that made the Japanese tea ceremony so meaningful and effective back then. Please Lord, may it be so!
Psalm 139:13-18 NIV
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand--
when I awake, I am still with you.
I believe a strong argument can be made that Rikyu and his collaborators had sufficient biblical and theological understanding to create the Japanese tea ceremony based upon a Christian worldview, philosophy, principles and practices. Such a Christian foundation was provided by not only Jesuit missionaries and Japanese in the process of seeking Catholic ordination, but, more importantly, by a closely organized network of highly educated, aristocratic female Christian catechists intimately related to Rikyu and his key inner circle of Christian disciples. Much of current opinion, if Christian influence is acknowledged at all, is that the Japanese tea ceremony started off as fundamentally Buddhist with a few elements and practices from Catholicism being adopted and adapted along the way—more broadly from the Mass and more specifically from the Eucharist (Holy Communion). While I don’t contest that early predecessors of Rikyu were Zen priests at Daitokoji Temple in Kyoto where Rikyu studied the then current form of Zen tea, the form and style Rikyu’s subsequent serving of tea was a radical departure from how tea was served before him. It was Rikyu’s wife who was among the earliest Christians in Sakai that introduced him to the Christianity and the Catholic Mass.
I am even willing to speculate that one of the earliest forms of what became the Japanese tea ceremony was used for Christian purposes before it was conducted diplomatically to bring about peace and reconciliation between warring warlords (daimyo). One reason that supports this idea is in answer to the question of how the daimyo and military leaders who comprised Rikyu’s united core of disciples became Christians themselves and subsequently joined him in the collaborative effort to further develop the Japanese tea ceremony for personal meditation, worship and evangelism as well as a means of facilitating secular national unification efforts. An embryonic version of the Japanese tea ceremony might well have been the means by which they came to understand the Gospel and became Christians.
When Japan made being a Christian a crime punishable by death and closed its doors to the rest of the world due to the increasing threat Christianity posed to the national leadership because of the rapidly growing number of Christians throughout Japan, especially at national and regional levels of leadership, 24 percent of the warlords in Japan had already become Christians. It is possible that many of them had become Christians by being taught the Gospel by Christian daimyo such as Rikyu’s seven key disciples through the use of a biblically based tea ceremony. The Japanese tea ceremony may also have been used by newly converted Christian warlords to share their new found faith with their own families and ranks of people under their leadership. Perhaps this is the reason Japanese Christians who went underground to survive persecution and death (Hidden Christians or Kakure Kirishitans) secretly used the Japanese tea ceremony to observe Holy Communion. It was not a new idea brought on by persecution, but rather something they already observed prior to the criminalization of Christianity. I am in the process of discovering countless parallels to the Bible reflected in the Japanese garden, tea house, tea room, tea ware and the entirety of the Japanese tea ceremony including what strongly resembles the sequence of events leading up to and including the Last Supper.
Bottom line, I am now in the process of studying the Japanese tea ceremony during the Christian Century as an accurate reflection of Christian theology based upon the Bible. In other words, the Japanese tea ceremony was Christian before credit for its development was usurped by the Buddhist leadership who were responsible for ferreting out underground Christians so they could be tortured and put to death. It was the Tokugawa Shogunate who issued and enforced the Edict of Annihilation of all Christians for over seven generations and two hundred years, reshaping the Japanese tea ceremony so, in addition to it becoming reputedly Buddhist, it became a means of promoting and maintaining cultural conformity and societal structure by infusing it with Confucianism. As a result of long isolation from the entire world, Japan became a homogenous island nation that viewed Christianity as being alien to being Japanese and a threat when in reality the Japanese tea ceremony, which is often pointed to as epitomizing Japanese culture, is Christian at its very core.
Up until Japan opened its doors once again to the world in the mid-nineteenth century, it was still illegal to be a Christian and continued to be punishable by death. Up until then, the Japanese tea ceremony was strictly observed by only males. It wasn’t until the feudal system of the Edo period ended and the westernization of the Meiji era began that women were allowed to teach the tea ceremony and the Japanese tea ceremony became standard in the educational curriculum exclusively for girls in Japan, like Home Economics used to be in the United States. Today the vast majority of teachers of tea and their students are female. As a result, the Japanese tea ceremony was neutered and became a benign form of performance art providing the viewer with an aesthetically beautiful impression of Japanese art and culture.
How might this understanding increase the openness of Japanese people to the Gospel?
1. Help Japanese understand why many of them experience an unexplainable visceral fear and resistance when they are confronted with anything symbolizing or having to do with Christianity.
2. Help Japanese who are Christians have a positive rather than an apologetic view of themselves as Christians—that they can, not only be both Christian and Japanese, but actually be more fully Japanese by being Christian.
3. The Japanese tea ceremony as it was observed during the Christian Century can be embraced and observed as a truly indigenous form of Japanese Christian worship and an effective means of evangelism to people of Japanese ancestry, whether in Japan or around the world.
4. That the Japanese tea ceremony of the Christian Century is not only useful, meaningful and effective when used now as a means of ministry as it was observed then, but that the world view, philosophy, principles and values underlying the Japanese tea ceremony that were effectively applied during the Christian Century then can be relevantly reapplied today in the development of new forms of contextualized ministry and evangelism for people of Japanese ancestry.
5. Appreciating the key role Christianity played in the shaping of uniquely Japanese forms of art, architecture and culture, a new, positive and integrated Japanese Christian identity can develop within and among people of Japanese ancestry and their churches.
As a result of all this, I hope you can now see, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, why I believe so many things in my life are converging and being interwoven, into one complete tapestry that fulfills so much of what the ministry of Iwa was originally called by God to pursue. Of course, the practical implications of what I have shared need to be to put into practice so we can see if what made the Japanese tea ceremony so effective for worship and evangelism then is still true today. We need to conduct the Japanese tea ceremony as it was then as well as transform it into something new and different but based upon the same essential biblical and cultural foundations that made the Japanese tea ceremony so meaningful and effective back then. Please Lord, may it be so!
Psalm 139:13-18 NIV
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand--
when I awake, I am still with you.
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