Hideyoshi and Rikyū
HIDEYOSHI
AND RIKYŪ
HIDEYOSHI
AND RIKYŪ
NOGAMI YAEKO
Translated by Mariko Nishi LaFleur
and Morgan Beard
With an introduction by Martin Collcutt
Copyright
© 2018 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
23 22 21 20 19 18 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nogami, Yaeko, 1885–1985, author. | LaFleur, Mariko Nishi, translator. | Beard, Morgan, translator. | Collcutt, Martin, writer of introduction.
Title: Hideyoshi and Rikyū / Nogami Yaeko ; translated by Mariko Nishi LaFleur and Morgan Beard ; with an introduction by Martin Collcutt.
Other titles: Hideyoshi to Rikyū. English
Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017059955| ISBN 9780824874322 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780824867263 (pbk. ; alk. paper), Amazon Kindle 9780824867287, EPUB 9780824867270, PDF 9780824867294
Subjects: LCSH: Toyotomi, Hideyoshi, 1536?–1598—Fiction. | Sen, Rikyū, 1521 or 1522–1591—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PL834.O4 H513 2018 | DDC 895.63/44—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059955
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction by Martin Collcutt
Cast of Characters
HIDEYOSHI AND RIKYŪ
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
The Life of Nogami Yaeko
About the Translators
Introduction
WARLORD TOYOTOMI HIDEYOSHI
AND TEA MASTER SEN NO RIKYŪ
MARTIN COLLCUTT
In her intriguing novel, Nogami Yaeko explores the ultimately mysterious relationship between the late-medieval Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his respected tea master and political advisor Sen no Rikyū. After many years of service, Rikyū somehow aroused Hideyoshi’s anger and ultimately ended their relationship by killing himself with his own sword, a series of events that has been much debated but never resolved.
The period of Japanese history in which the warrior Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) and the tea master Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591) lived, and came together, is known as the “Age of Wars,” Sengoku jidai. Japan in the sixteenth century was at an extreme of decentralization. Neither the imperial court nor the nominal warrior government, known as the Muromachi bakufu, commanded much political authority or respect. The country was divided among more than two hundred and fifty warring feudal lords, or daimyō. Some of these warlords hoped to use regional victories to catapult themselves into a drive for national hegemony. They watched for any chance to strike at the capital, Kyōto, as a base from which to assert control over central Japan. The daimyō who achieved this first was Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582), the young leader of the small domain of Owari on the Pacific coast. Nobunaga’s best-known achievement was to begin the reunification of the country. After his assassination, the struggle for unification was carried on by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and then by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616).
As a young man, Hideyoshi, the son of a peasant farmer, was determined to become a warrior. He began to serve under Nobunaga and steadily won advancement as a clever strategist. After Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi seized power, extended Nobunaga’s conquests and ruled with the title of regent (kampaku). Hideyoshi’s conquests, land surveys, separation of samurai and peasants, and sword hunts transformed Japan. Like Nobunaga, he was a lavish castle builder and patron of the arts. He aimed to expand Japanese rule by conquering Korea and China, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Finally, in 1587 Hideyoshi, who was hostile to Christianity, vowed—and carried out—vengeance against any Japanese who had converted to Christianity.
The late sixteenth century in Japan was also an age of cultural and artistic experiment that saw the perfection of what we refer to in English as the “Tea Ceremony.” This is a rather imperfect translation of the Japanese term chanoyu, which simply means “hot water for tea.” To many observers and participants alike, it may seem at times like a very stiff and formal “ceremony,” but in fact it is more of a performing art in which a host invites guests to share the enjoyment of green tea and appreciate prized tea utensils in a carefully cultivated atmosphere. The word “ceremony” perhaps conveys more formality and distance than may be intended. It is not simply the host who performs a ritual of dispensing tea. Host and guests together share in the enjoyment of a deep aesthetic and emotional experience.
During the late sixteenth century chanoyu, as we now know it, was perfected by the articulation of an aesthetic—the ideal of wabi (literally “lonely” or “impoverished”)—that came to inspire much of Japanese art and taste. As an aesthetic principle, we can think of wabi as an ideal of cultivated poverty that contains within itself intimations of great richness. The style of tea ceremony developed during the sixteenth century that contained the perfected ideal of wabi has come to be known as “wabi-tea” (wabicha). This ideal was perfected by three tea masters—Murata Jukō (1422–1502), Takeno Jōō (1502–1555), and Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591)—all from the merchant community, and all influenced by the meditative practice of Zen Buddhism.
Sen no Rikyū, who ultimately became Hideyoshi’s tea master, was born in the merchant city of Sakai. Rikyū’s family were fish wholesalers, probably quite wealthy but not ranked among the great merchant houses of Sakai. Rikyū was expected to follow his father’s career, but while still a teen he began to study the arts of tea with two merchant tea masters, first with Kitamuki Dōchin (1504–1562) and then with Takeno Jōō, and by his twenties Rikyū was already becoming well known locally as a tea master.
Rikyū soon came to the attention of the warlord Oda Nobunaga. The young leader ruthlessly pursued the reunification of a severely divided Japan, but when time allowed, he enjoyed the culture of tea, using Imai Sōkyū (1520–1593) and Tsūda Sōgyū (died 1591) as his tea masters. While these two men served as both Sakai merchants and as tea masters, Rikyū was employed purely as a specialist in the way of tea.
Nobunaga’s attempt to unify the realm, over which he planned to rule, was halted in the ascendant. In 1582, while he and his retainers were staying at the Honnōji temple in Kyōto, he was assassinated by Akechi Mitsuhide (1528–1582), one of his leading generals. Nobunaga’s warriors withheld their allegiance from Mitsuhide and he was overthrown within a few days by another of Nobunaga’s generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who succeeded him as the new tenkajin (the effective ruler of the heavenly realm).
Hideyoshi’s passion for tea was both Rikyū’s fortune and misfortune. For many years, things went well between them. Rikyū served Hideyoshi both as tea master and as a respected political advisor. Under Hideyoshi’s sponsorship chanoyu gained considerably in popularity. Tea ceremonies offered refinement for samurai, a symbol of wealth to merchants, and cultural legitimacy to rulers. Rikyū soon existed at the pinnacle of the world of tea. In 1587 Hideyoshi ordered that a grand tea party be held in the grounds of the Kit
ano Shrine in Kyōto. Hearing that iconic tea utensils (meibutsu) were going to be used at the party, tea masters gathered from all over Kyōto and neighboring provinces. Anyone who enjoyed tea was invited, and irrespective of wealth or social status, the townspeople could watch Rikyū and other tea masters conduct tea ceremonies and display famous utensils. In this popular festival of tea there was a breath of gekokujō—the lower overturning the higher, a dissolution or reversal of social hierarchy before the hardening of status distinctions. Rikyū was still in favor at this time, and he and Hideyoshi shared the planning for the occasion.
After this event, however, relations between Hideyoshi and Rikyū became strained. Many reasons have been advanced to explain the estrangement. Looking at it in cultural or aesthetic terms, we can suggest that the growing aesthetic severity of Rikyū’s wabicha made an autocratic warrior ruler like Hideyoshi uncomfortable. Rikyū’s aesthetic ignored the whims of Hideyoshi and his desire for entertainment and made Rikyū the supreme arbiter in the world of tea. From the ruler’s point of view, perhaps Rikyū became a cultural rival. Moreover, Rikyū’s assertion of his aesthetic leadership may have been seen as an expression of the spirit of gekokujō, a challenge to the rigid social hierarchy being imposed by Hideyoshi. Yamanoue Sōji, a tea master and one of Rikyū’s disciples, wrote the following in his Yamanoue Sōjiki (literally “The Record of Yamanoue Sōji”): “Since Rikyū is the master, it is tasteful if he freely transforms the way of tea, making mountains into valleys, and west into east.” This claim that Rikyū could freely overturn traditional values and introduce his own innovations in the world of tea may well have been unacceptable to Hideyoshi, who claimed that authority as his own, and who no doubt thought of himself as the rule maker in the cultural as well as the political realm.
Rikyū’s fate may also have been affected by the politics of the age and the eclipse of Sakai. By 1587, the year in which the great Kitano tea party was held, Hideyoshi had virtually succeeded in unifying Japan. His next target was Korea and beyond Korea, China. Rikyū did not think such foreign conquest was a wise ambition, however, and may have angered Hideyoshi by saying so to others and to Hideyoshi himself.
After the destruction of the Hōjō family in 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who sympathized with Rikyū, was sent to the Kantō region in eastern Japan, and Rikyū’s isolation and unpopularity within the factions around Hideyoshi worsened. The death in 1591 of Hidenaga, Hideyoshi’s brother and Rikyū’s last protector, opened the way for the final tragedy.
Although the reason for Rikyū’s suicide remains in question, one possibility, and the one favored by Nogami Yaeko, is that Hideyoshi was angered by Rikyū’s acceptance of the installation of a wooden statue of himself above the main gate of the Zen monastery of Daitokuji in Kyōto, through which Hideyoshi, a patron of the temple, might frequently have passed. The thought that he, Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan, would be required to walk with head bowed beneath his tea instructor may have infuriated him. Whatever the reason, or reasons, Rikyū was ordered by Hideyoshi to commit seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment), which Rikyū did at his home in Kyōto in the second month of 1591.
Rikyū’s love of the simple, natural, and restrained—embodied in the beauty of a simple teahouse with a thatched roof, bare wood, unpainted walls, simple earthen vessels, a single flower, a small fire—set a curb on the aesthetic excesses of the age and continued to inspire the various schools of tea that have claimed descent from him. Moreover, the ideal of wabi has made its influence felt through Japanese aesthetics well beyond the teahouse. It is found in Japanese architecture, gardens, flower arrangements, pottery, painting, calligraphy, poetry, and even cooking. Chanoyu, the enjoyment of tea, can therefore be seen as one of the central nodes in Japanese culture, bringing together, transforming, and redistributing the various elements that went to make up the distinctively Japanese aesthetic ideal of wabi, so vigorously encouraged by Rikyū and enjoyed, for a time at least, by the warlord Hideyoshi. In the long run, Rikyū triumphed over Hideyoshi in that his aesthetic ideals, diffused by his successors in the world of chanoyu, have continued to express and inspire Japanese culture even today.
Cast of Characters
Main Characters
SEN NO RIKYŪ (also known as Sōeki or Eki-san): Japan’s highest-ranking master of tea ceremony and advisor to Hideyoshi
TOYOTOMI HIDEYOSHI (official title: Kampaku-sama, Chief Advisor to the Emperor; boyhood name Tōkichirō; given the name Hashihaba Chikuzennokami by Nobunaga): the commander of Japan’s military forces and the de facto ruler
Rikyū’s Household and Friends
RIKI: Rikyū’s wife
KISABURŌ (Kī-san to his friends): Rikyū’s youngest son, and the only one who still lives with Rikyū and Riki
DŌAN: Rikyū’s oldest son
SHŌAN: Rikyū’s stepson (approximately the same age as Dōan)
KATSU: Rikyū’s middle daughter
TORIGAI YAHEI: Rikyū’s brother-in-law
OCHIKA: Yahei’s mistress
KOKEI: a high-ranking monk at Daitokuji Temple; one of Rikyū’s best friends
YAMANOUE SŌJI: Rikyū’s faithful tea disciple
UNAI: one of Rikyū’s personal servants
KISAKU: another of Rikyū’s personal servants
MIWA: the head maid in Rikyū’s household
GISUKE: the clerk who manages Rikyū’s wholesale business while Rikyū is away
Hideyoshi’s Family and Retainers
[Note: Although Hideyoshi’s mother is a recurring character, she is not named in the novel]
HIDENAGA (also called by his title, Dainagon): brother of Hideyoshi
NENE: Hideyoshi’s wife
TSURUMATSU: Hideyoshi’s infant son
CHA CHA (also known as Yodo-dono): Hideyoshi’s favorite mistress and mother of his son
ISHIDA MITSUNARI: one of Hideyoshi’s chief advisors; has an intense dislike of Rikyū; called Sakichi by Hideyoshi
KUREMATSU SHINKURŌ: Hideyoshi’s favored Noh teacher
MAEDA GEN’I: the magistrate of shrines and temples in Kyōto and a good friend of Mitsunari
ŌMURA YŪKI: a playwright; one of Hideyoshi’s retainers, and the author of “Vengeance on Akechi”
IMAI SŌKYŪ: tea practitioner from Sakai and one of Hideyoshi’s tea ceremony advisors
TSUDA SŌGYŪ: tea practitioner from Sakai and one of Hideyoshi’s tea ceremony advisors
Political Figures
ODA NOBUNAGA: the former shōgun of Japan, who committed suicide to avoid being captured during a coup d’état. Hideyoshi became his successor after defeating Akechi
AKECHI MITSUHIDE: The man responsible for Nobunaga’s death; Hideyoshi, a loyal retainer of Nobunaga, rose to power after killing him
TOKUGAWA IEYASU (known to friends as Owari): lord of the Kantō region, apparently an ally of Hideyoshi but also a potential political rival
HŌJŌ UJIMASA: lord of the province of Odawara, a province Hideyoshi wants to conquer
HŌJŌ GENAN: Ujimasa’s great-uncle and patron of Yamanoue Sōji in Odawara
MAEDA TOSHIIE: lord of Kaga province
SHIMAZU YOSHIHISA: former lord of Kyūshū province, now defeated by Hideyoshi
FURUTA ORIBE: a minor lord and one of Rikyū’s disciples
HOSOKAWA TADAOKI: a minor lord and one of Rikyū’s disciples
TAKAYAMA UKON: a Christian lord and one of Rikyū’s disciples
GAMŌ UJISATO: a minor lord and one of Rikyū’s disciples
DATE MASAMUNE: a lord from the northern provinces, one Hideyoshi suspects of plotting rebellion
TOKU-HIME: Ieyasu’s favorite daughter; married to Hōjō’s son, Ujinao
HIDEYOSHI
AND RIKYŪ
1
Sleeping late was one of Rikyū’s greatest pleasures when he was at home in Sakai. Exhausted after coming home late the night before, he slept until the sun peeked under the low-hanging roof, slowly turning each square of his rice-paper w
indow screen light gold.
His wife, Riki, had his bath waiting as usual. The door to the bathing room was low and narrow, but Rikyū—a big man, his flesh still firm even at nearly seventy—ducked skillfully to enter as if he were going through a nijiriguchi, the entrance to a tearoom. In Sakai, the local custom was a steam bath in the morning. The steam rising from the rough cracks in the floor through the new rush matting smelled of the sea. The room was thick with salty vapor.
He rubbed his skin clean with the linen robe he was wearing. Since it was spring, he didn’t linger the way he would have in winter, but still he took the time to wash his body slowly and deliberately. The salt from the steam mixed with his sweat as he massaged his arms, legs, and joints. Finally, he splashed himself with fresh, cold water from a large bucket, enjoying the coolness after the heat of the bath.
In an adjoining room, he shed his wet robe. There was a dry one waiting for him in a basket in the corner. He put on the fresh robe and used it to dry himself. “Mmmm, heaven, heaven!” He opened another door and went into the dressing room, where there was a mirror and a kimono stand. Riki was waiting with a clean kimono on her lap.
“Your complexion is much better than it was last night,” she observed.
“I’ve been so busy lately.”
“It’s not healthy to push yourself so hard.”
“It’s my duty.”
Recently, Rikyū had started traveling back and forth from his home in the city of Sakai to Hideyoshi’s castle, Jurakudai, in Kyōto. It didn’t leave him much time to sleep late, or even take his morning bath. He could be called to the castle at any time, and when he was at Jurakudai, Hideyoshi would sometimes visit him unannounced—he loved to catch Rikyū by surprise, especially if it meant that he annoyed him. But when Hideyoshi came to see Rikyū, it was usually about something important. They would retire to the privacy of Rikyū’s tearoom, where no one would disturb them.