Furuichi Ryōwa was a tea master from the

Edo Period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

and 4th generation ''

iemoto is a Japanese term used to refer to the founder or current Grand Master of a certain school of traditional Japanese art. It is used synonymously with the term when it refers to the family or house that the iemoto is head of and represents. Th ...

'' (grand master) of the Ogasawara Ko-ryū school of chanoyu. Ryōwa had a close friendship with

Furuta Oribe , whose birth name was , was a daimyō and celebrated master of the Japanese tea ceremony. He was originally a retainer of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Biography His teacher in the tea ceremony was Sen no Rikyū. He became the foremost ...

and received secret teachings of chanoyu from Oribe. This was a student-teacher relationship. Ryōwa’s ancestor

Furuichi Chōin Furuichi Chōin (1452–1508) (a.k.a. Furuichi Harima) was a minor Japanese lord and ''Japanese tea ceremony, cha-no-yu'' aficionado during the Sengoku period. A disciple of Murata Jukō, he was the recipient of Jukō's treatise on the tea cerem ...

was a disciple of Murata Shukō and the addressee of Shukō’s "Letter of the Heart" (kokoro-no-fumi), the most famous document on the essential philosophy and spiritual discipline of chanoyu.

Career

In the early Edo Period,

Ogasawara Tadazane was a Japanese samurai ''daimyō'' of the early Edo period. Early life Tadazane was the son of (1569–1615) with Toku-hime, daughter of Matsudaira Nobuyasu and granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He married Kamehime, daughter of Honda Tadamasa ...

(1596-1667), the lord of the

Kokura Domain , also known as or then , was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Buzen Province in modern-day Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. In the han system, Kokura was a political and economic abstraction based on period ...

, hired Ryōwa as Sadō (tea master). Ryōwa established his own school with this post, calling it the Ogasawara Ko-ryū. The term "ko" is the same Chinese character (古) as in his family name Furuichi (古市), but uses an alternate pronunciation. Ryōwa claimed his family lineage for the Ogasawara Ko school, making him the 4th generation grandmaster after Furuichi Inei. Inei was a famous master of tōcha tea gatherings who conducted extravagant events at Nara’s

Kōfuku-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples in the city of Nara, Japan. The temple is the national headquarters of the Hossō school. History Kōfuku-ji has its origin as a temple that was established in 669 b ...

temple. Inei's younger brother, Chōin, was also versed in the tōcha style, but later became attracted to Murata Shukō’s new approach to tea as an outward expression of the inner life of Buddhism.Chanoyu Jinbutsu Jiten, Sekaibunka-sha, 2011, (Japanese) Chōin studied under Shukō as is evident from the Letter of the Heart. Chōin's grandson, Furuichi Jyōin, became the third successor of the Furuichi style of tea before Jyōin’s adopted son, Ryōwa, established the Furuichi-style of tea as the Ogasawara Ko-ryū. Ryōma is buried at Kokura Castle, Shitaho-ji Temple.

Legacy

The Furuichi family continued in the role of Sadō of the Ogasawara feudal lord until the end of the Edo Period. In 1973, the 32nd head of the Ogasawara family, Ogasawara Tadamune, assumed the head of the Ogasawara Ko school of chanoyu to promote a resurgence of the school.

References

{{Reflist Tea ceremony Ogasawara clan 1657 deaths