The book of tea - Sakai city the birth place of Rikyu

To the south of Osaka city sits Sakai city. Overshadowed by "Osaka", but Sakai is itself a big city, one of the 20 ordinance-designated cities in Japan.

It was a self-governed city of merchants in the warring era, when feudal warlords were fighting with each other in total anarchy from 15th to 16th century. Sakai was well known for its merchant and foreign trade with Portuguese. Sakai's blacksmiths and merchants were the top class suppliers of guns for warlords, and its kitchen knife is now among the best in the world inheriting the tradition of gun production that involved the handling of iron. In fact, Sakai now produces 90% of kitchen knives used by professional chefs in Japan. The great tea master Rikyu was born in this city in the exact era of feudal warring era.

The site of Rikyu's residence, 11-Jan-2015

It may be an exaggeration to say that Sakai was also a religious city, but there are a lot of Buddhist temples of various schools. Trade with Portuguese introduced Christianity directly to Sakai. Walk in the city, and you would find a lot of Nichiren school temples, and also shin Pure land school of Hongan-ji temple Sakai branch, and Rinzai Zen school of Nanshu-ji, which had been closely related to Rikyu's ancestor. According to Okakura Tenshin, tea culture has been developing with Zen. Rikyu was Zen master as well as tea master.

Obai-an tea house, 11-Jan-2015

Tea house looks like just a simple hut, and it is. It is asymmetrically constructed by design, which gives the space of imagination to everyone. Novice like me who gets used to admire the symmetrical construction can not come up with anything in its asymmetrical-ness. Rikyu's universe is of asymmetrical, but natural phenomenon of complexity produces symmetrical phenomenon of fractal. Is the universe symmetrical or asymmetrical in its nature, complex or simple in its nature? Could it not be that Rikyu was of scientific strain as well?