Page 41 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

Nô (Kanze, Hôshô, Konparu, and Kongo), sponsored plays, and gave gifts
to actors. While the Korean campaigns were in progress he actually
began to study and perform No, taking the lead in a dozen plays in the
imperial palace. Obviously believing that practice of the dances, chants,
and movements of No provided a valuable cultural discipline, he obliged
his leading daimyo, including Tokugawa leyasu and Maeda Toshiie, to
perform alongside the actors. Hideyoshi himself liked to play leading
roles in plays especially written to record his conquests and other activi-
ties. In 1594, f° r example, Hideyoshi and a retinue that included Sato-
mura Jôha journeyed to Yoshino to view cherry blossoms. The outing
later was commemorated in a new No play.
Vassal daimyo learned from Nobunaga and Hideyoshi that the
scale of their castle walls and chambers, the luxury of interior decoration,
and the patronage of artists could contribute to a valuable ambience of
power and prestige. They found it expedient and enjoyable to patronize
the same men of culture, like Jôha, Kano Eitoku, and Sen no Rikyü, who
were patronized by the hegemons. They also shared the hegemons' pas-
sion for the culture of tea. Among the great daimyo patrons of tea,
known as suki daimyo, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
were Furuta Oribe (1544-1615), Oda Uraku, Nobunaga's younger brother,
and Hosokawa Sansai. Oribe was a daimyo with an income of 35,000
koku who studied tea with Rikyü and after Rikyü's death came to be
regarded as a tea master in his own right. Oribe helped shape a distinc-
tive daimyo style of tea by commissioning large, irregular bowls to suit
his own taste and by building tea pavilions—like the famous Ennan tea
room—to accommodate daimyo and their attendants. Suspected by To-
kugawa leyasu of plotting against him at the time of the siege of Osaka
Castle, Oribe disemboweled himself. Oda Uraku served Hideyoshi at a
stipend of 2,000 koku. At the Battle of Sekigahara he shifted his alle-
giance to Tokugawa leyasu and was awarded daimyo status and a domain
of 30,000 koku. He had studied tea with Rikyü and after the Osaka
campaign withdrew to Kyoto and devoted himself to tea. Hosokawa
Sansai was the eldest son of Hosokawa Yüsai, a daimyo and one of the
major literary figures of the age. With his father, Sansai served No-
bunaga. He took as his wife the daughter of Akechi Mitsuhide, a young
woman who was baptized and took the name Gracia. When Mitsuhide
pressed Sansai to join him in assassinating Nobunaga, Sansai refused and
instead gave his allegiance to Hideyoshi, temporarily repudiating his
wife. He was rewarded with the headship of Miyatsu Castle. After Hide-
yoshi's death, Sansai went over to the Tokugawa at the Battle of Sekiga-
hara and was granted Kokura Castle in Kyushu, reestablishing the
fortunes of the Hosokawa family. Like his father Yüsai, he was a waka
poet and painter and a devotee of chanoyu. He studied with Rikyü, built
tearooms, and collected many famous utensils. Gracia's fate was less
happy. Taken hostage by Ishida Mitsunari prior to the Battle of Sekiga-
hara, she took her own life.
The composition of renga remained a fashion among sixteenth-
century daimyo. Akechi Mitsuhide enjoyed a reputation as a tea man,
poet, and man of culture. A few days before he assassinated Nobunaga,
Mitsuhide is said to have participated in a renga session with Jôha in
which he opened the sequence with a daring verse that could be read as
an expression of his intention to seize the realm for himself:
toki was ima Now is the time
ame ga shita shiru To rule all under heaven—
satsuki ka na It's the fifth month! (Keene 1981,126).

But the most admired literary daimyo of the age was undoubtedly
Hosokawa Yüsai. After early service to the last of the Ashikaga shoguns

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