Page 412 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

the cuirass consists of floral arabesque rendered in the Chinese but temmoku by the Japanese, pre- 260
gilt bronze openwork, and studs in the shape of sumably from the Japanese pronunciation of Mt. TEA CADDY, CALLED "ROKUSHAKU"
double-petaled chrysanthemums. Tianmu, site of the Buddhist establishment in
The horns of the helmet flank a three-pronged Zhejiang Province, where many Japanese student- (PALANQUIN BEARER)
sword tip —an ornament with Buddhist significance. monks acquired the bowls and brought them back OR "MASANOBU SHUNKEI
A set of similar domaru armor but with dif- to Japan. KATATSUKI CHA-IRE"
ferent-colored cording is extant at the same Jian ware was made exclusively for drinking late i$th century
shrine. Both sets are said to have been an offering tea; tea bowls were the only shape produced. The Japanese
by Shimazu Takahisa (1514-1571), a daimyo of body was a purple-brown stoneware with a thick black-glazed Seto ware
southern Kyushu, and his clansmen. H.Y. "treacly" brown-to-black glaze, often marked height 7.7 (3J, diameter 6.4 (2 /2J
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with streaks (and then called "hare's fur") or,
more rarely, with silvery "oil spots." Tea, long Fujita Art Museum, Osaka
credited in East Asia with health-giving proper-
ties, was additionally prized by Chan Buddhists as Undocumented tradition tells of the founding of
a stimulant conducing to the alertness necessary the pottery kilns at Seto, to the east of present-
259 for meditation. When in the twelfth-thirteenth day Nagoya, by one Kato Shirozaemon Kagemasa
century Chan reached Japan, there to flourish (also known as Toshiro) in the first half of the
TEA BOWL, TEMMOKU TYPE mightily as Zen, tea and its appurtenances became thirteenth century. Kagemasa purportedly
almost mandatory for the Japanese monasteries traveled in China during the 12205 studying
first half of i6th century and, by extension, the powerful ruling warrior
Mino ware (?): stoneware with off-white crackled class. Direct imitations of temmoku bowls were ceramic technique, particularly the manufacture
glaze and silver rim mounting of tea caddies. On returning to Japan, he declared
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height 6.j f2 /3J, diameter 12.3 (4 /s) made at Seto from the late thirteenth through the the clays at Seto to be most suitable for the pro-
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references: Jenyns 1971, pi. 460; Seattle 1972, no. 25 fifteenth century. These are easily identified by duction of ceramics. Archaeological investigation
their gray body, radically different from the dark does confirm the production of glazed Chinese
Hinohara Setsuzo body of the Chinese wares. style ceramics at Seto during the period of Kage-
This bowl retains the regularity of the Chinese masa's ostensible activity. Vessels related to Tea
Uncertainty still surrounds this tea bowl and ware but is covered, save for its lower quarter and Ceremony that were produced in China and
another of the same type, equally rare and famous, the foot, by a thick, opaque, crackled, warm white eagerly collected by successive Ashikaga shoguns
in the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya. The glaze. The unglazed body, now dark from use clearly served as the prototypes for the tea caddy
date given above is approximate. Current writers and accumulated grime, was originally gray, like seen here.
favor Mino, north of Nagoya (in present-day Gifu Seto ware. The silver rim, a later addition with The formal Japanese title for this vessel,
Pref.), as its kiln site, but it may equally well have precedents among the jian wares of China, sug- "Masanobu Shunkei katatsuki cha-ire," describes a
been made at one of the older and more southerly gests how greatly the bowl was valued. The glaze square-shouldered tea caddy that was a joint
kilns at Seto (closer to Nagoya, in present-day anticipates one of the classic Tea Ceremony wares creation of Yamana Zensho Masanobu and Kato
Aichi Pref.). The historical importance of the two of the Momoyama period (1573-1615) — Shino Shirozaemon Shunkei. Not much is known about
bowls, however, is unambiguous. ware made at Mino —hence the importance of Masanobu (act. 1469-1486), except that he was a
Their simple, natural, and roughly symmetrical these two bowls. They stand at the transition retainer to Yamana Sozen (1403-1473) and prac-
shape was certainly copied after Chinese Song from the derivative Seto wares of the fourteenth ticed the Tea Ceremony and the manufacture of
dynasty (960-1279) tea bowls from Fujian Prov- century to the innovative and unique "tea taste" related vessels — a bent thoroughly consistent
ince. These were called jian ware (after Fujian) by wares of the late sixteenth century. with the cultural interests of the warrior class.
Shunkei, a descendant of the semilegendary Kage-
masa, instructed Masanobu in making ceramics.
The Yamana had been the dominant clan in
western Honshu from the early fourteenth cen-
tury, when eleven of Japan's then sixty-six prov-
inces were in their hands and the clan head was
referred to as "Lord of One-Sixth [of the Coun-
try]" (Rokubun no Ichi Dono). By Sozen's day
their domain had shrunk, though they were still
powerful enough to be one party to the prolonged
and disastrous Onin War (1467-1477).
More than a century after its creation this tea
caddy was a favorite of Kobori Enshu (1579-1647),
the renowned tea master and garden designer. It
was Enshu who named this piece "Rokushaku,"
meaning "Palanquin Bearer," and inscribed the
name on the box containing the caddy. Only the
neck and shoulder portions of the vessel are
glazed; the remainder is bare clay, which
apparently reminded Enshu of the minimally
attired bearers.
An amber glaze infused with black created the
smoky yellow color which covers the caddy from

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