Furuta Shigenari - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

, more familiarly known in Japanese cultural history as , was a warrior and celebrated master of the Japanese tea ceremony

Japanese tea ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony, also called the Way of Tea, is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha, powdered green tea. In Japanese, it is called . The manner in which it is performed, or the art of its performance, is called...

. He was originally a retainer of Oda Nobunaga

Oda Nobunaga

was the initiator of the unification of Japan under the shogunate in the late 16th century, which ruled Japan until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was also a major daimyo during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. His opus was continued, completed and finalized by his successors Toyotomi...

and Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

was a daimyo warrior, general and politician of the Sengoku period. He unified the political factions of Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle...

. His teacher in the tea ceremony was Sen no Rikyū

Sen no Rikyu

, is considered the historical figure with the most profound influence on chanoyu, the Japanese "Way of Tea", particularly the tradition of wabi-cha...

. He became the foremost tea master in the land after Rikyū's death, and taught this art to the shōgun

Shogun

A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...

Tokugawa Hidetada

was the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, who ruled from 1605 until his abdication in 1623. He was the third son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate.-Early life :...

. Among his other particularly famous tea ceremony students were Kobori Enshū

Kobori Masakazu

, better known as ', was a notable Japanese artist and aristocrat in the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu.In 1604, Kobori received as inheritance a 12,000-koku fief in Ōmi Province at Komuro. He excelled in the arts of painting, poetry, flower arrangement, and garden design...

and Honami Kōetsu

Honami Koetsu

was a Japanese craftsman, potter, lacquerer, and calligrapher, whose work is generally considered to have inspired the founding of the Rinpa school of painting.-Early life:...

. The kind of tea ceremony that he established is known as Oribe-ryū (see Schools of Japanese tea ceremony

Schools of Japanese tea ceremony

"Schools of Japanese tea ceremony" refers to the various lines or "streams" of the Japanese Way of Tea. The word "schools" here is an English rendering of the Japanese term ryūha .-san-Senke:...

), and the style of ceramics that are attributed to his artistic influence are known as Oribe-yaki (see Oribe ware). He also designed a style of stone lantern (tōrō
Tōrō
A "灯篭" is just a simplified form of "灯籠". is a Japanese lantern made of stone, wood, or metal traditional in the Far East. In China extant specimen are very rare, and in Korea too they are not as common as in Japan. In Japan, tōrō were originally used only in Buddhist temples, where they lined and...

) for the roji tea garden, and it has come to be known as Oribe-dōrō.

During the year of 1600, Shigenari received a 10,000-koku income. During the Osaka Campaign of 1615, Shigenari was forced to plot in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

against the Tokugawa

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

and the Emperor

Emperor

An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...

, on the behalf of the defenders of Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

. After this event, Shigenari was put to death (seppuku

Seppuku

is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies , or as a form of capital punishment...

) along with his son.

See also

Further reading