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稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十よりかへるもとの其一 keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one

稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十よりかへるもとの其一, a tea verse given to Rikyū: its copies, names and two verbs, from a manuscript dated 1623 to the flower and sword schools.

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Japanese Scroll of Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one (keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十よりかへるもとの其一keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十よりかへるもとの其一, practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one, is a teaching verse of the way of tea, counted among the hundred poems the tradition gives to Rikyū 利休 (1522–1591). The oldest dated copy of it read here is a manuscript whose colophon dates the copying to 1623 and names Rikyū as the maker, and it ends its hundred on this poem; but the same poems also stand under the names of Takeno Jōō 武野紹鷗 and Katagiri Sekishū 片桐石州, many copies hold ninety-odd poems, one study finding an exact hundred, among the eight copies it collates, only in the texts of the Urasenke 裏千家 master Gengensai 玄々斎 of 1845 and after and another in a copy of 1773, Tsutsui Hiroichi, as two later scholars report him, places the first hundred under Rikyū's name around 1690, and Inoue Muneo allows that the 1623 year may not be believed [1][2][3][4]. Every copy dated before 1901 that is read here, and the undated Sekishū manuscript, gives the verb as an order, 十をしれ, know ten; the continuing 十を知り, which runs one sentence from one to ten and back, is first known in print, in the National Diet Library's full text, in 1901 and 1903 and has been the common form since [5][6][7]. From 1907 the verse left tea for Noh, flower arrangement and the sword, and the 守破離 verse that now follows it closes the hundred, among the copies Ishizuka collates, only in the Hogo-fusuma 法護普須磨 text, which he dates to 1856 and reads in a copy of 1915, and it closes the Urasenke print of 1903 [8][9][4][7].

Overview

The text. The verse has the wording of the title in the Urasenke print of 1903, which spells 歸る and その一: 稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十より歸るもとのその一 [7]. The older copies differ in one word that changes the sentence: the 1623 copy, the Sekishū manuscript and the Jōō hundred write the verb しれ or 志れ, the copy of 1817 and the print of 1895 十を知れ, all the imperative know ten, and so does Gengensai's own hundred of 1845 as Ishizuka transcribes it, 十をしれ [1][5][10][11][12][4]. 習ひ is written ならひ in the 1623 copy, the Sekishū manuscript and Gengensai's text, and 習 in the Jōō hundred; come back is かへる, かゑる (the 1811 manuscript, as Ishizuka prints it), 歸る, 還る (1895), 帰る (Gengensai) and, once, 復へる (1925); that first one is もとのその一, もとの其一, 本の其一 (Gengensai), 元の其一 (1901) and 元のその一 (1925, 1928) [1][5][10][12][4][13][6]. The first line has moved too: 茶の湯とは, the way of tea is, in 1901, 其道は, the way is, as the library's text layer reads a Noh magazine of 1907, 茶の道は in a household reader of 1932 [6][8][14].

The sense. In the form of the title, one sentence runs the whole course: practice is learning from one and knowing ten, and from ten coming back to that first one. In the older form it is two orders and a naming: in practice, learn from one; know ten; and then, what you come back to from ten is that first one. The witnesses read it in several ways, side by side: the meaning of the tea procedures, from the simplest to the full set [6]; the master's return to the root, read with the verse keep the rule and the manner to the end, and though you break them, though you leave them, do not forget the root [15][16]; enter the form and leave it, for a teacher of flower arrangement [9]; and the play of beginner and adept, informal and formal, for its English translator [17].

The words. 稽古 is the 日本国語大辞典's third sense, 修業。練習。特に武術、芸能などについていうことが多い, training; practice; said especially of the martial arts and the performing arts, first cited from the Heiji monogatari 平治物語 (The Tale of Heiji), which it dates with a query, 1220頃か; its first sense is the characters' own, to consider the ancient, first cited from the Ruijū sandai kyaku 類聚三代格, in an item dated 弘仁 13, 822, with the Shujing 書経 (The Book of Documents) named among its other texts [18]. 一 and 十 are the numbers one and ten, written as numerals in the manuscripts [5][1]. 習ひ is the continuative of 習ふ, learn; 知り is the continuative of 知る, know, which runs the sentence on, and しれ is its imperative, which ends it. もとの其一 is that first one, the one at the origin. The line is read keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi: the print of 1895 marks けいこ, いち, なら, し, かへ and そのいち in its ruby [12], and the German translation of 1943, in the web edition read here, gives the romaji Keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi [19].

The text in English. As far as the books read and the Internet Archive's full text show, the verse came into a Western language first in German, in Hermann Bohner's translation of 1943 of a Japanese book of Zen words for tea-room scrolls, read here in an emended web edition: Der Unterricht: Lern eins und wisse zehn! Von Zehn zurück zum Grunde komm: zu diesem Eins! [19]. In English the earliest known rendering, in the books read and the Internet Archive's full text, is Dennis Hirota's of 1995, Practice involves / beginning to learn from one / and coming to know ten, / then returning from ten / to the original one, given as a poem attributed to Rikyū [17]; H. E. Davey printed another in 1999 and again in 2003, In your practice / Start by learning one / And continue until you understand ten. / From ten you must return / To the original one [20][21].

The historical record

元和 9, 1623, by its colophon: the Chanoyu hyakushu 茶湯百首, a hundred tea poems under Sōeki's name, ending on this poem. A manuscript in the Nakagawa collection 中川文庫 of the Yūtoku Inari Shrine 祐徳稲荷神社 carries 茶湯百首 宗易 on its cover and 茶湯百首, 宗易製, made by Sōeki, as its inner title; Sōeki 宗易 is Rikyū's Buddhist name [1][22]. Its last poem, in the last column before the colophon, reads 稽古とは一よりならひ十をしれ十よりかへるもとのその一, though in this hand the kana after the first 十 cannot be told apart from と, and the kana after かへ, a long stroke and a loop, is read as る from the other copies [1]. The colophon follows on the next leaf [1]:

此百首利休宗易居士之製作 / 茶湯之大體也 落首在之 遺恨〻〻 / 元和九年八月日 書寫畢

These hundred poems are the making of Rikyū Sōeki Koji; they are the essentials of chanoyu. 落首在之. A pity, a pity. Copied, the eighth month of 元和 9 [1]. The copy holds about ninety poems, ninety-two by the count of Inoue Muneo 井上宗雄, who wondered whether 落首在之 is to be read these were found among the 落書, lampoons, and noted that none of the ninety-two is in a lampoon's style [2]. Inoue allowed that the year may not be believed: 元和の年次は信じられなくとも, even if the year of 元和 cannot be believed [2]. A study of 2014, read here only in the library's snippet view, takes up the copy in a case for a hundred tea poems by Furuta Oribe 古田織部 in the 慶長 era, and 落書 as the copyist's word for its passages in the style of comic verse [23]. The National Institute of Japanese Literature gives the manuscript no date [1]. What the colophon dates is the copying it reports, and no source read dates the hand or the paper.

Undated, the hundred under Katagiri Sekishū's name. A manuscript of the 冑山文庫 collection titled Sekishūkō hyakushu 石州公百首, Lord Sekishū's hundred poems, undated and catalogued under Sekishū (1605–1673) as author, writes the poem one column to a poem [5]:

稽古とは一よりならひ十をしれ十よりかへるもとのそのいち

(The last four characters, そのいち, are read uncertainly in this hand: のいち are clear, the first may be the kana そ or the character 其.) Practice: learn from one; know ten; from ten, what you come back to is that first one [5]. The poem before it begins 目にて見よ, see with the eyes, and the poem after it calls what you have learned dust, as in the Jōō hundred below [5][10].

文化 14, 1817, the Chadō hyakushu 茶道百首 of the Mori collection, signed with a name Rikyū did not yet hold. A manuscript of the Mori collection 森文庫, titled 茶道百首 inside and Rikyū koji chadō hyakushu 利休居士茶道百首 on its cover, was copied in the first month of winter of 文化 14, 1817, by the copyist who signs it; the colophon it copies is signed 抛筌齋 利休 under the date 天正 8, 1580 [11]. Rikyū was given the name 利休 as a lay title at the palace tea of 天正 13, 1585 [22], so the signature gives him a name he did not yet have. The poem stands near the end, 稽古とは一より習ひ十を知れ十より歸るもとの其一 [11].

文政 11, 1828, the hundred under Takeno Jōō's name, in the Zoku gunsho ruijū. The collection Zoku gunsho ruijū 続群書類従 carries in its book 568 the Jōō chanoyu hyakushu 紹鷗茶湯百首, Jōō's hundred tea poems; its manuscript at the Imperial Household Agency writes the poem second-last of the poems it counts [10]:

稽古とは一より習十を志れ十よりかへるもとのその一

志 here is the kana し, so the verb is again しれ [10]. The poem after it, 習をは塵芥ぞと, ends the count, 右百四首有, the above: one hundred and four poems; one more poem, 振舞は酢皿屏風に, follows the count, and then a reader's note dated the twelfth month of 文政 11, 1828; the printed edition of 1926 sets the same text [10][24]. The date is the reader's, not the poems'. The hundred carries no date or signature at its head [24].

弘化 2, 1845, Gengensai, the Chadō kyōyu hyakushuei 茶道教諭百首詠: an exact hundred. Gengensai 玄々斎 (1810–1877), the eleventh head of the Urasenke house of tea [25][26], wrote out a hundred under the title 茶道教諭百首詠 and signed it in the early summer of 弘化 2, 1845, as Rikyū's descendant in the eleventh generation; Ishizuka Osamu 石塚修 transcribes it from vol. 10 of the Chadō koten zenshū 茶道古典全集 (Collected Classics of Tea), which his notes date 昭和 31, 1956, and the National Diet Library's copy 1961; in his numbering it is poem 91 [4][27]:

稽古とは一よりならひ十をしれ / 十より帰る本の其一

The verb is the imperative [4][27]. Of the eight copies Ishizuka collates, only Gengensai's two texts hold exactly a hundred poems [4]. He collates them against a manuscript at the University of Tsukuba titled 吃茶詠一百四十七首, poems on drinking tea, one hundred and forty-seven, which by his count holds 145, copied in 文化 8, 1811, where the poem is no. 130, 稽古とは一より習ひ十をしれ / 十よりかゑるもとの其一 [4]. In Gengensai's text the poem opens a run of five, nos. 91 to 95, four of which stand, two in variant wording, as nos. 46 and 129 to 131 of that manuscript, and Ishizuka reads the run as Gengensai's addition: Eは百首に整えるために、玄々斎が加えた部分, E is the part Gengensai added to bring it to a hundred [4]. In his reading, then, the poem came into the Urasenke hundred as one of five Gengensai added to make the number exact, four of which also stand in the 1811 manuscript; the 1623 copy, which already ends its hundred on it, stands beside that reading, and neither settles the other. Of the five poems after the run, nos. 96 to 100, he says that they show plainly Gengensai's intent to teach chanoyu in verse, この五首には玄々斎宗室が和歌で茶の湯の教導を意図したことが明確に現れている [4]. Its last poem, no. 100, is 本来もなき, and the verse that names 守破離 is not in it [4].

安政 3, 1856, with a writing of 1843: the Hogo-fusuma 法護普須磨, the rules on the practice-room doors, and, in a copy of 1915, a new last poem. The Urasenke book Hogo-fusuma 法護普須磨, its preface dated the middle of summer of 安政 3, 1856, is a set of rules for the procedures, and its preface says how they were first written [28]:

数たけ筆にまかせ稽古の席の襖に反古のやうに誌しけるも初学の人々修行の聊たよりになれ可しと謐而已

I wrote them, as many as there were, as the brush led, on the sliding doors of the practice room like waste paper, only hoping they might be some small help to beginners in their training [28]. The title is read hogo-fusuma [28], as 反古襖 would be, waste-paper doors; that the characters spell that is my reading. The National Diet Library's copy of the printed book, searched through its full text, carries no hundred [28]. The hundred stands under this preface in a copy of 1915, and the poem is in the edition of 1929 [4][29]; in the 1915 copy its last poem, no. 100, is the 規矩作法 verse, which Ishizuka prints 規矩作法護り尽くして破るとも離るゝとても本をわすれな and which in his words was 最終的に百首の掉尾を飾る一首, set in the end as the poem that crowns the hundred; among the eight copies he collates it is in this text alone [4][29]. Gengensai had written of the stages in 天保 14, 1843, in his 喫茶敲門瓦子: 弟子守を習ひ尽し、能成候へハ、自然ト破ル, when the pupil has learned 守, keeping, to the full and can do it well, he breaks of himself [4]. The word 守破離 itself is older than Gengensai, in the articles the tea master Kawakami Fuhaku 川上不白 wrote in Edo between 1750 and 1773 [30].

1893 to 1908, the etiquette manuals: still an order. The Danjo shoreihō 男女諸礼法, a manual of manners of 1893, files the poem under tea, with 十を知れ and 還る, and other books of etiquette carry it with the imperative into 1908 [31][32].

1895, the Chanoyu to ikebana 茶の湯と生花: not a hundred. A guide to tea and flowers compiled by Ōhashi Matatarō 大橋又太郎 opens its run of the poems with a headnote [12]:

茶道教へ歌は利休居士が茶道執心の人の望みに任せ茶の手前、茶の湯の理を書つゞられしものにて其數百首はなけれど大數を取りて茶道教歌百首といふなり歌は甚だ鄙俗を免れずと雖も此道に志ある者をして覺り易からしめんため作られしものなり

The teaching poems of tea are what Rikyū Koji wrote out, at the wish of those devoted to tea, on the procedures and the principles of chanoyu; they do not number a hundred, but the round number is taken and they are called the hundred teaching poems of tea. The poems cannot escape being very homely, but they were made so that those who aspire to the way might grasp it easily [12]. The poem stands near the end of the run, 稽古とは一より習ひ十を知れ十より還るもとの其一 [12].

1901, Okazaki Enchū 岡崎淵冲: 茶の湯とは, and the run-on verb. In the Tencha kappō 点茶活法, a comparison of the procedures of the schools of tea, the writer closes a passage on what the procedures mean [6]: 茶湯百首に「茶の湯とは一より習ひ十を知り十より歸る元の其一」とある是也、手前の意味は大凡斯の如き, this is what the hundred tea poems mean by "the way of tea is learning from one, knowing ten, and coming back from ten to the first one"; the meaning of the procedures is broadly this [6]. It is the earliest known witness of 十を知り in the National Diet Library's full text, and its first line is 茶の湯とは.

1903, Sen Sōshitsu 千宗室, the Chadō hama no masago 茶道浜の真砂: 利休居士教諭百首詠, and the 守破離 verse ten poems later. The Urasenke book of the thirteenth head of the house prints the hundred under the heading 利休居士教諭百首詠, Rikyū Koji's hundred poems of instruction [7]. The poem reads 稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十より歸るもとのその一, and ten poems later the hundred closes on [7]:

規矩作法守り盡して破るとも離るゝとても本を忘れな

The rule and the manner: keep them to the end, and though you break them, though you leave them, do not forget the root [7][30]. In the National Diet Library's full text it is the earliest known print of the poem under Rikyū's name in the run-on form, and the earliest print read here in which the 守破離 verse follows it.

1904, printed 1907, Tanaka Senshō 田中仙樵: after Rikyū's death. Asada Kyōkei 浅田恭卿 (1834–1914) records in the Myōmyō chawashū tsuika 妙々茶話集 追加 that in December 1904 Tanaka Senshō, a pupil of the Urasenke house (1875–1960), who founded the 大日本茶道学会 and argued for opening the secret transmissions [33], copied for him the hundred handed down in the Sen house, 今日庵前宗匠玄々齋直筆の百首, the hundred in the hand of Gengensai, former master of the Konnichian [34]. Tanaka's view, as Asada gives it: また利休百首とあれと休居士歿後の必作意ならんと主張せり, he also maintained that though it is called the Rikyū hundred, it must be a composition from after Rikyū Koji's death [34]. Asada then rewrote the poems with two advisers, 其可ならん方に訂正し … 書き改めたり, correcting them toward what seemed right … I rewrote them, so the text he prints is an editor's, and he says so [34]. Among the books read here it is the earliest known doubt of the attribution in print, and it came from inside the Urasenke house's own pupils.

1907 to 1939, out of tea: Noh, flowers and the sword. A Noh magazine of 1907 bends the first line to 其道は, the way is, as the library's text layer reads it [8]. A teacher of flower arrangement, Yamane Suidō 山根翠堂, set the poem in 1925 at the foot of a lesson sheet in his Moribana to nageirebana no kenkyū 盛花と投入花の研究, 稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十より復へる元のその一, with another poem of the hundred, and signed both 紹鷗, Jōō [13]; in 1928 he closed his Nageire moribana kōza 投入盛花講座 with it under Rikyū's name [9]:

利久居士は、稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り、十よりかへる元のその一と云つて居ります。…本書は一より習ひ十を知るまでの參考書です。而して十を知る事は、元のその一に還る過程です。

Rikyū Koji says: practice is learning from one, knowing ten, and from ten coming back to the first one. … This book is a reference for learning from one until you know ten; and knowing ten is the way back to the first one [9]. The same year Tokunō Bun 得能文 (1866–1945), in his Senjin reigo 淺人零語, gave the 守破離 verse to Rikyū as his saying, 故に利休は又た『規矩作法守り盡して破るとも離るゝとても本を忘るな』と言つて居る, and so Rikyū also said … [15]. In 1939 Kōno Minoru 河野稔's Musō jikiden eishinryū iaidō 無双直伝英信流居合道, a manual of iai, carries the poem [35].

1940, Takahashi Tatsuo 高橋竜雄, the Chadō jiten 茶道辞典: ninety-odd, and kendō. The dictionary of tea enters 利休百首 [16]: 茶湯の心得に就ての和歌。之に紹鷗百首、利休百首あり、その何れが眞なるか不明。又百首といつて、九十餘首のものが多い。今諸書を參考して、次の百首とした, poems on the principles of chanoyu. There are a Jōō hundred and a Rikyū hundred, and which is genuine is not known. Many that are called a hundred have ninety-odd poems; I have made the hundred below from several books [16]. The poem is his no. 90, and on another page he sets the hundred's last poem beside the sword: 劍道に守破離の三階段を說く (說 or 説; the print does not settle which at the library's resolution), kendō teaches the three steps of 守破離, and in tea the last poem of the Rikyū hundred says the same [16].

1977 to 2017, the scholars: one set under three names. Tsutsui Hiroichi 筒井紘一, in the Chasho no keifu 茶書の系譜 (1978), found that the hundreds under the names of Jōō, Rikyū and Kobori Enshū 小堀遠州 differ only by the exchange of a few poems and are one content [3]; and, as Ishizuka reports the edition of 2003, he found four sets of tea poems surviving, under the titles 紹鴎百首, 利休百首, 遠州百首 and 南坊二百首, the last of them two hundred poems, named as the oldest extant hundred the 茶湯百首 in the 茶湯秘抄, copied in 宝永 5, 1708, and dated the gathering of the hundred under Rikyū's name to around the centenary of his death, 元禄 3, 1690 [36]. Of a copy in the Konnichian 今日庵 library whose colophon is dated 慶長 3, 1598, he had written in an article of 1977 that the date cannot be believed as it stands, そのまま信ずることはできない [37]; in the book he placed that copy in the 元禄 era, some years before 1708, and called it the first to put Rikyū's name on a hundred [3]. Ishizuka Osamu in 2007 collated eight copies in three lineages, with Gengensai's two texts a lineage of their own [4]. Zhao Yanan 趙亜男 in 2017 found the poem absent from a copy of 1773 at the Tokyo University of the Arts and from the Saga copy of the Jōō hundred, and called the 1773 copy the oldest known that holds exactly a hundred, 現時点で知りうる茶道和歌伝本において百首に整っている最古のもの [38]; she writes that the Hogo-fusuma, in Gengensai's hand, became widely known when it was published in 1856, and the National Diet Library's copy of the book with that preface, searched through its full text, carries no hundred [38][28]. None of these studies, nor Tsutsui as they report him, sets the 1623 copy beside his dating; Inoue Muneo's allowance that its year may not be believed, and the 2014 study's case for Oribe, are the two readings of it among the studies read here [2][23].

The attribution. The poem has been given to four men. The 1623 copy names Rikyū Sōeki, and from the Meiji prints of 1895 and 1903 on the tradition follows it [1][12][7]; the 続群書類従 gives the hundred to Jōō, a manuscript to Sekishū, and a flower master still wrote Jōō under it in 1925 [10][5][13]; a study of 2014, read in snippet view, whose title gives a hundred tea poems to Oribe, discusses the 1623 copy under that head [23]. Against Rikyū as the author stand Tsutsui's dating of the first hundred under his name to about 1690, Tanaka Senshō's judgment of 1904, and the 1817 copy's signature in a name Rikyū was given only in 1585; and Inoue allowed that the 1623 year may not be believed [36][34][11][22][2]. Nothing read dates the poem itself. The 1623 colophon stands set against Tsutsui and Inoue, not over them: it is older than Tsutsui's 元禄, and it is also a colophon of the kind he distrusts. Attributed to Rikyū, Hirota's phrase, is where it stands [17].

What is not a source. The 守破離 verse is not the poem's partner before Gengensai: it is in none of the older copies read here, nor in any copy in Ishizuka's table but the Hogo-fusuma text, and in the 1623 copy this poem is itself the end [1][4][30]. The hundred tea poems printed in 1642 as the Chanoyu hyakushu uta 茶湯百首歌, also called 鳥鼠集, are their author's own composition by their afterword, Chinese tea lore, names and wares, and the poem is not on their last leaf [39]. The Analects' 回也聞一以知十, Hui hears one and knows ten, behind the Japanese saying 一を聞いて十を知る, sits beside the poem's learn one, know ten [40]; no witness read names it, and it is a pairing, not an origin.

The poem in English

1943, Akaji Sōtei 赤路宗貞 and Hermann Bohner, Zen-Worte im Tee-Raume. Before English, German. Akaji's Chashitsu kakemono zengo tsūkai 茶室掛物禅語通解, a book of Zen words for tea-room scrolls, published in Japanese in 1917 with the poem under 利休百首 [41], was translated by Hermann Bohner for the German East Asia society in Tokyo; in the comment on the scroll 一二三, one, two, three, he writes Sagt Rikyū in den Hundert Versen, Rikyū says in the hundred verses [19]:

Der Unterricht: Lern eins und wisse zehn! / Von Zehn zurück zum Grunde komm: zu diesem Eins!

Instruction: learn one and know ten! From ten come back to the ground: to this one! [19]. The two exclamation marks render both verbs as orders, wisse zehn, though the romaji beside them has the run-on shiri; zum Grunde, to the ground, reads もと as the ground of things [19]. The text is read in a web edition of 2006 to 2009, whose editor says he prepared and emended it, aufbereitet, emendiert, without a mark at this passage; the print of 1943 is not read here.

1995, Dennis Hirota, Wind in the Pines. A poem attributed to Rikyū states: keiko to wa / ichi yori narai / jū o shiri / jū yori kaeru / moto no sono ichi. Practice involves / beginning to learn from one / and coming to know ten, / then returning from ten / to the original one, p. 26 [17]. He reads it as the opposition of one and ten, of beginner and adept, ground and exfoliation, informal and formal procedures, and his note gives his source as the 茶道教諭百首詠, the title Ishizuka gives Gengensai's text, in the 茶道古典全集, vol. 10, p. 146 [17][4]. Attributed to is the scholar's hedge, and it is the right one.

1999 and 2003, H. E. Davey. In a book on Japanese brush writing, under POEM BY RIKYU, p. 89, as the Internet Archive's text layer reads it: In your practice / Start by learning one / And continue until you understand ten. / From ten you must return / To the original one [20]; and again in 2003, where Sen no Rikyu … expresses the concept as follows [21]. The attribution has lost Hirota's hedge.

Today. The English the work order gives the scroll is Learn from one to know ten, then come back from ten to that first one. It renders the run-on form of the work order's row, in which one sentence runs from one to ten and back, and keeps the poem's point, that the path ends where it began; the older form would read learn from one; know ten; from ten, what you come back to is that first one. A rendering should keep 稽古, practice, as its subject, and come back as its last movement.

A reading

The poem has been read as a statement about the procedures of tea, a rule for learning any art, a master's return to the root, and a riddle of one and ten [6][9][15][17]. A Japanese journal of 1972 saw in it 「關位」や「却来」, as the library's text layer reads the window [42]; I read them as 闌位 and 却来, Zeami 世阿弥's terms for the return an actor makes after reaching the heights, which the window does not say. From 1903 the hundred's own order set the 守破離 verse ten poems after it, and by 1940 a dictionary of tea set that last poem beside the three steps of 守破離 that kendō teaches [7][16].

I read it as a poem about coming back, and I think the older form says so more plainly than the run-on form. It gives two orders, learn from one; know ten, and then names the end: from ten, the one you come back to is that first one. Nothing in it says you leave the one when you reach ten; it says that ten, once known, is where the way back starts, and that the beginning is where the path ends. That is why a copyist of 1623 could end a whole hundred tea poems on it [1], before anyone set 守破離 after it, and why it needs no partner: the return is already in the poem.

Notes

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Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one (keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
稽古とは一より習ひ十を知りVB5JBlock
Japanese Scroll of Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one (keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
稽古とは一より習ひ十を知りVC5JCursive
Japanese Scroll of Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one (keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (Eri's Choice)
稽古とは一より習ひ十を知りVD5JEri's Choice
Japanese Scroll of Rikyū - Practice: learn from one, know ten, and from ten come back to the first one (keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
稽古とは一より習ひ十を知りVS5JSemi-Cursive

Sources not seen

『茶道古典全集』 第10巻 (淡交新社, 1961), p. 146, Gengensai's 茶道教諭百首詠 as edited for the collection; the National Diet Library serves it only in Japan [27]. It would settle whether the page Hirota cites prints 十をしれ or 十をしり.

利休茶湯百首, a manuscript copied by one 上原氏 in the fourth month of 正徳 1, 1711, which its catalogue record calls a transcription of the text made in 元和 9, 名古屋市鶴舞中央図書館, call number 791/00078 (catalogue https://www.library.city.nagoya.jp/, record 1009910052782). It would settle whether the second copy of the 1623 text also ends its hundred on this poem.

鈴木惠子「慶長期古田織部による茶湯百歌：その時代背景と連歌風俗」, 『風俗史学』 57 (2014), pp. 60–98, which the National Diet Library serves only inside its own reading rooms [23]. It would let the history state its argument that the 1623 copy is a hundred of Furuta Oribe's in its author's own words.

筒井紘一『茶書の系譜』 (文一総合出版, 1978; 淡交社, 2003), the study that dates the first hundred under Rikyū's name to about 1690, and his article 「茶湯百首について（三）」 in 『茶湯』 13 (1977), read here only as two later scholars report them [3][36][37]. It would let the history give his evidence for the 元禄 date in his own words.

Akaji Sōtei, Zen-Worte im Tee-Raume erläutert, tr. Hermann Bohner, Tōkyō, 1943, the print. It would settle whether the punctuation and the romaji of the German, read here in a later edition its editor emended, are Bohner's [19].

『茶之湯百首 附続茶之湯百首』, manuscript, 今日庵文庫, the copy with the 慶長 3 colophon, known here only as Tsutsui, Zhao and Ishizuka report it [3][37][4]. It would settle whether the copy Tsutsui calls the first to put Rikyū's name on a hundred holds this poem.

Rikyu Hyakushu: One hundred poems of Sen Rikyu, Urasenke Newsletter 23 (1980), known here only as a later bibliography cites it. It would settle whether an English rendering of the poem was printed before Hirota's.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 『茶湯百首』, manuscript, 祐徳稲荷神社 中川文庫 6/2‐2/1292, the cover, canvas 3, the inner title, canvas 6, the last poem, canvas 15, and the colophon, canvas 16. 国書データベース. https://doi.org/10.20730/100186036
  2. 井上宗雄『中世歌壇史の研究 室町後期』, 改訂新版, 明治書院, 1987, snippet view. National Diet Library pid 12454464. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12454464
  3. 筒井紘一『茶書の系譜』, 文一総合出版, 1978, pp. 116–118, 128, 131, as reported in 趙亜男 2017, pp. 138–139, notes 2–5 and 7.
  4. 石塚修「利休教歌の系統と展開―百首歌を中心に―」, 『文藝言語研究 文藝篇』 52, University of Tsukuba, 2007, pp. 170–150 (paged from the back), the base text, pp. 166–165, the witnesses, pp. 165–164, the lineages, p. 163, § 2 E, pp. 159–158, § 2 G, p. 156, and the collation table, p. 150. https://hdl.handle.net/2241/91666
  5. 『石州公百首』, manuscript, 冑山文庫, scan 8. National Diet Library pid 2538872. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2538872/1/8
  6. 岡崎淵冲『点茶活法 各伝比較』 巻之五, 1901, p. 376, scan 4. National Diet Library pid 860744. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860744/1/4
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  8. 『能楽』 5 (1), 1907, snippet view. National Diet Library pid 1519570. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1519570
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  12. 大橋又太郎 編『茶の湯と生花』, 1895, 茶道教へ歌, scans 52 and 55. National Diet Library pid 860728. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860728/1/52 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860728/1/55
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  14. 報知新聞社 編『新家庭読本』, 1932, snippet view. National Diet Library pid 1211477. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1211477
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  16. 高橋竜雄『茶道辞典』, 1940, p. 50, scan 33, and the entry 利休百首, scans 176 and 178. National Diet Library pid 1686670. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1686670/1/33 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1686670/1/176 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1686670/1/178
  17. Dennis Hirota, compiler and editor, Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path, Asian Humanities Press, 1995, p. 26 and the chapter's note 8.
  18. 「稽古」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, デジタル大辞泉 and 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%A8%BD%E5%8F%A4-488385
  19. Akaji Sōtei, Zen-Worte im Tee-Raume erläutert, introduced and translated by Hermann Bohner, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, Tōkyō, 1943 (Mitteilungen, Supplementband XX), kōan 3, 一二三, in the electronic edition of Adi Meyerhofer, 2009, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/Zenworte_Im_Tee_Raume
  20. H. E. Davey, Brush Meditation: A Japanese Way to Mind & Body Harmony, Stone Bridge Press, 1999, p. 89, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/brushmeditationj0000dave
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  23. 鈴木惠子「慶長期古田織部による茶湯百歌：その時代背景と連歌風俗」, 『風俗史学』 57, 2014, pp. 60–98, snippet view. National Diet Library pid 13789707. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13789707
  24. 塙保己一 編『続群書類従』 第19輯ノ下, 1926, 卷第五百六十八 紹鷗茶湯百首, pp. 447 and 452–453, scans 227 and 230. National Diet Library pid 936509. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/936509/1/227 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/936509/1/230
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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Takase Studios (an address check by script), 2026-10-19, citations — the cited web addresses opened and the quoted words looked for at each; every address answered with the words sought; nothing found to differ · two fresh-context readers per round (Claude), 2026-10-19, every claim in the page's summary block traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 FAIL, both, on a note set on the wrong poems and a claim of what form the scroll carries, which nothing in the sources says; round 2 FAIL, both, on a manuscript's poem count given as the number in its title; round 3 PASS, both; corrections made

Research depth: step 3 of our 10-step ladder, foundation complete · October 2026

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 稽古とは一より習ひ十を知り十よりかへるもとの其一 (keiko to wa ichi yori narai jū o shiri jū yori kaeru moto no sono ichi)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/rikyu-keiko-to-wa-ichi-yori-narai.