Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Four Virtues of Tea

和敬清寂 wakei seijaku Four Virtues of Tea

This is a philological study of 和敬清寂 (wakei seijaku), the four virtues of the Japanese tea gathering. It traces the phrase from its first appearance in 1699 to the tea schools of today, shows where the print and the manuscripts of its first text disagree, and follows its four English words to their source.

Japanese Scroll of Four Virtues of Tea (wakei seijaku) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Four Virtues of Tea (wakei seijaku)

Four Virtues of Tea in Japanese, 和敬清寂 (wakei seijaku), a hand-brushed hanging scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase.

View Scroll ›

Abstract

和敬清寂 (wakei seijaku), harmony, respect, purity, tranquility, names the four virtues of the Japanese tea gathering. Tradition gives the words to the tea master Sen no Rikyū, but their first appearance is a Zen abbot's preface of 1699, printed in 1730, a hundred and eight years after Rikyū's death. That book says Rikyū made the four from exclamations of the founder Murata Jukō, and its witnesses disagree on what Jukō said: the print of 1730 gives him three words; of the nine manuscript copies read for this study, in two recensions of the text, seven give him four, one gives him five, and one gives him three that are not the print's three. The English four are the Urasenke grand master's, in print by 1967, and are now the dictionary's.

Overview

The sense. One sense throughout: how host and guest are to be with each other, and how the room is to be. The modern dictionaries read the four characters as two pairs, 和敬 the frame of mind between host and guest, 清寂 the frame of mind toward garden, room and utensils [1]. What has changed over three centuries is the frame around them. In the first text they are the root from which the peace of the realm grows, an answer to a shogun's worry about swords in the tea room [2]; in the Meiji tea schools they are the golden saying every beginner recites [3]; in a modern collection of Zen phrases they are the four fundamentals of the tea ceremony [4]. The attribution to Rikyū has been constant since the first text. The two historians who write the encyclopedia entries do not say quite the same thing, and their entries stand side by side at kotobank (https://kotobank.jp/word/和敬清寂-154004), where a reader can see them disagree: Tsutsui Hiroichi dates the formula to the Genroku years and the return to Rikyū around his hundredth memorial, and says it is not Rikyū's expression; Kumakura Isao calls the Jukō story a legend and has the phrase in wide use from the early Edo period, taken over from the Buddhist words 和敬 and 静寂 [1].

The words. Four characters, four virtues: 和 harmony, 敬 respect, 清 purity, 寂 tranquility, the stillness of a quiet place. 和敬 alone is a Buddhist word, first cited from Dōgen's monastic rule in the thirteenth century, 初心晩学和敬随順, the beginner and the late learner, in harmony and respect, follow along [5]. The oldest text does not write the four as one word but as four abilities, 能和能敬能清能寂, able to be harmonious, able to be respectful, able to be pure, able to be still [2]; the four-character word is the Japanese abridgement, in print by the 1820s [6]. The reading is wakei seijaku, which books of 1851, 1905 and 1937 print beside the characters [7][3][8]; the 1820s book glosses the same characters クワケイセイセキ, kwakei seiseki, with 寂 read seki [6]. A second spelling, 和敬静寂, with stillness twice, appears in Meiji and was rejected by a tea master in 1905 [9][3]. 清 and 淸 are one character, the second the older printed form.

The text in English. The formula enters English in 1933 with A. L. Sadler, who tells the first text's story and romanizes both sets, Wa Kei Sei Jaku and Kin Kei Sei Jaku [10]. The four English words now standard, Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquility, are those of Sen Sōshitsu XV, grand master of the Urasenke school, in print by 1967 [11]; the school's English site carries them today as expressed by Sen Rikyu, the attribution being the tradition's [12]. The school's Japanese teaching page says the same in the tradition's own wording, 千利休の言葉として伝わるもの, handed down as Rikyū's words, and it is the school's teaching, not a history [13]. Earlier and rival renderings did not last: Peace, respect, purity and silence in 1960 [14], tranquil respect and serenity in 1968 [15]. JMdict today gives harmony, respect, purity and tranquility; the four most important elements of the tea ceremony [16].

The historical record

1699, printed 1730. The first text. The four first stand in the Chasoden 茶祖伝, a short life of the founders of tea whose preface is signed in 1699 by 巨妙子, the Daitokuji abbot Daishin Gitō 大心義統, and which reached print in 1730 as an appendix to a Kyoto cookbook [1]. The last sentence of its life of Rikyū, as the print has it [2]:

今茶之道四焉能和能敬能清能寂是利休因茶祖珠光荅東山源公文所云 The way of tea today has four: to be able to be harmonious, respectful, pure, still. This is what Rikyū set down on the ground of the founder Jukō's answer to Lord Higashiyama.

Lord Higashiyama is the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, and the answer is told earlier in the same book. The shogun asks Jukō what tea is; Jukō says the one taste of purity, the joy of the dharma, the delight of meditation; the shogun objects that a warrior may not bring his sword into the tea room and is left without his guard; Jukō laughs and says the lord argues the branch and not the root. The print continues [2]:

外離我人之相内蓄柔和之徳至交接相見之間謹兮清兮寂兮率及天下泰平何足言也 He leaves outside the distinction of self and other and stores within the virtue of gentleness, and when host and guest meet: reverence! purity! stillness! All of it reaches as far as the peace of the realm. What more is there to say?

Three exclamations. Both sentences are the abbot's, written a hundred and eight years after Rikyū's death in 1591; no earlier text of Rikyū's or Jukō's is known to carry either.

The manuscript copies. A manuscript of the same text in the National Diet Library, titled 茶祖珠光傳, has the Rikyū sentence in slightly different words, 茶之道有四焉能和能敬能清能寂是利休因茶祖珠光故事所立云, which Rikyū established on the ground of the founder Jukō's story, and it gives Jukō four exclamations where the print gives three [17]:

柔和之德至交接相見之間謹兮敬兮清兮寂兮卒及天下泰平何足言也 … the virtue of gentleness, and when host and guest meet: reverence! respect! purity! stillness! …

Six more manuscript copies, in Sendai, Osaka and Tokyo, read as this one does in the matter of the count. The Kanō collection copy at Tōhoku University and the Mori collection copy at Osaka Metropolitan University both have 内蓄柔和之徳 … 謹兮敬兮清兮寂兮, four exclamations [18][19]; the Ishizaki collection copy in Osaka, in a running cursive hand, has four pairs in the same place [20]. The Mori copy has the Rikyū sentence in the manuscripts' words, 故事所立云, and after it a note in small characters, 明和六己丑年迄百八十年, to Meiwa 6 (1769), a hundred and eighty years, so that copy or the one it was made from was annotated in 1769. In the Kanō copy a reader has written 和カ, 和?, beside Jukō's first word 謹: he wondered whether the founder's set ought to begin as Rikyū's does, and left the text alone. Waseda University has two more. One is a fair copy with the genealogy and 謹兮敬兮清兮寂兮, which a second hand has collated in red against another text: beside each 兮 he writes 也, and beside 可乎 he writes 豈 [21]. The other Waseda copy is that other text, or its sister: a second recension, without the genealogy, whose wording differs in a dozen small places (豈可乎; 何論其本 without the clause on the branch; 陸羽豈得到其境耶), and which has the exclamations as 謹也敬也清也寂也, four, in the plainer particle [22]. The cursive Ishizaki copy writes 也 as well and belongs with it [20]. A third copy of that recension, at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo, is the first read here to carry its own copyist's colophon, 于時文政元戊寅年十月依命葛山六左衛門直方書冩之, copied by command by 葛山六左衛門直方 in the tenth month of Bunsei 1 (1818). It has 謹也敬也清也寂也, four, each 也 glossed ナリ, and it closes with a signature that is not the print's: 元禄壬午一休和尚生辰紫野巨妙子操于江南蓮華堂, Genroku 15 (1702), on the birthday of the priest Ikkyū, 巨妙子 of Murasakino wrote this at the 蓮華堂 [23]. It is not alone. The first Waseda copy, which is of the 兮 recension, closes in its own copyist's hand 元禄壬午一休和尚生辰戯紫野巨妙子操觚于江南蓮花堂, the same year and the same occasion [21]. Four manuscripts are signed as the print's preface is dated, in 己卯, 1699: the Diet Library copy and the first Mori copy have 元禄己卯冬, winter, the Kanō copy 元禄己卯, and the second Mori copy, described next, 己卯之冬 [17][18][19][24]. The second Waseda copy and the 片玉集 copy have no signature line [22][25], and the Ishizaki copy's close was not read. So two signatures travel with this text, one of the winter of 1699 and one of Ikkyū's birthday in 1702, and the later one is found in both recensions. The leaves read do not say how that came about.

Two copies do not give four. A second copy in the Mori collection, a tea lineage's working book from the San'in coast, carries a register of pupils at Yonago and Tottori with the grades they received, dated 1795 to 1799, and its notes reckon the years to Bunka 3 (1806) [24]. It is of the 兮 recension, signed 己卯之冬, in the winter of the year 己卯 (1699), and it gives Jukō five:

内蓄柔和之德至交接相見之間謹兮和兮敬兮清兮寂兮 … reverence! harmony! respect! purity! stillness!

The five is not a slip of the pen, because the same copy has rewritten the sentence on the four. Where every other witness says Rikyū made them on the ground of Jukō's words, this one has 茶之道有四曰和曰敬曰清曰寂也珠光紹鷗利休皆傳此道而説茶事, the way of tea has four: harmony, respect, purity, stillness. Jukō, Jōō and Rikyū all handed down this way and taught tea by it. Someone held that the founder already had 和, put it in his mouth, and changed the ending so that Rikyū alters nothing. That is the form the legend takes in print in the 1820s [6], here inside a manuscript of the abbot's own text. A note in this copy's genealogy reckons to Kanpō (1741–1744); that dates an annotation in the genealogy it descends from, and not the five.

The other is in the 片玉集, a manuscript compilation in the Archives and Mausolea Department of the Imperial Household Agency, which the department's catalogue gives to 津村正恭 [25]. It is a fair, clean hand and a careless copy (it drops 浄 from 一味清浄 and writes 天外泰平 for 天下泰平), and at the exclamations it writes 謹兮敬兮宗兮, three. 宗 is read here as a miswriting of 寂, which it resembles in a quick hand; no other copy has 宗. So this copy has reverence, respect, stillness and lacks 清, purity, where the print has reverence, purity, stillness and lacks 敬, respect. It keeps the word the print lost, and it does not descend from the print.

Two further impressions of the 1730 print, at Tōhoku and at Osaka Metropolitan University, have three exclamations like the first, so the three are cut in the blocks [2].

So the story every later book tells, that Jukō said four things beginning with reverence and Rikyū made them four beginning with harmony, is the text of seven of the nine manuscripts, in both recensions. The print has three, one manuscript has another three, and one has five. The historians divide as the witnesses do: Tsutsui Hiroichi, writing the Nipponica entry, quotes Jukō's words from the preface as 謹兮、清兮、寂兮, three; the Britannica entry gives 謹兮、敬兮、清兮、寂兮, four [1].

1801. Out of the tea room. A book about kabuki actors, in a comic sketch of a tea bore, quotes the four as maxims of tea, 能和能敬能清能寂, with the readings printed beside them, and says Rikyū held them as the essence of the way of tea [26].

The 1820s. The legend retold with the later word. 深田正韶's tea miscellany from Owari, the 喫茶余録, retells the Jukō dialogue in Japanese, and now the four-character word is in Jukō's own mouth [6]:

際ニ至リテハ和敬清寂ヲ本トシテ末ハ天下泰平ニいたらむ事いふもさらなり … and when they meet, with 和敬清寂 as the root, that the branch should reach the peace of the realm goes without saying.

The book prints クワケイセイセキ beside the four characters.

1851. A commonplace. The preface to a popular novel: 作意は貴賤の隔なく。和敬清寂四字を捨ず, in its intent there is no gap between high and low; it does not abandon the four characters 和敬清寂 [7]. A novelist can use the phrase for his own art and expect to be understood.

1893 and 1905. Two spellings. 高畠米護 in 1893 writes 和敬靜寂の四字 and ties the character 靜 to two of the famous three autumn evenings poems, Teika's and Jakuren's: 此歌は。靜の字の解ともいへり, this poem is also said to explain the character 靜 [9]. Tanaka Senshō, founder of the Dai Nihon Chadō Gakkai, rejects that spelling in 1905, under the heading 和敬淸寂の解 [3]:

利休居士、始めて茶道は和敬淸寂にありと謂ひしより、苟も茶道に入る者、皆口に此語を稱へて金言と爲す Since the layman Rikyū first said that the way of tea lies in 和敬淸寂, everyone who enters the way recites these words as a golden saying.

He goes on: 世に和敬淸寂の文字を、和敬靜寂と書す者あれ共, there are those who write it 和敬靜寂, and they are wrong, because the phrase is 一字々々の意味を四個集めたるもの, four separate meanings, one to a character, and not a pair of couplets. In books printed before 1945 that the National Diet Library has made searchable, the stillness spelling is nonetheless the commoner of the two, and none of its uses is earlier than 1893.

1922 to 1937. The tea houses, a novel, the legend finished. The Mushakōji Senke's rulebook sets the four in its preface among the disciplines of the heart [27]. Yokomitsu Riichi's novel Monshō (1934) has a character reason from Rikyū's saying that the essence of the tea method is these four [28], and that sentence, 茶法の極意を和敬清寂と利休の云ったのに対して as the dictionary quotes it, is the Nihon kokugo daijiten's first citation for the phrase [1]. A Senke manual of 1937 gives the legend in its finished form [8]:

この珠光が卽ち「和敬淸寂」の四文字を丈室の入口にかかげまして、この道の精神的指導を示したのであります This Jukō, that is, hung the four characters 和敬淸寂 at the entrance of his ten-foot-square room, and so showed the spiritual direction of this way.

Today. 大辞泉: 茶道の精神を表現するのに用いられた語, a term used to express the spirit of the way of tea. Tsutsui Hiroichi: the phrase is handed down as the four rules of Rikyū's four rules and seven principles, 実際は利休によって表現された語ではない, but in fact it is not an expression Rikyū made; it belongs to the return to Rikyū called for around his hundredth memorial, and its first appearance is the Chasoden. Kumakura Isao: the attribution to Jukō rests on mid-Edo tea books and 伝説にすぎないであろう, is probably no more than legend; rather, the Buddhist words 和敬 and 静(清)寂 were taken over, and the phrase came into wide use from the early Edo period [1]. In the Zen phrase books the four stand as a capping phrase: Wa kei sei jaku. Harmony, respect, purity, tranquillity. The four fundamentals of the tea ceremony, keyed Shiba 74, a page of Shibayama's Zen phrase book [4]. The readings of the four are not all Zen readings. A 2025 paper by Sekine Kazuya sets the Zen commentators, 西部文浄 (the Zen content of tea condensed into four characters) and 芳賀幸四郎 (敬 not the old feudal order of host and guest but each recognizing the other's Buddha-nature), beside 奥田正造's 『茶味』 of 1920, which glossed 和 from the Analects, 禮之用和為貴, and 敬 as 程子's 主一無適, the undivided attention of the Song Confucians; Sekine argues that 敬 in the formula carries that Confucian 敬 and its outward form 禮, and that the four were formalized between the early and the middle Edo period [29].

What is not a source. No text of Rikyū's or Jukō's is known to carry the four; the two historians say so [1]. Three of the texts a reader would look in first are in English in Dennis Hirota's Wind in the Pines, and none has the four, a pair of them, or the dialogue with the shogun: the opening book of the Nampōroku, the record of Rikyū's words; the Zencharoku, a tract on tea as Zen published in 1828; and Jukō's letter to Furuichi Harima, which Hirota calls the sole surviving document by Murata Jukō [30]. The Nampōroku is itself a book of these years. Its discoverer Tachibana Jitsuzan had the first five parts in 1686 and copied the last two early in 1690, shortly before the centennial memorial of Rikyū's death, when, as Hirota writes, a strong "back to Rikyū" current flowed [30]. Kumakura Isao puts it that the book's existence was made known to the world at the time of the hundredth anniversary of Rikyū's death, and Paul Varley that the real revival of Rikyū occurred in the Genroku epoch, when every school of chanoyu claimed … a legitimacy of descent in its teachings from Rikyū [31]. The abbot's preface of 1699 is nine years later and belongs to the same return, and the return's own scripture does not have the four. The Nihon kokugo daijiten and the Britannica entry derive the phrase from a Chinese Rules of the Tea Hall 茶堂清規 by one 劉元甫, brought home by the Zen master Daiō in the thirteenth century [1]; neither historian repeats that, and no such text is cited by either dictionary. Nor is the phrase in the Zen phrase book of those years: the Zenrin kushū 禅林句集, in the enlarged edition printed at Kyoto in 1688, eleven years before the abbot's preface, was read for this study through its four-character and eight-character sections in Kobe University's copy, and the four are not there [32]. The three autumn evenings poems are a Meiji gloss on the Meiji spelling [9]. Okakura's Book of Tea (1906) has purity and harmony and not the formula [33].

The text in English

1933. A. L. Sadler, Cha-no-yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony, page 102, note. The first text's story in English, and the earliest known English book to print the formula [10]:

Wa Kei Sei Jaku 和敬清寂 was adapted by Rikyu from the Kin Kei Sei Jaku of Shuko.

He glosses Kin 謹 as Respect, Japanese tsutsushimu. His four for Jukō is the manuscripts' reading, not the 1730 print's.

1960 and 1968. Renderings that did not last. In The Oriental Economist a professor of architecture, writing on the painter Genichiro Inokuma's ceramic mural in the Kagawa prefectural office, gives its title as Wakei Seijaku (Peace, respect, purity and silence) and the painter's reason for it: these four attitudes of the soul are needed for true communication among people [14]. Joseph Goedertier's Dictionary of Japanese History has the way of tea summarized in "tranquil respect and serenity" (wakei-seijaku) [15], which makes two virtues of four.

1967 and 1979. Sen Sōshitsu XV. The Urasenke grand master's The Art of Taking Tea has the principles of chanoyu, which are Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquility [11], and his Tea Life, Tea Mind the same four [34]. These are the English words of nearly every later book.

1989. Sen Sōshitsu XV, in Tea in Japan, pages 234–235. The grand master tells the opening of the first text's dialogue in English without naming the book [31]:

Upon hearing of Shukō's tea, Yoshimasa summoned him and asked: "What sort of thing is this chanoyu that you perform? What are its secrets?" Shukō replied: "Tea is 'in all, pure' and takes 'joy in meditation and delight in the dharma.' Chao-chou followed these injunctions well. And didn't Lu Yü exemplify them in the highest degree?"

That is the Chasoden's 光曰一味清浄法喜禅悦趙州是知已陸羽豈到其佳境耶 [19]. He stops before the exclamations. The volume's note 7, page 242, says of it: This conversation between Yoshimasa and Shukō is a traditional attribution and is not based on a known written source. It has a written source, the abbot's book of 1699; what no one has shown is a source near Jukō's own time.

1991. Jennifer Anderson, An Introduction to Japanese Tea Ritual. She gives the Jukō set as Shukō's normative mnemonic "Kin Kei Sei Jaku" (reverence, respect, purity, and tranquillity) [35].

1998. Sen Sōshitsu XV, The Japanese Way of Tea, pages 95–96. The grand master sets the two formulas side by side, in a passage on the etiquette of medieval tea contests [36]:

… we can find the precedent for Murata Jukō's (also Shukō) "Kin Kei Sei Jaku" (Humility, Respect, Purity, and Tranquillity) and Sen Rikyū's "Wa Kei Sei Jaku" (Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquillity).

He states both attributions as fact. The Japanese historians do not.

2003. Victor Sōgen Hori, Zen Sand, page 178. The phrase as entry 4.680 of a capping-phrase collection, with the gloss quoted above [4]. A witness that the four are read as a Zen phrase and not only as a tea motto.

2013 and 2022. The calligraphy books. Shozo Sato's Shodo teaches the four as a Zen phrase for the brush, Harmony Respect Purity Tranquility, in block and semi-cursive script [37]. John Stevens reproduces the four as brushed by Yamaoka Tesshū at Zenshō-an and calls them the four virtues of the tea ceremony and, indeed, of daily living itself [38].

Today. JMdict gives harmony, respect, purity and tranquility [16]. The house title, Four Virtues of Tea, names what the phrase is; word for word the text says harmony, respect, purity, tranquility, which is the reading given at the head of this page, and the title differs only because it describes where a literal reading lists. The four English words are Sen Sōshitsu XV's. A rendering must keep four separate virtues and must not let the third and fourth collapse into one, which is Tanaka's argument of 1905 in English.

A reading

The attribution is the tradition's, and the tradition is itself the history. The four are first in print in 1730, in an abbot's preface of 1699 that gives them to Rikyū; no text of Rikyū's carries them; Tsutsui dates the formula to the Genroku return to Rikyū, and Kumakura, who calls the Jukō story a legend, has the phrase in use from the early Edo period. That is no loss for the scroll. It is the history of how a tea tradition came to name its virtues, fixed in this form around 1700 and given to Rikyū in the telling. It was fixed in the decade after the Nampōroku came to light, in the same return to Rikyū, and the Nampōroku itself does not have it. What the leaves add concerns Jukō's half of the story. The print of 1730 has him say three things, reverence, purity, stillness; seven of the nine manuscript copies read have him say four, and I read the four as the abbot's text. The nine fall into two recensions that differ from each other in a dozen places, one writing the exclamations with 兮 and one with 也, and both have four: a reading the two share is older than whatever divided them. The run 謹兮敬兮清兮寂兮 is four like endings in a row, the place where a copyist's or block-cutter's eye most easily skips, and the leaves now show it happening twice. The print, in all three impressions opened, skips 敬; the 片玉集 copy, which does not descend from the print, skips 清. Two copyists each dropped a different member of the same run, and each kept what the other lost: that is what an accident at this place looks like, and it is the strongest single argument that the run they were copying had four. The copy with five points the same way. Its five contains the four, and the one word it adds is the word the story's ending supplies, put there by someone who also rewrote the ending. The print is the earliest dated witness, and a neat four could be a copyist making the story match its ending; but the two hands caught tidying reach for something else. The reader of the Kanō copy queries 謹 against 和 and lets the four stand; the redactor of the five adds 和 and keeps 謹. Each wants harmony in the founder's mouth, and neither makes a four out of a three. No date on any manuscript leaf is earlier than the print: the earliest are a reckoning to the Kanpō years (1741–1744) in one genealogy and a note of 1769 in another, a copyist's note of 1773 stands on documents appended in the Diet Library copy [17], and the one copyist who dates his own work wrote in 1818. So descent from a corrected copy of the print cannot be ruled out on the leaves alone, and the copies not yet shown in images could speak to it. One of them is a different book, catalogued under a colophon of 1679 [39]; it has not been read for this study, and what it holds is set out under Sources not seen. On the text as I read it Rikyū is credited with one change, reverence to harmony: the founder's word for how a man carries himself became a word for what passes between two people. The four begin with harmony, and the character is 清.

Notes

Sources not seen

茶祖伝（甲）and 茶祖伝（乙）, two manuscripts, 西尾市岩瀬文庫, 函 75-81. The library's catalogue describes each as a genealogy of tea, a life of Jukō in Chinese headed 茶祖珠光伝, and a list of tea people, under an original colophon of 延宝7 (1679) that speaks of a list of tea people submitted to the shogunate. It dates the 乙 copy to the middle of the Edo period and names no author for either [39]. The library serves them on paper only. If the life of Jukō in these books is older than the abbot's preface of 1699, or differs from it at the exclamations, the first sentence of this history changes.

Other manuscript copies of the 茶祖伝. The union catalogue 国書総目録 and the holders' own catalogues list copies that are not served as images: 西尾市岩瀬文庫 函 96-36, whose catalogue record gives a chain of copying from 明和7 (1770) to 文化4 (1807); 京都大学附属図書館, in the compilation 武道摭萃録; two in 慶應義塾図書館's 高橋箒庵文庫; 立正大学図書館, 河口慧海旧蔵, KE791.2/Ky5; 和中文庫, on microfilm at the 国文学研究資料館; and copies the union catalogue gives to 大阪府, 京都府 and 東京大学. A copy dated before the print of 1730 would show that the four exclamations do not descend from a corrected copy of the print, and any of them would add to the count of signatures dated 1699 and 1702.

柴山全慶 訓註『禅林句集』, 其中堂, Kyoto, in both editions. Hori keys the phrase to page 74 of the revised edition of 1972, and reports that Shibayama enlarged that edition by three hundred phrases partly to include phrases and verses often found on tea scrolls [4]. The first edition appeared in 1952; the National Diet Library holds its second printing of 1954 (https://doi.org/10.11501/2970028) and serves it only through its transmission service for readers in Japan. Whether the four stand in the first edition, and what source the second names for them at page 74, would say whether the Zen phrase book took the phrase from tea.

町田忠三「『南方録』成立の背景と利休虚像の誕生」,『茶の湯文化学』9 (30 September 2004), pp. 32–48. The paper on how the Nampōroku came to light and the image of Rikyū that grew around it, in the journal of the 茶の湯文化学会; its record is at the 国文学研究資料館's database (https://ronbun.nijl.ac.jp/kokubun/01283207). The paper is not online: the society sells back issues from No. 10 onward and lists no No. 9 (https://www.chanoyu-bunka-gakkai.jp/pages/23/), and the National Diet Library holds the journal on paper. The pages are not obtainable from outside Japan and a copy needs a reader there; the paper bears on the same Genroku return to Rikyū this history dates the four to, and it enters the references once read.

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

References

  1. 「和敬清寂」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (熊倉功夫) · 日本大百科全書 (筒井紘一) · ブリタニカ国際大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/和敬清寂-154004
  2. 巨妙子 (大心義統)『茶祖伝』, preface 1699, printed 1730 as an appendix to 『料理網目調味抄』. National Diet Library pid 2557798, scans 12 and 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2557798/1/19 · Two further impressions: 東北大学附属図書館 狩野文庫, 国書データベース bid 100306884, image 118, https://doi.org/10.20730/100306884 ; 大阪公立大学中百舌鳥図書館 (microfilm), bid 100168867, image 119, https://doi.org/10.20730/100168867
  3. 田中仙樵『茶禅一味』, 1905, 和敬淸寂の解. National Diet Library pid 823364, scan 106. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823364/1/106
  4. Victor Sōgen Hori, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2003, p. 178, entry 4.680; on Shibayama's two editions, p. 86.
  5. 「和敬」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/和敬-664938
  6. 深田正韶『喫茶余録』, 文政年間 (1818–1830). National Diet Library pid 2567773, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2567773/1/15
  7. 緑亭川柳『祥瑞白菊物語』二編, 1851, preface. National Diet Library pid 9893735, scan 5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/9893735/1/5
  8. 一箒庵宗心『千家草庵茶の湯の秘法』, 1937. National Diet Library pid 1113772, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1113772/1/13
  9. 高畠米護『紀堂茶話』, 1893. National Diet Library pid 889003, scan 14. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/889003/1/14
  10. A. L. Sadler, Cha-no-yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony, J. L. Thompson, Kobe, and Kegan Paul, London, 1933; Charles E. Tuttle reprint, Rutland and Tokyo, 1962, p. 102, note.
  11. Sen Sōshitsu, The Art of Taking Tea, Tanko Shin-Sha, Kyoto, 1967, p. 7. Internet Archive artoftakingtea0000sens. https://archive.org/details/artoftakingtea0000sens
  12. 裏千家 Urasenke, Greetings, the school's English site: The fundamental spirit underlying the practice of chanoyu was expressed by Sen Rikyu as Wa Kei Sei Jaku, or "Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquility". https://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/greetings/.
  13. 裏千家 Urasenke, 「茶道とは」, the school's Japanese teaching page: 千利休の言葉として伝わるものに、「四規七則」があります。「四規」とは、茶道の精神を要約した「和敬清寂」という四語の言葉を指します。 https://www.urasenke.or.jp/textb/shiru/spirit/spirit2.html.
  14. Yuichiro Kojiro, "Modern Murals in Japan," The Oriental Economist, vol. 28, no. 600, October 1960, pp. 570–571, at p. 571. Internet Archive tokyo-business-today_1960-10_28_600_0. https://archive.org/details/tokyo-business-today_1960-10_28_600_0/page/n32
  15. Joseph M. Goedertier, A Dictionary of Japanese History, Walker/Weatherhill, New York, 1968, p. 25, under cha-no-yu. Internet Archive dictionaryofjapa0000goed. https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofjapa0000goed
  16. JMdict, 「和敬清寂」, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/word/和敬清寂
  17. 『茶祖珠光傳』, manuscript copy, undated. National Diet Library pid 2538364, scans 4, 5, 6 and 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2538364/1/4
  18. 巨妙『茶祖珠光傳』, manuscript copy, undated. 東北大学附属図書館 狩野文庫, 国書データベース bid 100441090, images 3 and 4. https://doi.org/10.20730/100441090
  19. 巨妙『茶祖珠光伝』, manuscript copy, with a note of 明和6 (1769). 大阪公立大学杉本図書館 森文庫, 国書データベース bid 100024043, images 4, 5, 6 and 10. https://doi.org/10.20730/100024043
  20. 巨妙『茶祖珠光傳』, manuscript copy, undated, cursive. 大阪府立中之島図書館 石崎文庫, 国書データベース bid 300097291, image 4. https://doi.org/10.20730/300097291
  21. 巨妙 (attributed in the catalogue)『茶祖珠光傳』全, manuscript copy with 茶系, collated in red by a second hand, undated. 早稲田大学図書館 古典籍総合データベース, ヲ09 00656, PDF pages 4 and 5. https://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/wo09/wo09_00656/
  22. 『茶祖伝』, manuscript copy of a second recension, bound with other tea writings, undated. 早稲田大学図書館 古典籍総合データベース, ヲ09 02229, PDF pages 3 and 4. https://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/wo09/wo09_02229/
  23. 巨妙子『茶祖伝』附茶系, manuscript copy by 葛山六左衛門直方, 文政元 (1818). 東京大学史料編纂所 4189-1, frames 4, 5 and 17. https://doi.org/10.57459/hi.01.400_4189_1
  24. 『茶祖傳』, manuscript copy with a 煎茶歌 and a 茶家系譜, with reckonings to 文化3 (1806). 大阪公立大学杉本図書館 森文庫 791/CHA, 国書データベース bid 100024218, shown under bid 100166167, images 5, 7, 11 and 22–23. https://doi.org/10.20730/100166167
  25. 『茶祖珠光傳』, manuscript copy, undated, in 津村正恭 (compiler)『片玉集』前集巻83. 宮内庁書陵部 458・1, 国書データベース bid 100019356, images 4393–4396. https://doi.org/10.20730/100019356
  26. 八文舎自笑『役者大功記』, 1801. National Diet Library pid 2567098, scan 14. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2567098/1/14
  27. 『官休清規』巻5上, 1922, 序. National Diet Library pid 1241229, scan 3. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1241229/1/3
  28. 横光利一『紋章』(1934), in the 1936 collected edition. National Diet Library pid 1218966, scan 56. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1218966/1/56
  29. 関根和矢 Sekine Kazuya, 「茶道の作法と禮：茶道の精神「和敬清寂」における儒教思想」, 『伝統文化』5, 2025, pp. 31–45, at pp. 31–33 and 42–43; the manuscript cited at its note 7 as 巨妙子（1715）『茶祖珠光傳(茶祖傳)』. https://st.agnes.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/2000315
  30. Dennis Hirota, ed., Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path, Asian Humanities Press, Fremont, 1995, pp. 195–198, 215–240, 261–286.
  31. Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao, eds., Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1989: Kumakura Isao, Sen no Rikyū: Inquiries into His Life and Tea, pp. 48–49; Paul Varley, Chanoyu: From the Genroku Epoch to Modern Times, pp. 165–166; Sen Sōshitsu XV, Reflections on Chanoyu and Its History, pp. 234–235 and p. 242, note 7.
  32. 己十子 (enlarged and annotated)『増補首書 禅林句集 出所付』, 京師 小川多左衛門 (柳枝軒), 貞享5 (1688), the collection tradition gives to 東陽英朝. 神戸大学附属図書館 188-8-T, 国書データベース bid 100272428, images 13–38 (四言) and 139–152 (八言, 八言対). https://doi.org/10.20730/100272428
  33. Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea, G. P. Putnam's Sons, London and New York, 1906 (copyright 1906 by Fox, Duffield & Company), p. 3, which is the first page of chapter I and carries no printed number. Internet Archive bookoftea00okakrich. https://archive.org/details/bookoftea00okakrich/page/n18
  34. Sen Sōshitsu XV, Tea Life, Tea Mind, Weatherhill, Tokyo, 1979, p. 13. Internet Archive tealifeteamind00sens. https://archive.org/details/tealifeteamind00sens
  35. Jennifer L. Anderson, An Introduction to Japanese Tea Ritual, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1991, p. 54. Internet Archive introductiontoja0000ande. https://archive.org/details/introductiontoja0000ande
  36. Sen Sōshitsu XV, The Japanese Way of Tea: From Its Origins in China to Sen Rikyū, translated by V. Dixon Morris, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1998, pp. 95–96.
  37. Shozo Sato, Shodo: The Quiet Art of Japanese Zen Calligraphy, Tuttle, 2013, pp. 88–91.
  38. John Stevens, The Art of Budo: The Calligraphy and Paintings of the Martial Arts Masters, Shambhala, Boulder, 2022.
  39. 『茶祖伝（乙）』, manuscript, 近世中期写, catalogue record only. 西尾市岩瀬文庫 函 75-81, 古典籍書誌データベース. https://adeac.jp/iwasebunko/catalog/mp00613500

Books Cited

Books this article cites that can be ordered today.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

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

Checked · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every cited claim tested at its address; the NDL leaves the check was not handed and the English books cited from search windows rather than held here could not be opened by it and were re-read by hand from the OCR text and the archive's own snippets; one reading found to differ (柔和) and taken into the account