A short history of the tea room — from a four-and-a-half-mat study to a two-mat hut, and the famous rooms that survive by moving

Dōjinsai at Ginkaku-ji, Taian, Joan, Mittan: tracing how the tea room was born and handed down, through surviving buildings and their official heritage records.

The tea room was not born as a 'tea room'. Using surviving buildings and official heritage descriptions, here is its story in order.

[Muromachi — a four-and-a-half-mat study] The Tōgu-dō at Jishō-ji (Ginkaku-ji) in Kyoto was built in 1485 at Ashikaga Yoshimasa's Higashiyama villa as a private chapel and study. In Dōjinsai, the four-and-a-half-mat room at its rear east side, the built-in desk (tsukeshoin) and staggered shelves are the oldest surviving examples and are regarded as a source of shoin-style architecture. The Japan Tourism Agency's description calls Dōjinsai the oldest surviving four-and-a-half-mat shoin room and a forerunner of the small tea room.

[Momoyama — a two-mat hut] Taian, at Myōki-an in Ōyamazaki, Kyoto Prefecture, is said to have been made to Sen no Rikyū's taste around the Tenshō era (1573–92). The tea room is only two mats, with a cave-like alcove (horadoko), followed by an anteroom with a one-mat board floor and a preparation room. The Agency for Cultural Affairs values it as a remnant of the earliest tea rooms, deftly handling a cramped space through its ceilings and windows, and notes that copies were often made. It is a National Treasure.

[Early Edo — the inventive tea room] Joan, founded at Kennin-ji in Kyoto by Oda Uraku, younger brother of Oda Nobunaga, is a room of two and a half mats plus a daime mat. A scale-shaped board beside the alcove creates a slanted wall, giving it the name 'sujikai no kakoi', and inventions abound, from old calendars pasted along the lower walls to the close-set bamboo 'Uraku windows'. It was designated a National Treasure in 1936.

[Early Edo — the shoin-like tea room] Mittan, built into the shoin of Ryōkō-in at Daitoku-ji, dates from the Kan'ei era (1624–43) and is said to reflect the taste of Kobori Enshū: a four-and-a-half-mat-plus-daime room with a somewhat shoin-like character. It has two alcoves, one for calligraphy by Mittan Kanketsu (Mi'an Xianjie), the other for a letter by Rikyū. The Agency for Cultural Affairs counts it among the representative tea rooms of the early Edo period. Taian, Joan and Mittan are spoken of together as the surviving National Treasure tea rooms.

[Tea rooms move] Another feature of tea-room history is that buildings are often moved. After wandering from place to place, Joan was relocated by Nagoya Railroad in 1972 to the east of Inuyama Castle in Aichi. Tengo-an in the Tokyo National Museum garden — said to have been built by Kobori Enshū at Rokujizō in Fushimi, Kyoto — passed through Jakkō-in in Ōhara and Azabu in Tokyo before being donated in 1963. Kujō-kan in the same garden came from the Kujō residence in the Kyoto palace grounds, via Akasaka, in 1934.

[The work that keeps them] Famous rooms survive because carpenters repair and move them. Yasuimoku Komuten of Mukō, Kyoto Prefecture, lists among its works the relocation of Joan to Inuyama (1971) and the conservation of Taian (1977). When choosing a builder, this kind of repair work is also a clue to a firm's skill.

[Sources] Jishō-ji (Agency for Cultural Affairs, World Heritage nomination) https://online.bunka.go.jp/suisensyo/kyoto/MAINTEXT/3b-N-j.html / Tōgu-dō, Dōjinsai (Japan Tourism Agency multilingual database) https://www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db/R1-00459.html / Myōki-an tea room, Taian (Cultural Heritage Online) https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/200949 / About Urakuen (Nagoya Railroad) https://www.meitetsu.co.jp/urakuen/guide/index.html / Ryōkō-in Shoin (Agency for Cultural Affairs database) https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/102/1592 / Garden and tea rooms (Tokyo National Museum) https://www.tnm.jp/modules/r_free_page/index.php?id=121 / Works (Yasuimoku Komuten) https://www.yasuimoku.co.jp/