Hayami-ryu School (速水流)
Hayami-ryu is a school of the tea ceremony, originated by Sotatsu HAYAMI. The head family of the school, named Tekigenkyo, is located in Kita Ward, Kyoto City. It has an organization of fellow students called Tekigenkai.
Features
Although Hayami-ryu school stemmed from the Urasenke school of tea ceremony, it is based upon the culture of court nobles since it has maintained close relationships with Shogoin Monzeki Temple (originally built in 1090 in Kyoto as a temple of Tendai Sect and has been continuaously used as a residence of various priests retired from nobilities including imperial household members). Some prominent examples of the influence of court culture are the use of fukusa (a small cloth for wiping tea utensils) in two colors on a skew which refers to the color pattern of juni-hitoe (twelve-layered ceremonial kimono wear) as well as the Kinin-date (the tea ceremony procedure for nobilities) using tato (a folding paper-case) and kokakedai (a small table) which refers to Senko no Kakeban (a small low table made of subtle fragrant wood to place dishes). One of the other features of Hayami-ryu school is the igyoshiki exercises (a series of officially established ten methods to exercise the tea ceremony) developed from the shichijishiki exercises (a series of officially established seven methods) which was officially established in the middle of Edo period by Sansenke (three Senke schools,) and another feature is the shool's unique procedure called the dasshaku tenho which is a special procedure of the tea ceremony using no chashaku or excluding the bamboo tea spoon for making Japanese tea.
History
Sotatsu HAYAMI who was born in the family of Hikotatsu HAYAMI, a successor of the job as goten-i (a doctor hired by a family of shogun or other feudal lord,) became acquainted with kangaku (the study of Chinese classics) and kokugaku (study of ancient Japanese literature and culture) by studying them at Kogido (a private tutoring shoool to teach Confucianism by Jinsai ITO in Kyoto). Sotatsu HAYAMI learned tea ceremony under Itto Soshitsu, Yugensai, the eighth head of Urasenke school, and mastered its secrets early on assuming his own scholarly style of tea ceremony. Sotatsu was respected as a prominent disciple of Itto Soshitsu, because of his deep insight as a scholar and his academic approach to the tea ceremony, beside the pedigree of his Hayami family as distinguished doctors. As a coach of the tea ceremony, he served Imperial Prince Shogoinnomiya Einin, a younger brother of the Emperor Kokaku, and gradually changed his style of the tea ceremony to goshofu (imperial palace style). Sotatsu is also known to have coached the tea ceremony to the Ikeda family of Okayama Domain, Bizen Province, and the Yanagisawa family of Koriyama Domain, Yamato Province.
In a way, the Hayami-ryu school is believed to have originated in the event that Sotatsu was allowed to establish a branch school in order to be delegated to Okayama on behalf of Soshitsu when Soshitsu received a request for outside services of the tea ceremony at Ikeda family's residence in the domain of Okayama. But, this explanation is contradictory to the fact that the Okayama Domain assumed its policy of civilian control only after the retirement of the fifth lord, Harumasa IKEDA, known as an intellectual lord who had lived with Itto Soshitsu, and that Soshitsu had then already passed away at the time of Harumasa's retirement. Meanwhile, there is another explanation that Sotatsu HAYAMI was allowed to establish an offshoot of Itto Soshitsu, when accosted and asked by Imperial Prince Shogoinnomiya Einin, after Itto's death. Stories of these traditions are considered to have been formed in the Tenpo era at the earliest, most probably after the Bunkyu era.
Sotatsu left a huge vokume of scripts showing that he had apparently intended to create an academic teaching system of the tea ceremony regardless of whatever school or sect it may concern. After Sotatsu died, his scripts were partly compiled by the second head of the school, Soyo, into such books as "Chashiryaku," "Kissa-shisho-hen" and others, and further they were published by the third head, Soken, as a book titled "Chasoku." During the generation of the third head, Soken, Dekigenkyo, the head family of Hayami-ryu school, reached a new height of prosperity and shifted its location from Kamaza Demizu to the current address of Kitano under the order from the bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun). The sixth head, Sojin, a graduate of Waseda University, was awarded with Academia prize of Zenkoku Nihon Gakushikai (the Academic Society of Japan) as a scholar adept in religion and philosophy.
Succession
Hayami-ryu School