Colloquia
In and Around Chanoyu in Sixteenth-Century Japan
“Chigusa in Context” will focus on the tea-leaf storage jar named Chigusa and the broader production and appreciation of the arts within which it thrived in the sixteenth century. The jar was made in China sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth century as a utilitarian container, and only after arriving in Japan was it admired aesthetically, given its name, and employed as a respected storage vessel for tea. This elevation in status took place within chanoyu, the practice of drinking bowls of whisked powdered tea while in a specially designed architectural space equipped with a range of objects selected for the participants’ appreciation. Chanoyu, however, was not pursued in isolation, and Chigusa and its admirers inevitably intersected with other artists and aspects of Japanese culture. “Chigusa in Context” will examine this expansive art world during the century of the jar’s greatest acclaim.
Symposium Program
Friday, 7 November 2014
101 McCormick Hall
Keynote Lecture, 4:30 pm
The Art of Tea in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Takeuchi Jun’ichi
Director, Eisei-Bunko Museum, Tokyo
Saturday, 8 November 2014
101 McCormick Hall
Registration and Coffee, 8:30–9:30 am
Morning Session
9:30 am–1:00 pm
Chair: Andrew Watsky, Princeton University
Ceramics and Warrior Sociability in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Morgan Pitelka
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Show and Tell: Reformatting the Context of a Rikyū Letter
Andrew Hare
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Changing Hands: Teika, Waka, and Calligraphy in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Tomoko Sakomura
Swarthmore College
Professionals and Amateurs on the Sixteenth-Century Stage
Thomas Hare
Princeton University
Drinking from the Dragon’s Well: The Art of Tea and the Aesthetic Ideals of the Ming Literati
Steven D. Owyoung
Independent Scholar
Discussion
Afternoon Session
2:30–5:30 pm
Chair: Louise Cort, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
From Gusoku to Dōgu: The Changing Value of Things
Oka Yoshiko
Otemae University
Dressing Chigusa: Meibutsu Textiles for a Meibutsu Jar
Melissa Rinne
Kyoto National Museum
Eitoku’s Doves
Matthew McKelway
Columbia University
The Wa-kan Dialectic circa 1560: Painting, Poetry, and Tea
Melissa McCormick
Harvard University
Discussion
Concluding Remarks