Hideyoshi and Rikyū

by Nogami Yaeko

  After the fire, the monks had rebuilt just the main temple building, which served as a lecture hall and Buddhist sanctum, but they hadn’t had enough money to reconstruct the gate completely. The current gate was the same width and depth as the original one, but it was only one story tall. In order to have a properly solemn and dignified presence, the gate should have been two stories tall, but after the fire, the one-story gate was never restored to its former condition.

  Rikyū’s motive for funding the reconstruction wasn’t any deep religious faith, or because of his friendship with Kokei. It was because of an oak tree that grew on the temple grounds. The tree had been planted by the founder of Daitokuji Temple, the revered priest Daitō-kokushi, as a living embodiment of a well-known Zen kōan: “An oak tree in the garden.” The tree had survived for more than three centuries, even through the fires of the Ōnin War.

  The main temple building stood in the space between the tree and the gate, and the width of the hall was the same as the width of the gate. When visitors entered, they saw only a flat, two-dimensional form, without any variation in height to make it interesting. Rikyū had a mental block about any kind of ugliness in symbolic objects. The only way he could happily pass through that familiar gate again was to reconstruct the original temple gate, thus recreating the beauty that no one had seen for many years.

  The gate was surrounded by wooden scaffolding for the reconstruction, making it look like a giant birdcage. There were carpenters on every level, hard at work like birds making a nest. The old roof was already gone. The scaffolding soared up to the height of the new gate, where the frame of the roof was slowly being built inward from the four sides.

  Near the gate was a storage area, surrounded by bamboo fencing, which doubled as a work space. Inside, the head carpenter, Zengorō—easily seen among the other carpenters because of the rectangular hat perched on his white-haired head—was making marks on a board with an ink brush. He was standing in the middle of a pile of sawdust and wood shavings created by the saws, axes, and planes of the other carpenters. Seeing Rikyū, who had been standing watching the work for a while, he quickly came out from behind the fence.

  “Good day, sir,” he greeted Rikyū.

  “It looks like you’ve made good progress while I was away.”

  “It’s hard to go as quickly as I want. There’s a shortage of carpenters because of the construction going on over there. If I’m not careful, others will hire away my men.” Zengorō wrinkled up his flat nose and nodded with his square chin toward another construction area in the cedar and pine woods, very close to Sōkenin Temple, where Rikyū was headed. The new structure was Tenzuiji Temple, which Hideyoshi was building in honor of his mother’s seventieth birthday, and the workers were hurrying to finish.

  Rikyū ignored the complaint and changed the subject to roof tiles. Zengorō had a good relationship with a potter in Fushimi, who promised that they would give priority to making the tiles that would be used for the roof of the gate. The roof tiles needed to be ready by the time the wooden frame of the roof was complete, so as not to delay construction. The clay for the tiles would be mixed very carefully, and the finished product would be of even better quality than the roof of the old gate—and the roof of the new temple under construction. The carpenters at the new construction site were bragging that the tiles in their roof were the same quality as the ones at the famous Daibutsu Temple in Nara, Zengorō told them in a low voice, nodding toward Tenzuiji Temple again.

  Rikyū walked through the gate toward Sōkenin Temple. Unai, carrying Miwa sōmen noodles on his back to present to the temple as a gift, followed at Rikyū’s heels. It had been more than a hundred and twenty years since the battle that had destroyed the temple, and many trees had sprouted from the ashes. Old pine, cedar, and zelkova grew tall on either side of the road, and the spaces between the trees were covered with tall spring grasses and striped bamboo. Close to the main temple building were several smaller buildings, including Daisenin Temple and Shinjuan Temple, which had been built for the monk Ikkyū, who had helped Murata Jukō develop the grass-hut way of tea. There were no other buildings in sight. The dark red trunks of the pine trees were bright in the late spring sunshine, and occasionally a bush warbler chirped in a high-pitched, out-of-tune voice among the thick, interlaced green branches. It was as though they were walking through a distant, lonely forest.

  Soon the roof of Sōkenin Temple showed through the pines. As they got closer to the temple, sounds of construction rang out from Tenzuiji Temple, disturbing the deep stillness. The workers were hurrying to finish the temple before Hideyoshi’s mother’s birthday in autumn, and each rapid strike of hammer hitting nail was like a spike being driven up into the clear blue sky. The rhythm of hammers echoed through the forest. Close to Sōkenin Temple, they passed a grassy field. Along the left side of the field, carts full of pebbles from the Kamo River were lined up as if they had been abandoned. A cow continuously dropped big, round balls of feces from her light red hindquarters. The gentle breeze carried the thick, leathery smell of boiling glue, which would be used to apply gold leaf to the newly constructed temple fixtures.

  The heavy black gate of Sōkenin Temple, which had been carved into a fashionable curved shape, had been left open. Just as Rikyū approached the entrance, a monk in black robes came to greet him. It was Kokei.

  “I thought you might be arriving about now.”

  “Thank you for coming to greet me.”

  The cow mooed lazily as she watched them tread along the path to the temple, which was laid out with stepping stones in interesting patterns. The hurried echo of pounding nails, accented by the shouting of the workers, followed them in. Understanding the need for fast construction even in the peace of the temple grounds, Rikyū didn’t say anything about it to Kokei. Kokei didn’t mention it either, but they knew each other so well that they were able to communicate volumes without speaking.

  Kokei was slightly taller than Rikyū but not as broad in the chest and shoulders. His black robes made him look thinner than he actually was, especially walking next to Rikyū. He had large features in a slender face. His family came from the warrior class, and if he had chosen to remain with his family, the Asakura warrior clan in Echizen, rather than going to the temple, he would have looked the part of a strong and famous warrior. On the left side of his face, from cheek to chin, there was a stain the size of a baby’s fist, a distinctive yellow that looked almost as if it was glued on to his white skin. Like a typical Zen monk, he often said that the stain showed his attachment to the world. He could have been serious or joking. The stain gave people the impression that he was a formidable man.

  Kokei was widely expected to be the successor to Abbot Shōrei, the one-hundred-and-sixteenth-generation head of Daitokuji Temple. Kokei was a respected monk from a good background, besides being a descendant of the Asakura family, but the yellow stain on his face meant that many people avoided him, including Mitsunari and Maeda Gen’i, the commissioner of shrines and temples for the Kyōto region.

  Whenever Rikyū visited Sōkenin Temple, he entered through the kitchen, to the right of the main entrance, rather than through the main entrance itself. A young monk who knew Rikyū well heard his footsteps outside the kitchen door and scooped hot water from a big cauldron on the kamado into the basin used for washing feet. The heavy door was half latticework, and, as was the custom in Zen temples, there was no shōji paper pasted on it. The dirt floor of the kitchen was dark, forming a pleasing contrast to the glowing coals in the kamado.

  Unai, who had taken a shortcut through the pine woods, was already waiting for Rikyū in a corner of the kitchen. He always came to the temple before Rikyū, so that the monks would know that Rikyū was about to arrive.

  Rikyū sat on the kitchen step and took off his dusty leather foot coverings. He washed his feet and then put on a pair of new white cotton socks, which he had carried at his waist in a European twill pouch. He finished by rinsing his mouth slowly. The cle
ansing ritual was his way of showing respect before going to see the wooden statue of Nobunaga in the main room.

  The next room over was Kokei’s living room. Before entering, as was his custom, Rikyū stopped in the corridor to look at the temple’s rock garden. The largest part of the garden was rectangular, bounded on the near side by the temple and on the far side by a low, clipped oak hedge. A narrower section of the garden continued around the side of the temple, where there were a couple of boulders from Mount Kurama in the center and three or four small rocks scattered around it in a conscious imitation of nature. Off to one side was the path to the temple’s tearoom. The arrangement of the garden was simple, and it harmonized with the pine trees beyond, as if the rocks had been sitting that way since the beginning of time and everything else had grown up around them.

  After taking a moment to enjoy the view, he went into Kokei’s room. He was surrounded by sliding doors with ink brush paintings of landscapes, monkeys, geese, and reeds, all done by his friend Hasegawa Tōhaku. In the alcove there was an elegant painting of a peony in ink, with a hint of color, by Bokkei. The painting had been a gift from Hideyoshi when Sōkenin Temple was built. Kokei had purposely chosen this unseasonable painting to show Rikyū that he remembered the warm personal note Rikyū had written to accompany the gift.

  Rikyū looked carefully first at the scroll, then at the paintings on the sliding doors one by one as if he had never seen them before. Then he took a seat near Kokei and spoke, his voice sentimental. “It is said that life rumbles past us incoherently. It has been six years since Nobunaga died.”

  “Yes. Next month will be the sixth year.”

  They were talking about the death of Oda Nobunaga at Honnōji Temple. Sōkenin Temple had been built by Hideyoshi as a memorial for Nobunaga, whose tragic, violent death had been deeply connected to tea.

  Nobunaga had decided to attack the Shikoku region, and ordered Hideyoshi—who had been fighting Lord Mōri in Bicchu—to meet him at the front to lead the attack. As he prepared to depart to the front, Nobunaga gathered up all of his treasured tea utensils, which his power and authority had enabled him to collect over the years. He was planning to have a tea gathering with the wealthy merchant Shimai Sōshitsu in Hakata, showing his integrity as a tea person by keeping a promise made three years earlier. He also wanted to have a chance to show off his collection of treasures from the Ashikaga shōgunate and celebrate his departure to the front. In a hurry to keep his meeting with Hideyoshi, Nobunaga had left his castle with only 150 soldiers and other retainers, some of them women.

  Akechi, one of the lords who served Nobunaga, had ambushed him at Honnōji Temple, hoping to seize power. During the attack, the temple was burned to the ground, along with three chests of treasures from the Ashikaga collection. Those chests contained many of the tea world’s most irreplaceable treasures.

  In some ways, for the tea people of Sakai, the loss of the utensils was more tragic than Nobunaga’s death. Sōji took the loss harder than anyone. For him, it was as if the sun and the moon and the stars had disappeared from the universe. He was so sick from grief that even his shadow looked thinner. Even in the tearoom he couldn’t focus on anything.

  Rikyū would never forget how devastated Sōji had been, and thinking about Sōji reminded him of the reason for his visit: to ask Kokei how Maeda Gen’i had come to know so quickly about the meeting of Sōji and the monk at Nanshūji Temple. Rikyū told Kokei that Hideyoshi had sent an express messenger to fetch him back from Sakai, although at the time Rikyū hadn’t known why. “When you talked about Sōji’s meeting with the monk at Nanshūji Temple here at Sōkenin, was someone from the commission of temples and shrines present? If so, that would explain it.”

  “No,” Kokei said. “Abbot Shōrei invited me for tea when the monk from Nanshūji came here. It was just the three of us.”

  “If so, one of Hideyoshi’s informants in Sakai must have heard about Sōji.”

  “Well, these days it’s not safe to talk anymore even in a temple.” Kokei gave a light, short laugh and changed the subject. “So why did you have to return from Sakai so quickly?”

  “It was because of Sōji.”

  “Does Hideyoshi want Sōji to spy for him in Odawara?” Kokei saw through to the heart of the matter quickly.

  When Rikyū had returned from Sakai, it had been Hidenaga who saw him first, not Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi must have thought it would be better to let his brother ask Rikyū to convince Sōji to spy for them. Or perhaps Hideyoshi had hesitated to talk directly to Rikyū about asking Sōji—a man he had exiled—to get in touch with Hōjō in Odawara. In any case, Rikyū had refused to ask Sōji to spy on Hōjō.

  “If it were somebody else, that would be different. But it’s Sōji.” Rikyū knew Kokei would understand what he meant. Rikyū described the details of the conversation with Hidenaga. “I told Hidenaga that Sōji’s too direct and honest to think about the political benefits of his actions, and that’s the reason why he’s still suffering in exile. Hidenaga said he had expected my answer. As you know, he’s kind and understanding. And that was it.”

  “I wonder if Hideyoshi, with his hot temper, will give up so easily.”

  “Even if I upset him by refusing, I cannot do the things I cannot do.” One corner of Rikyū’s mouth twitched and his eyes held hollow laughter. Rikyū never tried to mask his true feelings about Hideyoshi when he was with Kokei.

  Lately the gap between Rikyū and Hideyoshi had been growing, like an underground stream slowly eroding the earth. Rikyū was a wealthy, cultured merchant from Sakai, while Hideyoshi, for all his power, was an upstart country bumpkin who was getting too full of himself. When Hideyoshi signed a court document, he used only one name, Tenka, signifying the one person in heaven who controls the universe. His attitude was increasingly tyrannical.

  Hideyoshi was very aware of the political benefits of having Rikyū as a servant. The lords who came to Jurakudai enjoyed the honor of sitting in the teahouse and watching Japan’s greatest tea master making tea. The chief retainers of the lords who came to Jurakudai were Rikyū’s students, and they respected him deeply. Since Hideyoshi had no intention of losing Rikyū, no matter how difficult their relationship became, he tried to compromise with Rikyū skillfully, so that Rikyū wouldn’t notice that he gave in sometimes. Of course, Rikyū knew it, but he had to pretend that he did not. These last two years, the game of blind man’s bluff had gotten tiresome.

  “I don’t have time for a cup of hot water, or even tea.” His grief came from his complicated relationship with Hideyoshi. Sometimes he got so tired of it all that he thought it would be a relief to just end his relationship with that upstart without having to worry about the advantages or disadvantages.

  The reconstruction of the gate had nothing to do with his public life. Accordingly, no one complained or challenged Rikyū about this matter—especially not Hideyoshi. Rikyū felt a kind of secret freedom from supporting the project, which was certainly the reason he was so attached to it.

  He told Kokei he was happy with the good progress on the gate, adding, “Soon I will be seventy. I’m healthy now, but I don’t know when I might die. When I do, my wish is to sleep at the corner of the temple, and so I’d rather put money into rebuilding the gate than building my tomb.”

  “That reminds me of something I wanted to ask you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I am thinking of having a statue carved—a statue of you, to commemorate your seventieth birthday. Now, hearing that for you, helping to construct the gate is the same as building yourself a tomb, it could become a memorial for you. I think that putting a statue of you in the altar room on the second story of the gate would be natural. It would also show our appreciation for what you have done for us.”

  Rikyū’s face took on a look of bewilderment—unusual for him—and he didn’t reply immediately. He observed that Kokei’s yellow stain had brightened slightly. Although Kokei was strict about his discipline as a monk, he coul
d still be carried away by passion, and on those occasions this showed in his heightened complexion. He told Rikyū that he had already discussed the statue with the other monks. Hasegawa Tōhaku would be glad to draw the basic design, and Kokei wanted the sculptor Ankei to carve the wood. Ankei was also over seventy and didn’t want to do any strenuous work, but he would take on this project for the great tea master. “If you let him do this, surely he’ll make a statue that satisfies you. It’s going to be extraordinary.”

  Rikyū smiled faintly and again looked around at the paintings on the sliding doors. The last time he had had his portrait painted, he was sixty. Now his image would be rendered as a wooden statue. He knew that his students Furuta Oribe and Hosokawa Tadaoki and their friends were already planning a celebration for Rikyū’s seventieth birthday. When they heard of Kokei’s plan, they would consider it the best possible gift for Rikyū.

  Rikyū was thinking of a story he’d heard about the current gate. Several decades after the devastating Ōnin War, a monk and poet named Sōchō had helped to pay for the initial reconstruction of the gate by selling his treasured collection of rare Tale of Genji texts. Rikyū was able to appreciate the generosity of the gesture, if not the style of the gate Sōchō had paid for. And as a child, Rikyū had heard the story of Owa Shirōzaemon, a wealthy merchant who, along with another merchant named Awajiya, had helped to rebuild the main hall, kitchen, and inner sanctum of the temple. The locals often told the story of how Shirōzaemon had donated the mast of a ship that had been to Ming China to become one of the kitchen beams, to wish the temple luck. Those deeds were a genuine service to Daitokuji Temple and to the monk Ikkyū, performed out of charity and virtue.