wabisuki and wabi-sabi

*wabisuki and wabi-sabi
It is not an overstatement to say that chanoyu at the end of the16th century was nearly dominated by wabisuki. However, with the death of the man who we may consider to have been its main leader, SEN no RIKYU, this began to change. As described previously in the post about the chanoyu history, entering the 17th century many unique tea masters appeared on the scene, each innovating and promoting his own style of chanoyu, and so we could say that this was an era of development for wabisuki. however, entering the 18th century it appears that wabisuki had changed in its very quality.

Specifically, in documents about chanoyu written around this time, at first we can find some usage of the term wabisuki, but gradually the usage becomes divided into wabi and suki. To explain more clearly, at first wabi is used to imply something very close to the original meaning of wabisuki, but soon it comes to imply something quite different from the wabisuki described in last post above; something inferring chanoyu that does not have any splendid implements. The word suki comes to simply mean chanoyu, and so the combination sukisha(数寄者) means chanoyu person and sukiya(数寄屋) means chashitsu in those documents.

Wabisuki initially was understood as a certain ideal form of chanoyu. However, because of its strict content or the difficult process required to reach the realm that was its goal, people lost interest in it. The consequence of this is revealed in the change of vocabulary we find in the chanoyu documents. Although around the beginning of the 17th century the word wabi was used with the same meaning as wabisuki, in time the term wabi person/people(wabibito), though it might have shown a measure of respect, actually came to ring of the sense that they were looked upon as heathenish beings.

Nowadays it is so common to use the terms wabi-sabi when speaking about chanoyu, almost as if these are set epithets for it, but as can be realized from the explanations given thus far, the root of the chanoyu ideal lies in wabisuki, and even though wabi is a close term, it actually only indicates one facet of chanoyu. The term sabi(rust,sense of patina) actually was never used much in chanoyu. Even if it were used, it would not be used like the words wabisuki or wabi, to talk about the ideology of chanoyu itself or matters related to it. Sabi, rather, it a term used most often to explain about the beauty in wabisuki- wabi-style chanoyu. moreover, it may be said that wabi was a term holding important meaning in literature,such as haiku(俳句)