This page provides a brief history of the development of the Japanese tea house (chashitsu) and garden – especially the specific rustic style that is the objective of this project. More authoritative and in-depth coverage can be found in The Tea Ceremony by Sen’ō & Sendō Tanaka and The Japanese Tea Garden by Marc Peter Keane.
The origins of the modern formal tea ceremony (chanoyu) can be found as early as the fourteenth century among the samurai class. A tea ceremony would typically be performed in a room of the house set aside for this purpose with a design incorporating elements of temple architecture (shoin). The leading designer of a simpler style of smaller tea room was a Zen priest named Murata Shukō (1422-1502), generally regarded as the father of the tea ceremony.
The second of the great tea masters was Takeno Jōō (1502-1555), but perhaps the most influential was Sen no Rikyū (1522-1591), who was largely responsible for developing the rules and rituals of the tea ceremony.
However, the most significant change was that chanoyu was no longer the exclusive practice of court nobility but was open to all classes. And, curiously, the emerging wealthy merchant classes were tending to avoid ostentatious display in favour of a more restrained and simple aesthetic known as wabi. Despite one or two setbacks over the following centuries, the modern tea ceremony retains the ideals of simplicity and tranquillity that are inherent in wabi and the Zen spirit.
By the sixteenth century, the preferred setting for the tea ceremony had moved outside the home altogether into a small sōan – a rustic hut built using the natural materials of farmhouses: rough timber frame with mud and straw walls and often with a thatched roof – set in its own tea garden (roji).