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Due to Lords of Japan, Daimyo were first and foremost warriors.
The primary obligation of their lives
was maintaining constant readiness to do battle
on behalf of their overlord, the Shogun.
The sword, accordingly, was the principal tool
of the Daimyo's metiye and symbol of the values
by which he lived.
The Japanese long sword is both a lethal weapon
and a work of art.
Inscribed with the name of the swordsmith who forged it
and with its own name and provenance,
a long sword like this one, a national treasure,
was passed down through warrior families for generations,
accumulating its own legend over time
and a distinct personality known and feared by enemies
who had to test themselves against its edge.
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Like the samurai warriors who owed him fealty,
the Daimyo was trained from childhood in the arts of war.
In fact, the process of becoming a skilled swordsman
constituted a major part of his physical, intellectual,
and spiritual training.
In 1336, the warrior leader Takauji Asikaga
from Eastern Japan occupied the Western capital of Kyoto.
Takauji banished the emperor, installed a surrogate
on the throne and declared himself Shogun.
With the Asikaga Shogunate now in Kyoto,
the warrior class was exposed to the influence
of courtly elegance.
By the mid-14th century, the Daimyo was aspiring
to more than skill at battle.
As a result of his contact with nobles from the imperial court
and Zen monks steeped in Chinese culture,
he was also committed to becoming a man of cultivated taste.
This obliged him to develop not only his warrior skills,
but a genuine appreciation for the peaceful arts.
Landscape gardening and architecture.
Poetry, painting, and calligraphy.
The tea ceremony.
The no theater.
The warrior had in fact become a warrior esthit,
a man who sought to embody as the ultimate goal
of his warriorhood both fierceness and sensitivity.
This paradoxical ideal became known
as the dual way of the sword and the writing brush.
The tension created between its poles of force
and delicacy is the animating energy of Daimyo culture.
Mr. Isaburo Nakamura is a kendo master of the eighth level.
(speaking in foreign language)
Calligraphy was one of the disciplines
that Daimyo practiced as part of his training
in the dual way.
In China as well as Japan,
the art of calligraphy was esteemed along with poetry
and painting as one of the three excellences.
A man's calligraphy was seen as a reflection
of his inner self, his power, integrity,
and ethical correctness.
Mr. Shinzan Kamijo 81 is an eminent calligrapher
with a bold and forceful style
which recalls the medieval period.
(speaking in foreign language)
Mr. Kamijo completes the scroll and makes it a valuable work
of art by adding his signature, Shinzan.
The first Chinese character means contained.
The second radiance.
This two character compound, Gangkou,
was the name of a mythological sword
from the Shang dynasty in ancient China.
It also came to mean the internal radiance
which suffuses all superior action,
whether in art or public behavior.
Mr. Morisada Hosokawa, author, cultural historian,
and director of the Aise Bunko Foundation and Museum
is descended from an illustrious Daimyo family
which reaches back to the 13th century.
His great-great-grandfather was the last Hosokawa Daimyo.
Mr. Hosokawa was raised on stories about his warrior ancestors.
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The life of Sansai Hosokawa, born in 1563,
was a paradigm of the dual way.
Sansai first went to battle at the age of 15
and earned the favor of the overlord Nobunaga.
A formidable warrior in the battlefield
for 20 of the most turbulent years in Japanese history,
Sansai also served and fought under Hideyoshi,
one of the unifiers of feudal Japan.
At the same time, he was a noted scholar
and natural scientist, a designer of armor,
and an intimate disciple of Japan's greatest master
of the tea ceremony, Riku Sin.
For his valor in the battle of Sekigahara in 1600,
where he fought on the side of the victorious Tokugawa,
Sansai was granted a family domain and castle in Kukura,
and later moved to today's city of Kumamoto
on the southern island of Kyushu.
It was here as lord of the Hosokawa domain
that he established his own school of tea
to maintain the tradition of the ceremony
as it had been reshaped by his master, Riku.
This is the tea garden in Kumamoto,
which Sansai designed for his own use.
Tea was brought to Japan originally
from Tang Dynasty China by Buddhist monks.
Over time, the preparation and serving of the tea
evolved into a Zen discipline for focusing awareness.
In the 14th century, Zen monks introduced tea
to the imperial court and the warrior class.
The Zen residents remained strong,
but in the hands of the Daimyo warrior,
the tea ceremony became more an aesthetic experience
than a monastic discipline.
At the stone water basin in front of the tea house,
symbolically with every motion prescribed,
the invited guest washes away the dust
of the material world and enters the purified domain
of the tea ceremony.
In Sansai's day, the guest might well have been a Daimyo
from a neighboring domain.
The host was at pains to prepare for his guest
a pleasurable experience.
The guest's role was to be fully aware
of the beauty and appropriateness
of every detail presented.
The scroll hanging in the alcove just inside the entrance
will be a poem chosen by the host
because it fits the season and this particular occasion.
The flower arrangement and the flower holder
are also observed and appreciated.
(speaking in foreign language)
The full significance of the tea ceremony practiced
by Daimyo warriors like Sansai Hosokawa
is best appreciated in the context of a country
torn by civil war.
Just outside the cramped space of the tea house,
the reality of the 16th century was the chaos
and terror of battle and the hovering presence of death.
The tea ceremony with its demands on the Daimyo's
total concentration functioned to isolate him
from that overwhelming reality
so that he could prepare himself to meet it.
The tea bowl is warmed with boiling water
and carefully dried before the thick powdered tea
called matcha is prepared.
This 16th century bowl is a priceless masterpiece,
black raku by the founding raku potter, Chojiro.
The rest of the utensils used will have been selected
to enhance the special beauty of this centerpiece.
The harmony of all details is of key importance.
The tea jar is a 17th century piece of set-aware
by the potter, Chojiro.
The bamboo teaspoon was fashioned by the eighth generation
Hosokawa Daimyo, Shigekata.
In the preciseness of every designated move,
one feels the presence of zen discipline.
The exact position on the tatami mat
of each of the utensils is also designated.
Nothing is accidental, including the sounds of the ceremony.
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Mr. Sakai had his debut on the nose stage at the age of three
and performed his first leading role at age eight.
In acknowledgment of his consummate's skill as a performer,
Mr. Sakai has been designated a bearer of important,
intangible cultural assets,
the Japanese equivalent of cultural knighthood.
Mr. Sakai will perform the climactic dance from Funa Benke,
Benke at sea.
He plays the anguished spirit of a vanquished warrior.
The demon rises from beneath the waves to avenge himself
and his clansmen by destroying his conqueror in life,
the warrior Yoshitsune.
To convey the purity and innocence for which he stands,
the role of Yoshitsune is normally played by a child actor.
In this style of performance, Maibayashi,
only the demon protagonist appears on stage
and performs without robes or mask.
(singing in foreign language)
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On the no stage in his own home in Tokyo,
Mr. Sakai rehearses the same scene from Benke at sea
with his 10-year-old son Odo Haru playing Yoshitsune.
(singing in foreign language)
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Early in the 17th century,
a great peace settled over Japan.
In the absence of war,
Daimyo had increasing difficulty maintaining the dual way.
The government urged the warrior class to preserve the martial arts.
But with no real battles to be fought,
the warrior's relationship to the sword became more a matter of ritual than reality.
As a result, the Daimyo turned their energy increasingly to the peaceful arts.
When they were not building or restoring castles on orders from the shogunate,
they installed elaborate landscape gardens on their estates.
They studied calligraphy and painting with New Zeal,
and became patrons and collectors of celebrated artists like Tanyu Kanō.
Their passion for tea intensified.
Every Daimyo with the domain of any size had to have his own tea house,
personal tea master, and collection of rare utensils.
They also competed in sponsoring no actors,
building stages on their own estates and collecting masks and robes.
In fact, the survival of these peaceful arts into modern Japan
is due in large measure to Daimyo patronage during the 250 years of the Tokungawa Peace.
Considering that this art and theater was also shaped significantly by the warrior sensibility,
the Daimyo contribution to Japanese culture must be considered vast and everlasting.
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