. Persons and People of Edo - Personen .
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Baisaoo, Baisaō 売茶翁 Baisao, "Old Tea Seller"
賣茶翁 （ばいさおう） / 高遊外 Ko Yugai.
(1675 – 1763)
Baisaō with his portable tea stand,
as depicted in a gently comical caricature painting of the late 19th–early 20th century
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was a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Obaku school of Zen Buddhism, who became famous for traveling around Kyoto selling tea. The veneration of Baisao during and after his lifetime helped to popularize sencha tea and led to the creation of the sencha tea ceremony.
Baisao went by many names during his lifetime, as was common at the time. As a child, he was known as Shibayama Kikusen. When he became a monk, his Zen priest name was 月海元昭 Gekkai Gensho. Baisao, the nickname by which he is popularly known, means "old tea seller." He acquired this name from his act of making tea in the Kyoto area.
Later in his life, he denounced his priesthood and adopted the lay name of 高遊外 Ko Yugai.
Baisao was born in the town of Hasuike in what was then Hizen Province.
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Tea
Around 1735, Baisao began selling tea in the various scenic locations in Kyoto. At this time, he had not yet formally given up his priesthood. Baisao never sold his tea for a fixed price. Instead, he carried a bamboo tube with which he collected donations. He lived an ascetic life, despite his lasting friendships with illustrious individuals, and used the meagre donations from his tea peddling to keep himself nourished. As for his tea equipment, he carried it all in a woven bamboo basket he called Senka ("den of the sages") that he lugged around on a stick over his shoulder.
Baisao's method of preparing tea was referred to as sencha, or "simmered tea". In this method, whole tea leaves would be tossed into a pot of boiling water and simmered for a short period of time. This style of tea differed from matcha, the most common tea in Japan at the time, which consists of tea leaves ground into a fine powder. The method of brewing tea by grinding it into a powder and whisking it with hot water was popular in China in the Song dynasty, during which Zen Buddhist monks first brought the practice to Japan. By contrast, the Obaku school of Zen specialized in brewing loose leaf green tea, a style that had gradually become popular in China during the Ming dynasty. Sencha partisans of the time opposed the rigid, elaborate formalism of the traditional chanoyu tea ceremony, which uses matcha. The comparative simplicity of adding tea leaves to water appealed to many Japanese monks and intellectuals (among them Baisao and much of his social circle) who admired the carefree attitude advocated by the ancient Chinese sages. Baisao himself saw tea as a path to spiritual enlightenment, a point he made repeatedly in his poetry.
It is not known where Baisao originally obtained his tea leaves from, but by 1738, the sencha method of brewing tea had become popular enough that one of his acquaintances, a tea grower in Uji, developed new production methods to create a type of tea named after the brewing method. This sencha tea was made of whole, young leaves which were steamed and then dried. This technique differs from the typical Chinese method of producing loose leaf tea, which does not involve steaming. Baisao himself praised the tea highly, and the term sencha has come to refer primarily to the tea leaves produced by this method, not to the method of brewing them.
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Baisao's poetry and calligraphy
are considered important in the Zen history of Japan, especially in Kyoto where Baisao was well known. His poetry was highly regarded by the artists of 18th century Kyoto, which was more "liberal" than the capital city of Edo (modern Tokyo). Over 100 of his poems have survived. Some of Baisao's writings were published in 1748 as A Collection of Tea Documents from the Plum Mountain (Baisanshu chafu ryaku). In this text, Baisao argued for the philosophical superiority of sencha over chanoyu, and wrote that priests who performed the chanoyu tea ceremony were as far from the example of the ancient sages as heaven from earth.
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Today, Baisao is considered one of the first sencha masters. After his death, sencha continued to rise in popularity, gradually replacing matcha as the most popular type of tea in Japan.
- source : wikipedia
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高遊外売茶翁佐賀地域協議会
佐賀市松原４丁目６番１８号 / Saga, Matsubara
- source : kouyugaibaisao.com -
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The Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in 18th Century Kyoto
by Baisao (Author), Norman Waddell (Translator)
Baisao was an influential and unconventional figure in a culturally rich time period in Kyoto. A poet and Buddhist priest, he left the constrictions of temple life behind and at the age of 49 traveled to Kyoto, where he began to make his living by selling tea on the streets and at scenic places around the city. Yet Baisao dispensed much more than tea: though he would never purport to be a Zen master, his clientele, which consisted of influential artists, poets, and thinkers, considered a trip to his shop as having religious importance. His large bamboo wicker baskets provided Baisao and his customers with an occasion for conversation and poetry, as well as exceptional tea.
The poems, memoirs, and letters collected here trace his spiritual and physical journey over a long life. This book includes virtually all of his writings translated for the first time into English, together with the first biography of Baisao to appear in any language. It is bound to establish Baisao’s place alongside other Zen-inspired poets such as Basho and Ryokan.
- source : www.amazon.com -
The Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in 18th Century Kyoto
By Baisa Baisa
- source : books.google.co.jp -
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Searching for the Spirit of the Sages: Baisaō and Sencha in Japan
by Patricia J. Graham - 1996
PDF file
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Baisaō on a Footbridge by 伊藤若冲 Itō Jakuchū (1716-1800)
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賣茶翁 Baisaō (1675-1763)
..... Baisaō was an inspirational and unconventional figure in a culturally rich time period in Kyoto.
.....
Book reviewed by Joseph S. O’Leary, Sophia University
Book reviewed by Vladimir K.
.....
- - - - - Two quotes from Baisaō:
“The price for this tea is anything
from a hundred in gold to a half sen.
If you want to drink free, that's all right too.
I'm only sorry I can't let you have it for less.”
“What's the tea seller got in his basket?
Bottomless tea cups?
A two-spouted pot?
He pokes around town for a small bit of rice,
Working very hard for next to nothing ---
Blinkering old drudge just plodding ahead ...
Bah!”
portrait by 田能村竹田 Tanomura Chikuden (1777-1835)
More illustrations and translations of his writing are here :
- source : terebess.hu/zen/mesterek -
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Making the busy streets my home
right down in the heart of things
only one friend shares my poverty
this single scrawny wooden staff.
Having learned the ways of silence
within the noise of urban life
I take life as it comes to me
and everywhere I am is true.
Rambling free beyond the world
enjoying the natural shapes of things
a shaggy eight-year-old duffer
scraping out a living selling tea.
He escapes starvation, barely,
thanks to a section of bamboo,
a tiny house with a window hole
provides all the shelter he needs.
Outside, carts and horses pass
annulling both noise and quiet
inside, easy talk at the stove
banishes notions of host and guest.
He lives under a row of tall pines
beside a temple of guardian sages
where the pine breeze sweeps clear
the dust of fame and profit.
I'm not a Buddhist or Taoist
not a Confucianist either
I'm a brownfaced white-haired
hard up old man.
People think I just prowl
the streets peddling tea.
I've got the whole universe
in this tea caddy of mine.
Left home at ten
turned from the world
here I am in my dotage
a layman once again;
A black bat of a man
(it makes me smile myself)
but still the old tea seller
I always was.
Seventy years of Zen
got me nowhere at all
shed my black robe
became a shaggy crank.
now I have no business
with sacred or profane
just simmer tea for folks
and hold starvation back.
Tr. Norman Waddell
Baisao makes a good case for a simple but elegant life of attention, beauty, and contentment that honors old age and the impermanence of life.
- source : spiritualityandpractice.com -
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朱泥ダルマ彫煎茶 Cup for Sencha
made from shudei 朱泥 red clay from China
. Sencha 煎茶 .
a Japanese green tea, specifically one made without grinding the tea leaves.
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仙台市の 売茶翁 （ ばいさおう ） の「みちのくせんべい」
- reference : takedala/dokugen -
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. Edo bakufu 江戸幕府 The Edo Government .
. Famous Places and Powerspots of Edo 江戸の名所 .
. Doing Business in Edo - 商売 - Introduction .
. shokunin 職人 craftsman, craftsmen, artisan, Handwerker .
. senryu, senryū 川柳 Senryu poems in Edo .
. Japanese Architecture - Interior Design - The Japanese Home .
. Legends and Tales from Japan 伝説 - Introduction .
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