Founder of the Ishu school of tea ceremony and master of the tea ceremony for the Tokugawa shogunate. He was born in 1605 as the son of Sadataka Shozensho, the younger brother of Katagiri Ichimasa Tangen, whose real name was Sadatoshi, and later changed to Sadamasa. In 1624, he was appointed as the fifth cousin of Iwami, and was known as Ishishu. He was a student of Gyokuro Sokaku at Daitokuji Temple, where he received the title of Sanzoku Soseki. He also called himself Nokaigan, Ukibyoken, Shoinsai, and Tonsai. He was appointed as a magistrate in charge of construction in Yamato Koizumi (Koizumi-machi, Yamatokoriyama City, Nara Prefecture), and was appointed as a magistrate of Kanto County in 1642, a magistrate of Chion-in Temple in Higashiyama, Kyoto in 1633, an inspector of flood-damaged areas along the Higashiyama Road in 1650, and an inspector of coastal embankments of the two rivers Tokaido Fuji and Tenryu in 1660, and an inspector of flood damage in the five Kinai provinces in 1661. He was mainly engaged in construction and civil engineering work for the Shogunate, and once completed the garden pond at the Sento Palace by order of Tofukumonin. In 1665, he joined the Ryuei family with Funakoshi Eikage and became a tea ceremony instructor for Shogun Ietsuna. In 1670, at the age of 66, he handed over the reigns of his family to his third son Sadafusa and retired. Although Ishu’s tea ceremony was based on the Wabicha of Doan, it maintained the status of a natural warrior’s tea ceremony, and he established a set of rules, such as discrimination of the cloth used to represent the brush, the method of accompanying nobles, and the method of tea ceremony with utensils used by the recipients of worship. His disciples included Sogen Fujibayashi, Yisei Washo, Shigenobu Matsuura, Kagamori Niwa, Dokan Shimizu, Kansai Onishi, and Sotake Kubo, and this school eventually flourished and dominated the tea ceremony for almost all the lords of several domains in the Edo period. Ishizhu’s style can be seen in the shoin (drawing room) of Jikoin, which he built in Yamato Koizumi, and in the tea ceremony room with two tatami mats in the garden. He also had a great fondness for many of the utensils used in his tea ceremonies.
