Tea master and merchant of the Momoyama period, born in 1551. Born in 1551, his first name was Sadakiyo, also known as Zenshiro. He was a member of the Kamiya family, a wealthy merchant in Hakata. He was the sixth head of the Kamiya family, a wealthy merchant in Hakata. The Kamiya family had long been the chief administrator of Usa Hachimangu Shrine (Oita Prefecture), and Jusada III learned the art of smelting in Ming Dynasty China, and established the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine (Shimane Prefecture), amassing great wealth. As a political merchant, Sotan was always close to the mainstream of his time, including Otomo Sorin, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Kobayakawa Takakage, Ishida Mitsunari, and Kuroda Nagamasa, and he received the greatest patronage from Hideyoshi. In 1582, at the age of 32, he attended Nobunaga’s tea ceremony at Honnoji Temple with Munemuro and became the first tea master in Japan. After traveling to Kyoto on November 18, 1586, he was treated by Hideyoshi, and all of his various records, including the “Sotan Diary,” have been preserved in great detail. He died on October 28, 1635, at the age of 85. His tomb is in Myorakuji Temple in Fukuoka City.
Sotan’s diary is one of the three major chronicles of chanoyu. It is also called “Kamiya Sotan’s Writing. The “Kamiya Sotan Nikki” is a three-volume diary of Sotan, from which he prepared a record of his cooking menu. The “Sotan Diary” is in three volumes. It is a record of Munezan’s tea ceremonies from the Tensho to Kanei Era. The articles are detailed and detailed, and are considered extremely valuable not only as a record of tea ceremonies but also as a historical document. There are several variant copies of the Seiden manuscript, and it covers the September 25th meeting in Kan’ei 3. It is included in the sixth volume of the “Complete Collection of Tea Ceremony Classics,” with detailed research and commentary by Haga Koshiro.
