Tea master, eldest son of Sotatsu Tsuda of Tennojiya, a major merchant in Sakai. Date of birth unknown. Nicknamed Sukégoro, he received the Buddhist name Tenshin from the monk Dairin of Daitokuji Temple, and also went by the name Sarayusai. He is also said to have called himself “Keze Hogen. He succeeded to the position of the Sakai Gakushu and approached Oda Nobunaga early on, and when Nobunaga imposed 20,000 kan of arrow money on Sakai in 1568, he acted as an intermediary to maintain the peace and security of the city. He learned the tea ceremony of the Shaoogu school from his father, and is said to have been the tea master of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, along with Munehisa Imai and Sen no Rikyu, and to have been the owner of 3,000 koku. He was versatile in many arts, and in addition to tea ceremony, he excelled in waka, renga, flower arrangement, incense, kemari (a Japanese ball game), and sword appraisal. He died on April 20, 1591 (Tensho 19) at an unknown age. Tennojiya had been prominent in Sakai since the time of his grandfather Munehashiwa, and by the time of his father Sotatsu, it had amassed enormous wealth as a political merchant through its friendship with Ishiyama Honganji Temple and the Miyoshi clan. Sokaku is said to have learned renga from Botan Hanakashi and tea from Shuko. Sotatsu introduced the tea ceremony of Shao and received the title of “Datu” from the monk Obayashi. The Tennojiya family was also known for its love of tea, including Ryozen, the younger brother of Sobaku, Sokan, the younger brother of Sotatsu, and Ryoun and Dosokan. The eldest son of Muneyoshi was Munehon, and the second son was Etsuki, a monk of Daitokuji Temple.
Tennojiya Kaikki: Considered a first-rate work not only for the tea ceremony but also as a general historical document, this book consists of 16 volumes of records of tea ceremonies held by three generations of Tennojiya, one by Sotatsu and the other by others, from 1548 to 1566. Volumes five through thirteen and a separate volume of volume fifteen are Sogyo’s journal, covering the period from 1565 to 1585. Volume 14 is the record of other meetings of Sobon in 1590. It is a large record of more than 2,560 meetings. The “Tennojiya Kaikki” was originally called “Tsuda Sosho Chayu Ki,” but after Nagashima Fukutaro’s review, it is included in the seventh and eighth volumes of the “Complete Collection of Tea Ceremony Classics” as “Tennojiya Kaikki.
