context: tea ceremony > history > Rikyu

Rikyu's Death

The official story: in 1591 Rikyu largely paid for the second floor of a new temple; therefore they put a statue of him there, as was normal. Hideyoshi claimed he was setting himself with his feet treading on everyone else, and told him to commit seppuku. This is a hopelessly weak reason for getting mildly irritated, let alone sentencing an important associate to death. We need to look for something more. As it happens, there is plenty to look at, even discounting implausible nonsense without evidence, such as stories that Rikyu wouldn't let Hideyoshi get at his daughter, or that Rikyu was secretly a Christian. Let's say a few things about a few aspects of the political context...

• Rikyu had intensified the split (begun by Shuko) between the aesthetic, ascetic, performative view of the tea ceremony and the opulent approach based on valuable and famous art objects - the former a matter of discipline and practice, the latter of wealth and aristocratic taste.
• His seppuku came soon after Hideyoshi unified Japan; and in the following decades, the top tea masters were warriors, not merchants and aesthetes. Tea culture was important enough that it was worth taking extreme measures to grab dominance of its ideology and praxis
• When Hideyoshi was gaining power, the egalitarian, humble style was very useful diplomatically; after he had all the power, he wanted to impose a strong hierarchy, and the wabi style didn't fit.
• Rikyu defined a new aesthetic, then traded in Raku ware, selling it for the high prices he created by championing it - and might this have undermined the value (in prestige and monetary terms) of the ceramics collection that Hideyoshi had taken incredible trouble to assemble?

I have no special information here, but for me, that kind of thinking is far more persuasive than the lame statue story.

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