Abstract
In the second half of the sixteenth century, a commoner named Sen no Rikyū became the foremost tea master to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ruler of Japan. In 1591, Rikyū was forced to commit ritual suicide and was succeeded by Furuta Oribe, one of his students. Unlike Rikyū, Oribe was not a commoner but a feudal lord. Oribe would later become tea master to the second Tokugawa shogun Hidetada, and after he himself was forced to commit ritual suicide in 1615, he was succeeded as tea master of the realm by another feudal lord, Kobori Enshū. This paper will discuss the role Enshū played in the development of the tea ceremony, then known as chanoyu, during the Kan'ei period, and will focus on the development of the sukiya 数寄屋 or tea room.