Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/279

 the fourteenth century, when the nine horizontal rings of shakudo,—a metal composed of copper, silver, and a small quantity of gold,—enriching the finial of the Ten-no-ji pagoda, were taken down and used for casting tea-urns, by order of a military chief. Thenceforth a pagoda ring became the orthodox material for a tea-urn, and it is said that among more than a hundred pagodas in the provinces of Izumi and Kawachi, not one escaped having its rings stripped off. The pastime of tea-tasting was now so popular that every street in the two capitals—Kyōtō and Kamakura—had a shop for the sale of tea-utensils, and the store-keeper sat among his wares calling out, "Won't you condescend to want a cup of tea?"

But the Cha-no-yu had not yet developed its distinctive features, or acquired anything of the immense influence it afterwards exercised socially and aesthetically. Yoshimasa, the eighth of the Ashikaga Shōguns, was the patron of the new departure. He did not himself originate anything, but being a ruler whose unlimited lavishness of expenditure on objects of beauty attracted the attention of the entire nation, and produced a wave of aestheticism that swept through the whole country, his devotion to the Cha-no-yu brought it at once into prominence. The deviser of the extraordinarily detailed system of etiquette and labyrinth of observances that now became associated with tea-drinking, and the