Senké and the Merchants' Dinner
told of the statue overhead. He declared it an insult to him, the Shogun, and sent to Rikiu the fateful short sword, the wakazashi, and the great master died the honorable death of seppuku, or hara kiri.
“And the daughter? Did the Taiko get her after Rikiu's death?” we asked, as we sat waiting in Senké’s garden, listening to the many histories connected with the place. “Wakarimasen” (I do not know), said our friend, with that Japanese indifference to the end of a story that so perplexes the western mind.
Senké has a lovely garden beyond the palace walls, and reached by deserted streets, whose blank walls shelter aristocratic homes. Crossing a court, we crept through a small door in a large gate-way and entered this retreat, whose floor was all irregular stones, covered evenly with a soft, velvety, green moss. Upon this verdant surface fell dappled shadows and an occasional ray of sunshine from a canopy of maple, cherry, and pine branches, carefully clipped and trained so as to form an even tent-roof over the whole enclosure. The stillness was unbroken, though upon this strange paradise looked out a dozen exquisitely simple tea-rooms, each isolated and sheltered from the view of any other. Pupils come to Senké from all parts of Japan, but even when every tea-room is in use the same hush reigns. To subdue us to what we were to work in, and to enhance Fortune’s supreme favor of a cha no yu in the Taiko’s manner, we were made to wait and wait before we were invited into the cool twilight of a large tea-room. The house has been burned twice since Hideyoshi's day, but each time has been exactly reproduced, so that virtually we sat where the Taiko had sat for many hours, and we used the veritable bowls, spoons, trays, and tea-caddies sanctified by his touch three hundred years ago. The Taiko’s crest was on the simple, gold decked screens of the room, and an autograph verse on a kakemono, and a single pink
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