This Buddhist temple of the Muromachi period (1392-1573) was built in 1398 and extensively repaired in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It stood originally in Katagiri village in Nara Prefecture as a subsidiary part of the great Buddhist temple Höryüji. When the Shöfukuji temple building was dismantled in 1928, the Museum acquired its wooden elements.
The building as it now stands in the Museum follows the original plan in everything but the roof. It is supported by twelve cypress posts resting on stone bases, with white plaster walls on three sides. The front can be closed off by three wooden latticed doors (shitomi-do), the upper halves of which open horizontally inward and are held open by hooks from the ceiling. There are also two side entrances with sliding wooden doors (ama-do). The hipped roof is covered with pottery tiles and two demon, mask tiles (oni-ita) intended to frighten away evil spirits.
The center of the temple holds the main altar (butsudan), where a lacquered and gilded wood statue of Amida Buddha presides. The side niches (tokonoma) are used as subsidiary altars and also hold figures of buddhas or bodhisattvas. The standing Amida Buddha on the left is a particularly fine example of Kamakura period (1185-1333) sculpture. Before the main altar are Buddhist ritual objects of the esoteric Shingon sect, such as vases of flowers and an altar table with ceremonial utensils.
This ceremonial teahouse was built in about 1917 by the Japanese architect Ögi Rodö. Designed in the rustic tradition or "artless style" of the fifteenth-century artist Oguri Sotan, it also incorporates eighteenth-century elements. The Sunkaraku teahouse originally stood on the grounds of Rodö's private residence in Tokyo. He sold it to the Museum in 1928, and in 1957 it was installed at the Museum, making it the only work by Rodö outside Japan. The garden setting you see now was planned by one of Japan's foremost contemporary garden designers, Matsunosuke Tatsui.
The apparent artlessness of the teahouse in fact conceals acute attention to detail and to aesthetic pleasure. The architecture of both the waiting room and the tearoom reveals a special delight in natural materials such as cypress shingles (for the roof) and bamboo. Proximity to nature is also emphasized by the garden, visible from both buildings. Everything inside the tearoom has been planned to stimulate the mind and to delight the eye. Rough, unfinished vertical posts remind guests of their imperfections and their oneness with nature, and the tea utensils enhance their sensitivity to natural textures and artistic creativity.
The tea ceremony offers a temporary respite from the complexities of daily life. This mood perhaps inspired a famous devotee of the tea cult, Lord Fumai Matsudaira (1750-1818), when he autographed the tablet over the teahouse with the inscription "Sun Ka Raku," or Evanescent Joys.
Two entryways leading into this gallery were built in the traditional Japanese style for the Philadelphia Museum of Art when the Tea House was installed in 1957.
"Japanese style doorway." Museum slide card catalog, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives.
