Saturday, April 4 – Sunday, June 28, 2015

 Adults 1200 yen (1000 yen), University & high school students 700 yen(600 yen）

 
Special Exhibition: Golden Age of Chanoyu – Karamono Tea Utensils of the Seventeenth Century

 
Chinese artworks enjoyed their high esteem in Japan, especially during the Muromachi period (1336-1573), being called karamono by the Japanese, meaning “Chinese articles”. Since the latter half of the fifteenth century, however, when tea master Murata Shuko proposed wabi-cha (way of tea with the idea of maintaining simplicity and rusticity), people began to prefer the unpretentious, rustic haikatsugi tenmokuteabowl rather than the gorgeous, glossy yohen tenmoku tea bowl. The simple, less-adorned Korean ceramics were also regarded as karamono. Such trend flourished with the rise of tea masters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Sen Rikyu, who became influential figures and established the so-called Golden Age of chanoyu (way of tea). This exhibition traces the transformation of the people’s sense of beauty as well as the concept of karamono during the course of history.