A three-node bamboo tea scoop (mitsu-bushi chashaku) inscribed with the name 'Kanzan' — the Tang-dynasty Zen poet-recluse whose image pervades Rinzai monastery culture. Crafted by Ueda Gizan, resident of Daitokuji Kotooin, Kyoto, and housed in its original wooden box.
📦 [ BASIC DETAILS ] • Artist: Ueda Gizan (上田義山), Daitokuji Kotooin • Form: Mitsu-bushi chashaku (three-node tea scoop) — uncommon structural form • Material: Bamboo with three natural nodes • Mei (Inscription): 寒山 (Kanzan — Cold Mountain) • Box inscription: 高桐院 義山 (Kotooin, Gizan) • Includes: Lacquered tube, signed wooden box • Condition: Good; warm amber patina consistent with age • Period: ca. 2000–2006
🏛️ [ CULTURAL INSIGHT ] Daitokuji Kotooin was founded in 1601 by Hosokawa Tadaoki, the daimyo whose family stood at the center of the world Sen no Rikyu built. Within the Daitokuji compound — the spiritual axis of Rinzai Zen and chanoyu — Kotooin holds a particular gravity. Its garden, its moss, its silence: these are not decorative. They carry the accumulated weight of four centuries of intentional living. A chashaku bearing the Kotooin seal does not merely come from a temple. It comes from a specific tradition of custody over what tea ceremony means.
🔍 [ DEEP-DIVE ] The mitsu-bushi (three-node) form is a departure from convention. A standard chashaku presents one or two nodes; three nodes introduces a visual rhythm, a pause before the scoop. Each node was once a point of growth, of arrested momentum — the bamboo stopped here, then again, then again. The mei 'Kanzan' (寒山, Cold Mountain) refers to the eccentric Tang monk-poet whose verses survive in translation and whose figure — wandering, laughing, beyond categorization — became a touchstone for Rinzai iconography. To name a tea scoop after Kanzan is to invoke that tradition of deliberate outsideness: the utensil that doesn't announce itself, but accumulates presence through stillness.
_A scoop made three times over — each node a breath held, then released._
🔹 [ SHIPPING & PACKAGING ] • Dispatch: Within 1-6 business days • Carrier: Japan Post EMS / UPS (with tracking) • Packaging: Carefully wrapped with protective materials
