Sen Shōan
Historian and Japanese tea ceremony master
Sen Shōan (千少庵) (1546 – October 10, 1614) was a Japanese tea ceremony master, and is distinguished in Japanese cultural history as the second generation in the Sen family tradition of Japanese tea ceremony founded by his father-in-law, Sen no Rikyū.
Early life
Shōan’s father was Miyaō Saburō, who was a resident of Sakai and was a master at playing the Japanese hand drum (tsuzumi). Circumstantial evidence indicates that Miyaō Saburō probably died around the year 1553. Shōan's mother, the wife of Miyaō Saburō, was known as Sōon. She became the second wife of Sen no Rikyū. Shōan was adopted into the Sen family and became the son-in-law of Rikyū when he married Rikyū's daughter Okame. The oldest boy born between Shōan and Okame was Sen Sōtan, the third generation in the Sen family tradition of Japanese tea ceremony.
Tea ceremony career
Shōan was the same age as Rikyū's oldest son, Sen Dōan, but his skill at Japanese tea ceremony was much more highly reputed than was Dōan's. Rikyū left the Sen estate in Sakai for Dōan, and had Shōan and family set up a new Sen household in Kyoto. The exact year of the move is unknown, but it represented the origin of the so-called Kyoto Sen Family (Kyō-Senke), which evolved into the present san-Senke (lit., three Sen houses/families) (see Schools of Japanese tea ceremony).
“Sen Shōan” enters the record as historian and Japanese tea ceremony master. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shōan, Historian and Japanese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7449900. VIAF identifies the subject as 76129485. The Library of Congress control number is no2008089956. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1546, 1614 and 1553.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sen Shōan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.