This study examines tea specialists and the process of their institutionalization in the seventeenth century. Tea specialists served the Tokugawa bakufu and certain daimyo houses in official positions with tea specific duties, and while their institutionalization drew upon the precedents the late-sixteenth century, when became an integral part of elite warrior society, tea specialists were a phenomenon of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867).

Tea specialists played significant roles in Tokugawa warrior society and in the evolution of tea as a cultural institution, yet they have generally been neglected by scholars. Research on tea-topics of the late-sixteenth century and early-seventeenth century has tended to focus on individual tea practitioners and to emphasize the transition from merchant tea masters to daimyo tea masters. This study, however, contends that the contours of the world of tea in the Tokugawa period resulted largely from the early Tokugawa shogun's incorporation of tea into bakufu rituals and their retention of tea specialists. In so arguing, this study aims to provide new portions of the historical context necessary to developing a fuller understanding of the history of tea and individual tea practitioners in the Tokugawa period while shedding new light on elite daimyo/warrior society and institutionalization in general.

This study begins by examining the importance of tea to warriors, from the mid-sixteenth century through the establishment of the basic institutional structure of tea specialists under the first four Tokugawa shogun. It outlines the institutional nature of tea specialists in terms of their compensation, status, and duties, and then looks at the scope, characteristics, and causes of the domainal market for tea specialists in the seventeenth century. This institutional focus is combined with an analysis of Sen Sotan's efforts to find work for his sons as tea specialists. Sotan and his sons' approach and experiences likely represent what others, not only tea specialists, went through in trying to find work with the bakufu and daimyo houses, and illustrate the benefits produced by the political institutionalization of tea specialists, including how crucial these positions were to the foundation upon which the three Sen houses later built their tea schools.