About Bokushinan

Bokushinan is the name of the Kizu family, a family of tea masters. The family began when its first head (1775–1855) became a disciple of Ittotsusai, the eighth grand master (iemoto) of the Mushakoji Senke school, Kankyuan.

The Bokushinan Foundation (一般財団法人卜深庵), established in April 2013 and based in Osaka, works to spread the way of tea, with its five-hundred-year history, and to pass on the culture of tea and enrich the culture of Japan.

Kizu Sousen VII is an instructor certified by the iemoto of the Mushakoji Senke school (kyoju), a member of the Reizei family's waka poetry society, and a visiting professor at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.

He joined his university's tea club as a student and became a disciple of the fifth head of the family. After graduating, he trained as a live-in apprentice at the iemoto's house. In April 2013 he succeeded to the name Sousen as the seventh head. In the spring of 2004 he received his tea name, 桜斎, from the iemoto.

He chose the way of tea as his life's work out of a love of tea and a wish to know more deeply, and to come a little closer to, the tea of Sen no Rikyu, Sen Sotan, the founder of the Mushakoji Senke school and the other masters of the past.

Seven generations of the Kizu family, from the first head (1775–1855) to the present seventh head, have carried on the tea of the Mushakoji Senke school for some two hundred years. The third head was a skilled designer of tea rooms and tea gardens, and was commissioned by Empress Teimei to design a tea room at the Omiya Palace.

The life of each generation is described on our Japanese page.