In Toranomon, tucked away from Tokyo’s relentless pace, there’s a teahouse where time moves differently. Ohashi Charyō is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property - a sukiya-style building of such quiet elegance that Tantansai, the 14th Urasenke Grand Master, chose it as his Tokyo dōjō before the current Urasenke dōjō was built. In November, I was honored to be there for something special: Sukimonomusuhi.

Sukimonomusuhi, now in its fourth edition, exists to revive something that has quietly faded in post-war Japan. After WWII, tea culture became largely synonymous with the Senke teaching system - structured lessons, formal procedures, certificates marking progress. This democratized tea and opened it to millions. But it also overshadowed another tradition: sukisha culture.

Sukisha (数寄者) - “those who love” - were the connoisseurs. In the Meiji era, collectors like Masuda Don’ō would gather not as teachers and students, but as equals exploring beauty together. They would handle objects, discuss freely, debate what made something extraordinary. The purpose wasn’t certification or technique. It was 美 - beauty itself.

I started my tea journey through otemae, as most people do. The procedures. The forms. But what is drawing me deeper these days is this the historical and aesthetic appreciation, the direct encounter with objects that have survived centuries. This has also lead me to have an increasing appreciation for the artisans who created these objects.

For all six sessions across two days, I prepared koicha - thick tea - using pieces from my own collection alongside treasures brought by the hosts. The thick tea was prepared in my Komogai bowl, Tanihibiki - over 400 years old. Korean Joseon-dynasty ware, it has a quirky confidence to it. The curved lip and unaffected simplicity feel completely natural, settling into the hands as if it belonged there. Elegant, but in an entirely unintentional way.

But I also brought something new: an Imayaki chawan by the current head of the Raku family, I won the right to acquire the bowl in a lottery at a Mitsukoshi exhibition last year.

The hosts - Fujita Kiyoshi of Fujita Museum, Yamaguchi Masanobu of Tekisui Museum, Toda Takashi of Tanimatsuya Toda, and Tokubuchi Suguru of Yorozu who organized it all - are serious connoisseurs. But I call them the “Choi-waru Brothers” - the “Slightly Bad Boy Brothers” - because they’re also unpretentious, funny, and completely alive to the joy in all this. When museum directors and dealers gather to share their treasures, not behind glass but in actual use, something rare happens.

That’s the key insight: tea utensils only reveal their true essence through use. Museums preserve objects for viewing. But sukisha culture keeps them alive by actually using them - handling them, drinking from them, experiencing them as their makers intended. Every session at Sukimonomusuhi, guests touched pieces that might otherwise spend decades unseen in storage. We drank from bowls that carry centuries of history.

This is what’s at risk of being lost. And this is what gatherings like Sukimonomusuhi work to preserve.

The theme of this fourth Sukimonomusuhi was “銭” - money or the lack of it.

In the machiai - the waiting room - guests encountered Matsudaira Fumai’s famous letter: “I want a tea bowl so badly, but I, the penniless one, finally managed to get one. I eagerly await serving you tea.” Beside it, Masuda Dono’s wry observation: “Even the great Fumai was like this. As they say, those without money are the ones who want to buy the most - and truly, he wanted to buy.”

Fumai was a feudal lord, and Dono one of the wealthiest industrialists in Meiji Japan. Yet here they are, commiserating about being “penniless” when it comes to tea bowls. Perhaps true sukisha always feel this way - no matter how much they have, there’s always another bowl calling to them, always just out of reach. The appetite for beauty is never quite satisfied.

In the main room there was a scroll bearing Sen no Rikyū’s poem to Yabunouchi Shōchi: “有人の在るにまかする茶の湯より 無くてぞ出す侘びは面白き” - The tea ceremony of those who have, relying on what they have, is less interesting than the wabi that emerges naturally from having nothing.

From Fumai’s desperate wanting to Rikyū’s transcendent answer: true wabi doesn’t need expensive utensils. The theme resolved beautifully.

But then, we encountered something that seemed to contradict - or perhaps complete - Rikyū’s words: a small natsume bearing his own handwriting. “Riki Sōeki” - a gift to his wife Sōon, whom he called Riki.

The lathe work is exquisite, considered essential for understanding the original Rikyū-style natsume form. Riki herself was a remarkable woman who, alongside Rikyū’s son Shōan, helped rebuild the family after Hideyoshi forced Rikyū' to commit ritual suicide.

The natsume’s box carries inscriptions from Sōtan - Rikyū’s grandson - and Gengensai, the 11th Urasenke Grand Master. There is als a connection to Ohashi Charyō’s tea room “Aoi” which is a copy of the Urasenke room “Totsutotsusai,” named after Sōtan’s artistic name. And who built that original Totsutotsusai? Gengensai. To view this natsume in this place was to feel centuries of tea history converging.