Baisao

With letters of introduction from Daicho, Baisao quickly gained the friendship of many leading artists, monks, and literati in Kyoto.

He lived an ascetic life, despite his lasting friendships with illustrious individuals, and used the meagre donations from his tea peddling to keep himself nourished.

As for his tea equipment, he carried it all in a woven bamboo basket he called Senka ("den of the sages") that he lugged around on a stick over his shoulder.

The method of brewing tea by grinding it into a powder and whisking it with hot water was popular in China in the Song dynasty, during which Zen Buddhist monks first brought the practice to Japan.

By contrast, the Ōbaku school of Zen specialized in brewing loose leaf green tea, a style that had gradually become popular in China during the Ming dynasty.

Sencha partisans of the time opposed the rigid, elaborate formalism of the traditional chanoyu tea ceremony, which uses matcha.

The comparative simplicity of adding tea leaves to water appealed to many Japanese monks and intellectuals (among them Baisao and much of his social circle) who admired the carefree attitude advocated by the ancient Chinese sages.

This technique differs from the typical Chinese method of producing loose leaf tea, which does not involve steaming.

Conscious of his own fame and hoping to avoid the creation of a ritualized sencha tradition as stifling as the formal chanoyu ceremony that he so often denounced, Baisao burned many of his own tea utensils shortly before his death.

His poetry was highly regarded by the artists of 18th century Kyoto, which was more "liberal" than the capital city of Edo (modern Tokyo).