Chanoyu hibigusa (Daily practice of the tea ceremony) 茶の湯日々草

Chanoyu hibigusa (Daily Practice of the Tea Ceremony) is a 1896 print or series by Mizuno Toshikata held by the Victoria and Albert Museum (museum object O422223). The series, often translated as 'Daily Grasses of the Tea Ceremony,' was Toshikata's most sustained engagement with chanoyu and one of his most ambitious projects of the mid-1890s. It paired carefully composed instructional images with explanatory text, and as a whole it functioned as both a manual and a tribute to a ritual then being repositioned for a modern Meiji public. Toshikata, a Yoshitoshi student whose teacher had also produced a number of women-and-ritual subjects, was unusually well-prepared for this kind of book-like cycle: the discipline of staging multiple figures within a coherent interior, depicting utensils with precision, and integrating decorative motifs with the printed text drew on every skill in his repertory. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds several plates from the series, of which this is one, and their inclusion in the V&A's holdings reflects how seriously these designs were taken outside Japan even at the time of publication. Among the wide range of Meiji prints, the Chanoyu hibigusa designs are notable for combining the careful technical standards of high-end ukiyo-e with a documentary function, demonstrating how Toshikata's practice extended well beyond the senso-e for which he is sometimes pigeonholed. The V&A's 1896 dating sits at the heart of the series' documented publication window.