Greeting Guests to the First Serving of Tea (Hatsuza mukai no zu) 初座迎ひの図

Greeting Guests to the First Serving of Tea (Hatsuza mukai no zu) is a 1896 print from Mizuno Toshikata's Chanoyu hibigusa series held by the Victoria and Albert Museum (museum object O422225). The image depicts the host receiving guests at the first of the formal tea ceremony's sequenced segments, the hatsuza or 'opening session,' in which the participants are welcomed into the tea room before the koicha (thick tea) is prepared. Within Toshikata's Daily Practice of the Tea Ceremony series, prints of this type function as instructional illustrations as much as aesthetic objects: each plate stages a specific moment of the protocol so that a reader could follow the ritual through the cycle. As a Yoshitoshi student trained to lay out figures within interior space, Toshikata was well prepared to handle the choreographic demands of the chanoyu sequence, and the series is one of the high points of his ritual-genre output. The Victoria and Albert Museum's holding of multiple plates from Chanoyu hibigusa allows comparative study of his treatment of consecutive moments in the ceremony. Among Meiji prints, instructional cycles of this kind sit between art and manual; they preserve the protocol of a centuries-old practice at a moment when it was being reframed for the modern Japanese household, particularly as a feminine accomplishment. The V&A's 1896 dating locates this plate firmly within the series' documented publication run.