Portrait of Sen no Rikyū with his Death Poem

Like many depictions showing Rikyū seated on a tatami mat, dressed in the robes of a Buddhist layman, wearing a cloth hat, and holding a closed fan, this anonymously executed example is based on a portrait attributed to the noted painter Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539–1610). That revered painting––treated almost as if it were a religious icon––is the treasured possession of the Omotesenke Fushin’an school of tea in Kyoto, established by a branch of Rikyū’s descendants. It bears an inscription dated 1595 by Sen’oku Sōen (1529–1611), a Zen master at Daitokuji and one of Rikyū’s spiritual advisers, establishing the precedent of Rikyū’s portraits being inscribed by prominent Zen or tea masters.

The inscription can be deciphered as follows, reading the columns of characters from left to right, reverse of normal order:

[Chinese verse]
人生七十　　　
力圍希咄
吾這宝剣
祖佛共殺

[Waka poem]
提ル　我カ得具そくの　一太刀
今此時そ　天に抛

Jinsei shichijū
Riki-i-ki totsu
waga kono hōken
sobutsu tomo ni korosu

Hissaguru
waga egusoku no
hitotsu tachi
ima konotoki zo
ten ni nage-utsu

In a life of seventy years,
after exerting myself to the limit,
now, with my own sacred sword
I kill both patriarchs and the Buddha.

Carrying in my hands
the only weapon I own—
this one long sword—
and at this moment, alas,
I abandon it to the heavens.

—Trans. John T. Carpenter