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Urasenke Philadelphia is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization dedicated to supporting and promoting awareness of Japanese tea ceremony (chado or chanoyu in Japanese) in Philadelphia and the surrounding region. Our members are teachers and students of chado as well as people who enjoy participating as guests or just learning more about it. If you’d like more information about membership in the association, click here. We offer lectures and demonstrations to groups around the region and, for those who are interested in exploring more deeply, our teachers offer lessons. Our teachers are all licensed by the Urasenke school of tea ceremony in Kyoto, Japan. In addition to private lessons and demonstrations, our group offers monthly demonstrations at Shofuso, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park, from April through November. We also offer weekly lessons in chado in affiliation with Shofuso. As part of our mission, we also offer educational grants and scholarships for organizations and individuals. You can contact us by e-mail at urasenkepa@gmail.com or by postal mail at:
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Our group was founded by the late Brother Joseph Keenan (1932-1999), a member of the Christian Brothers Catholic teaching order and a professor at La Salle University. Brother Keenan first became interested in chado while attending a series of lectures and demonstrations at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With his background in liturgy, he immediately saw parallels between chado and the Eucharist of the Catholic mass. He began to research the connections between the two rituals, which led him to starting taking lessons in chado. |
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In accordance with federal regulations, our tax form 990-PF is available for public inspection. Click here to download the 2010 form in PDF format: 2010 990PF For 2011: 2011 990PF Or you may contact us by e-mail or postal mail and we will send you a hard copy. |
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Brother Keenan’s passion led him to propose offering classes in chado at La Salle. With the support of the Grand Master (O-Iemoto) of the Urasenke school, he oversaw the renovation of one of the campus’ outbuildings into a tea ceremony house. The three-year project was completed in 1987. Brother Keenan taught chado-related courses, allowing La Salle students to take lessons in tea. For members of the public, he and teachers Taeko Shervin and Mariko La Fleur offered weekend and evening classes. When Brother Keenan died in 1999, the two remaining teachers kept the tea house open with the help of the students and the support of the faculty at La Salle University. In 2007, however, the university ended the tea program, and so the chado group went in search of a new home. Shofuso is a house built in authentic 16th-century Japanese style, located on the grounds of the Horticultural Center in Fairmount Park. Originally built in the 1950s and presented as an official gift from Japan to the United States, it was part of a special exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. When the exhibition closed, the house moved to Philadelphia. The Japanese House, as it is known locally, is a recreation of a shoin-zukuri (desk-centered) house, complete with kitchen, bathroom, living areas, and a traditional tearoom. Shofuso has been home to a wide variety of Japanese cultural activities throughout the years, including tea ceremony demonstrations, and we were pleased to be invited to offer lessons there as well. |
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Urasenke is one of about ten different tea schools active in Japan today. The school traces its lineage back to Sen Rikyu, a merchant, Zen layman, and later advisor to the ruler of Japan who lived in the sixteenth century. Rikyu was at the forefront of a new movement in chado, one that emphasized simplicity and de-emphasized the rigid class structure of the time. Urasenke is one of three schools of chado that descended from Rikyu through his family line – the "Sen" in Urasenke is his family name. After the death of Rikyu’s grandson, Sotan, the family property was split into two halves, the front and the back. The Omotesenke school developed from the part of the family that inherited the front half of the house (omote = front), while the Urasenke school formed from the ones who inherited the back half. A third Sen family property in Kyoto became the home of the Mushanokojisenke school. The Sen schools still exist on the property that Sen no Rikyu acquired in Kyoto more than four hundred years ago. If you visit Kyoto today, the Urasenke and Omotesenke schools are next door to each other, including their business offices, schools with full-time classes in chado, and the personal residences of the Grand Masters of each school. Although the two schools began to diverge in style almost immediately after the property split in the early seventeenth century, even today there are more similarities between the two than differences. It’s possible for an Urasenke practitioner and an Omotesenke practitioner to sit and do temae (a single tea ceremony) side-by-side and perform the same general sequence of movements in the same order, beginning and ending at the same time. Most of the other active tea schools in Japan trace their lineage back to Rikyu as well – most often through disciples who studied under Rikyu during his lifetime and became famous teachers in their own right. Through the generations, however, each school has developed a different way of doing chado and a different emphasis -- one school might favor a more formal style of practice, while others allow for more modern innovation. No one school is better than any other, but Urasenke is the most accessible for non-Japanese. Since World War II, Urasenke has made a particular effort to reach out to foreigners, and in addition to actively spreading the word about chado, Urasenke has published the bulk of the books and articles in English on the subject. |
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Taeko Shervin has been practicing chado for more than twenty-five years. She began sharing her passion for tea in the form of demonstrations at venues ranging from cultural fairs to department stores, including Shofuso, the Japanese House in Fairmount Park. In 1986, she started teaching at La Salle University, where she gave lessons to students and public alike. She continued her own studies, however, and in 2010 she attained the rank of kyoju, an honor that has been granted to few teachers in the United States. Today, she continues to teach private students, and regularly does public tea ceremony demonstrations. Mariko Nishi La Fleur began her study of chado at Urasenke's Kyoto headquarters, receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1977. She spent the next five years teaching chado in Midorikai, the foreign student division of Urasenke. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she taught chado at UCLA, and then on to the Philadelphia area in 1990. Shortly after her arrival, Mariko began teaching at Urasenke La Salle, continuing until the program ended in 1987. In addition, she has taught classes in Japanese and in chado at the University of Pennsylvania, and Japanese at Villanova University. She currently teaches Japanese at Lower Merion High School. Morgan Beard has been studying chado since 1994. Her introduction to tea was an undergraduate course with Brother Keenan at La Salle University. She enjoyed doing tea so much that she continued to study under teachers Mariko La Fleur and Taeko Shervin, expanding her knowledge of tea and eventually becoming a licensed teacher. She teaches weekly lessons at Shofuso along with Drew Hanson, and also does demonstrations and other events throughout the Delaware Valley. In addition to her chado-related activities, she works full-time as an editor. Drew Hanson has been studying chado since 1995 when he began practice with Brother Joseph Keenan at La Salle University's teahouse. Subsequently, he trained under teachers Mariko La Fleur and Taeko Shervin and is a licensed teacher. Now retired, Drew continues to study, teach, and demonstrate chado. He's an avid gardener and ceramicist and operates Boukakuan, Japanese Tea House and Garden, at his home in New Jersey. Drew holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the Pennsylvania State University. |
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