was an

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

priest of the

Jōdo-shū , also known as Jōdo Buddhism, is a branch of Pure Land Buddhism derived from the teachings of the Japanese ex-Tendai monk Hōnen. It was established in 1175 and is the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan, along with Jōdo Shin ...

sect of Buddhism; devotee of the

tea ceremony An East Asian tea ceremony, or ''Chádào'' (), or ''Dado'' ( ko, 다도 (茶道)), is a ceremonially ritualized form of making tea (茶 ''cha'') practiced in East Asia by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. The tea ceremony (), literally transl ...

; connoisseur of camellias; and dilettante poet. The name Anrakuan takes from the name of the

tea house A teahouse (mainly Asia) or tearoom (also tea room) is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other light refreshments. A tea room may be a room set aside in a hotel especially for serving afternoon tea, or may be an establishment wh ...

that he built and lived at after he retired at the age of seventy. He is famous as the author of the ''Seisuishō'' (醒睡笑, Laughs to Wake You Up), which is a collection of humorous anecdotes. The ''Seisuishō'' is considered a major progenitor of the popular Edo-period literary genre called ''hanashibon'' (咄本), books of humorous stories. For this reason, Anrakuan Sakuden is called the founder of , the popular form of comic monologue performed by special storytellers.　Anrakuan is also known as the founder of the Anrakuan school of Japanese tea ceremony. The ''Seisuishō'', which Anrakuan Sakuden compiled in 1623 through the urging of Itakura Shigemune (1588–1656), the magistrate of Kyoto, consists of eight chapters, divided into volumes.''Kōjien'' Japanese dictionary, entry for ''Seisuishō.

References

Japanese writers 1554 births 1642 deaths Jōdo-shū Buddhist priests Edo period Buddhist clergy {{japan-writer-stub