The *Kundaikan Sochoki* was compiled by the doboshu, the cultural advisers of the Ashikaga shogunal house — Noami, Geiami, and Soami — and concerns the appraisal of imported Chinese objects and their display in a formal room. It is the basic source for the norms of shoin tea, recording in detail how Chinese objects were to be arranged in a shoin-style room.
Composition
It is thought to date from the later fifteenth into the earlier sixteenth century, compiled across several generations from Noami through to Soami. The title refers to the shogun's seat and to a record of the display on either side of it, and it systematically sets out the ranking of Chinese painters and the selection and placement of bowls, calligraphy, and flower vases.
Why it matters
It does not govern modern practice directly, but it is the document that lets us see what wabi tea was rejecting. Reading it makes the shoin/wabi opposition concrete rather than rhetorical — the display norms it prescribes are exactly what Rikyu's two-mat room dispenses with.
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