(Rengetsu ware teapot for steeped tea (kyūsu) inscribed wi...)
Rengetsu ware teapot for steeped tea (kyūsu) inscribed with a waka poem by Ōtagaki Rengetsu, stoneware with rice-straw-ash glaze. Late Edo period-early Meiji era, mid-19th century
Rengetsuni Odagaki was a Buddhist nun who is widely regarded to have been one of the greatest Japanese poets of the 19th century. She was also a skilled potter and painter and expert calligrapher.
Background
Rengetsuni Odagaki was born on February 10, 1791 in Kyoto, Japan. She was the daughter of a courtesan and a nobleman. Born into a samurai family with the surname Tōdō, she was adopted at a young age by the Odagaki family. The Otagaki family were well known as teachers of ninja.
Education
She was a lady in waiting at Kameoka Castle from age 7 to 16, when she was married.
Career
However, her husband died in 1823. She became a Buddhist nun at the age of thirty after burying both husbands, all of her children, her stepmother and stepbrother. Her adoptive father joined her.
Ōtagaki joined the temple Chion-in and became a nun, taking Rengetsu ("Lotus Moon") as her Buddhist name. She remained at Chion-in for nearly ten years, and lived in a number of other temples for the following three decades, until 1865, when she settled at the Jinkō-in where she lived out the rest of her life.
Being a woman, she was only allowed to live in a Buddhist monastery for a couple of years. After that she lived in tiny huts and moved around quite a lot.