Chadō or The Way of Tea in Japanese Political & Diplomatic History
Declan Downey
- 📅Tuesday, February 6, 2024
- 🕥10:30 – 12:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
The Onin Wars – a period of civil warfare in late medieval and early modern Japan – were eventually resolved, not so much by military action, as by a reunification movement inspired by the philosophy of Chadō / The Way of Tea. This presentation will explore this fascinating dimension in the process of the reunification of Japan from c.1540 to 1600, and the emergence of the Urasenke School of Tea, and the role of its Grand Tea Masters, hereditary in the Sen family of Kyotō, in the subsequent political and diplomatic culture of Japan.
Declan was awarded the Ph.D. degree in Legal & Diplomatic History from the University of Cambridge in 1993. Since 1995, he has been lecturing in European and Japanese Diplomatic History at University College Dublin, where he directs the BCL degree programme in Law with History. In 1995, he initiated the first ever Japanese History course at degree level in Ireland at UCD. He also supervised the first ever doctoral dissertation in Japanese Studies in Ireland. A former trustee of Chester Beatty Library (2012-’17), he is closely involved with Japanese cultural and academic events in Ireland. Also, he is a founding member of the Centre for Japanese Studies at UCD. In 2009, he was the first Irish citizen to be elected to membership of the Spanish Royal Academy of History (fd.1733). Since 2018, he is an Assessor for the Publications Board of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. His extensive publications and leading role in major international research projects have been recognised with international distinctions and awards, including Austrian, Spanish and Japanese state honours, and the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation in 2020. In Autumn 2022, Dr. Downey was the first Irish academic to be awarded the prestigious Gaimushō Visiting Scholarship, which he took up at the University of Tokyo & the University of Kyoto, during his semestral research leave from UCD last Spring. Currently, he is working on two books, a biography of the post-war Japanese statesman, Yoshida Shigeru, and a study of the Irish émigré nobility in Spain, Flanders and Austria.
