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Asia Pacific|Masaoki Sen, Ex-Kamikaze Pilot and ‘Tea Ceremony Diplomat,’ Dies at 102
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/world/asia/japan-masaoki-sen-kamikaze-tea.html
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Spared from flying a suicide mission in World War II, he became a grandmaster of Japan’s venerable tea ceremony and used his stature to speak out against all wars.
Aug. 15, 2025Updated 4:56 p.m. ET
Masaoki Sen, who volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot during World War II but who survived the war and became a grandmaster of an ancient tea ceremony school and a vocal proponent of peace, died on Thursday in Kyoto, Japan. He was 102.
His death was announced by the Urasenke school, where he was the 15th-generation grandmaster. It is one of Japan’s three main schools that teach the tea ceremony.
After inheriting that title from his father in 1964, Mr. Sen used it as a vehicle to promote peace, often while speaking publicly of his own experiences during the war.
Traveling the world to engage in a kind of tea-ceremony diplomacy, Mr. Sen used that ancient art, whose roots lie in Zen Buddhism, to call for an end to all wars. He was known for the phrase “peacefulness through a bowl of tea.”
Following Japanese traditions, he went by several names during his lifetime. As grandmaster of the Urasenke, he was called Soshitsu Sen XV, a title that evoked his school’s lineage back to Rikyu Sen, a philosopher of the tea ceremony who taught it to medieval warlords.
After retiring in 2002, Mr. Sen took the name Genshitsu Sen, a gesture that allowed his eldest son, Masayuki, to become the next Soshitsu.
