“Sōen played a major role in the tea world as an active tea participant and as a powerful abbot of several Zen temples around the Kansai, though he is primarily associated with Daitokuji. Like the Daitokuji priest Kogaku Sōkō (1465–1548) before him, Soen was particularly active as a bridge between Kyoto, and its large community of tea practitioners, and Sakai, the merchant city south of present-day Osaka that gave birth to the new breed of sixteenth-century tea masters.”