Tea utensils as financial and political tools
Oda Nobunaga: Widimedia Public Domain
No, Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 was not crazy to forgo the opportunity to grab the whole state in return for the little tea caddy.
Oda Nobunaga was the first samurai warlord who unified Japan. He took advantage of the valuable tea ceremony utensils and fervently collected them. He either bought them for excessive prices or took them by force from other samurai. Nobunaga’s tea utensil collection became enormous.
At the same time, Nobunaga forbade his subordinate samurai to perform tea gatherings without his permission. There were only six or so samurai who were granted this right. Nobunaga gave away his tea utensils as remuneration to his subordinates.
One time a samurai was granted a huge swath of land for his contribution, but he lamented that he was not granted a famous tea container instead.
For Nobunaga, the tea ceremony and tea utensils were useful tools, financially and politically, to achieve his ambition to eventually dominate all of Japan.