Takeno Joo was a merchant of Sakai City. He was commonly known as Shingoro, his name was Chuzai and his Buddhist name was Daikokuan. In Sakai the name of his shop was Kawaya (leather merchant) and it probably sold leather armour. The Takeno family was the most prosperous in Sakai, but when he was still young Joo went to Kyoto and devoted himself to renga poetry. He studied the classics under Sanjonishi Sanetaka who was the leading poetry master of the day and was given 'Eiga Taigai' essays about waka poetry by Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241). This grounding in renga is thought to have had a great influence on his chanoyu. Returning to Sakai Joo entered Nanshu-ji temple, training under the Zen priest Dairin Soto (1480-1568), so that at the time that his eyes were opened to the beauties of chanoyu he was able to deepen his chazen ichimi (tea and Zen are one) style of wabi-cha.

Joo owned sixty meibutsu (famous utensils), but he also used a plain wood well bucket as a mizusashi (fresh water jar), carved chashaku (tea scoops) from bamboo and made futa-oki (lid rests) from green bamboo and succeeded in bringing the beauty of plain wood into chanoyu. This creative way of looking at tea was passed on to Joo's disciple Rikyu and so chanoyu achieved success.