Moving into the Muromachi period, chanoyu went beyond social ranking and became extremely popular. People got together and enjoyed cha-yoriai get-togethers and tocha (tea tasting contests) and so on. In the first half of the 15th century, Shotetsu (1381-1459), a tea practitioner of that time, divided those who gathered to do chanoyu into three types in the 'Shotetsu monogatari' a poetry review. The three types are 'chasuki', 'chanomi' and 'chakurai'.
'Chasuki' is defined as someone who enjoys chanoyu, owning all kinds of utensils and having an aesthetic appreciation of them. 'Chanomi' refers to someone who is highly skilled at identifying different types of tea at a tocha. Chakurai is someone who is happy to attend a tea gathering if he hears that one is being held.
Shotetsu's pointing out of the aesthetic appreciation of chanoyu of the people practicing tea at the time was an important part of the development of chanoyu. Shotetsu, when likening 'chasuki' to poets, said they 'are able to design beautiful inkstones, bundai (a small, low table on which papers and poems and so on were put), tanzaku (long paper strips with calligraphy written on them) and kaishi (pocket paper on which sweets are placed), can always produce their own poems to go with other people's and can lead a poetry meeting'. Shotetsu shows that from within chanoyu which had transcended class boundaries to become a popular activity, people who owned all the utensils and had aesthetic awareness began to appear.
At that time waka and renga were not arts to be enjoyed alone, but were group activities for gatherings of people and at these gatherings chanoyu, incense and ikebana were all enjoyed. For chanoyu to become a refined art it was necessary for it to have a connection with waka and for there to be gatherings at which several arts were practiced together. Shotetsu's use of the word 'chasuki' shows that chanoyu, evolving from the gatherings at which waka, renga, incense appreciation and flower arranging (tatebana) had been practiced, had become a refined and independent art form.