Masaoki Sen, who volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot during World War II but survived the war and became the master 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, which did not provide a cause.

Mr. Sen was best known for serving as the 15th-generation grand master of the Urasenke, one of the three main schools of Japan’s tea ceremony. After inheriting the role from his father in 1964, he used it as a platform to promote peace, often while speaking of his own experiences during the war.

Traveling the world to engage in a sort of tea-ceremony diplomacy, Mr. Sen used the 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 grand master 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 move that allowed his eldest son, Masayuki, to become the next Soshitsu.

In a statement released by the Urasenke, the son said Mr. Sen had weakened physically after injuring his hip in a fall three months ago. When his breathing stopped suddenly, efforts were not made to prolong his life, in accordance with Mr. Sen’s wishes.

Born in Kyoto on April 19, 1923, Mr. Sen was the eldest son and thus heir apparent of the Urasenke grand master at the time.

This appears to have saved him during the war. After leaving Doshisha University in 1943 he was drafted to the Imperial Navy, where he trained to be a pilot. When his unit was asked to form a “special attack” squadron to carry out suicide missions, Mr. Sen was one of the volunteers.

“I thought I was ready to die,” Mr. Sen said in a 2021 interview with a Japanese newspaper. “But I was just a greenhorn of 20 or 21 years of age. I didn’t know what death meant.”

While many young men in his unit flew off to ram their aircraft into Allied ships, Mr. Sen was never sent. Historians say the Japanese military often spared the oldest sons, especially from historically significant households.

After the war, Mr. Sen asked a former commander why he was never sent. The older man answered: “Just think of it as fate.”

Unlike many war veterans, Mr. Sen spoke openly of his experiences and sorrow for comrades who never returned. He also made no effort to disguise his anger toward his nation’s leaders who sent them on one-way missions.

“We were told to die because others would fill our ranks,” he said in another interview. “But who wants to die?”

Given a second chance at life, Mr. Sen used his hereditary role to turn the ancient art of making and serving tea into a means of promoting peace. During nearly four decades as the grand master, he made this appeal in lectures and demonstrations in Japan and around the world.

He continued his mission after retirement. In 2011, he conducted a tea ceremony in Pearl Harbor to honor the crew of the U.S.S. Arizona, a U.S. battleship sunk during the Japanese surprise attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

“Facing what happened in the past and relaying its lessons to future generations is the responsibility of those of us who survived,” Mr. Sen said at the time.

A funeral will be held at a later date. The Urasenke statement did not give details of Mr. Sen’s survivors.

Hisako Ueno contributed reporting from Tokyo.