Sensei, Okeiko Domo Arigato Gozaimasu!
Reflections on Studying Chanoyu in Los Angeles with Sosei Matsumoto, Sensei
By Lauren W. Deutsch, Sochi. 4/21/2019
Matsumoto Sosei, Sensei passed away February 21, 2019, on her 103rd birthday. While her given name was Shizuye and her nickname was Susie, her tombstone prominently identified her by her professional name: "Sosei S. Matsumoto". She died a chajin. It brought me to tears.
In the beginning, I felt as if I were Alice falling into the rabbit hole. What started out as a 10-week class through UCLA Extension became a 34-year journey into chado, the Japanese Way of Tea. I didn’t follow a rabbit scurrying about with a pocket-watch, rather the soft-spoken kimono and tabi-clad woman into the large tatami matted room set into her mid-city Los Angeles home. Week after week, sitting seizasometimes as guest, other times as host, I was given the opportunity to practice the choreography of the Urasenke school from an extraordinary teacher. Sometimes, I would just watch in awe from the sidelines of her hachijo(8 mat) room-within-a-room as one student after another let her direct them in the movements that resulted in whipping a bowl of matcha from her teaching position.
Natural?
Being a student of Sosei Matsumoto Sensei was an extraordinary experience for so many reasons, the least of them being the fact that despite her frequent admonition that things should be done “natural”, none of it was “natural” to me. I am an extremely left-handed, Jewish, cross-country skiing, feminist middle-age woman. Aside from developing some (literal) “dexterity” handling the utensils, walking on tatami, putting on kimono, etc., I learned how to clean a traditional tatami mat room with papered lattice shojipanels, to arrange the wooden shelves of the mizuya, preparation room, sweep a garden, wash charcoal, etc. I was truly honored when she applied to Urasenke headquarters to request that I be granted chamei,professional license as a teacher. It took about a decade, but was in no hurry.
I was invited also to become part of a unique community, sangha, of practitioners of the Way of Tea, of which she was recognized and highly respected as an undisputed teacher-as-leader. While there were many nuances that seemed “natural” extension of other students’ traditional Japanese cultural upbringing, Sensei would respectfully explain when I had made an error, such as when to ask her permission to attend a program presented by another tea school. This and other similar subtle teachings were as important as knowing the poetic name of the matcha, powdered green tea.
My Dear Student. My Dear Teacher.
Over the years, I have been privileged to have met many individuals – mostly middle-age Japanese women -- who became teachers; she had hundreds of “grand-students”. Some teenagers studied with her because a parent wanted them to be familiar with their Japanese heritage. Other would-be students left relatively soon, when they felt they had “learned ‘it’”; an even rarer fewer, especially those not of Japanese heritage, have continued like me for decades. She was sought out by folks who had practiced for a lifetime and accepted rank beginners. Like a favorite calligraphy scroll she hung in the alcove for class notes, each of us came to chado along a different path. Sensei’s eyes would light up at demonstrations when a child would be handed a bowl, and she would instruct him or her how to lift it up and turn it before drinking. I learned that a great teacher (of anything) teaches the student through the course material. She would often refer to me as “My dear student!” I would reply, “My dear teacher!”
Performance Art
For my first public demonstration, a Nisei Week program in 1986, Sensei had me wear one of her kimonos, a lovely light blue silk summer one withkumadori, Kabuki makeup, designs. With the help of other students with more experience, I was tied into the outfit for the first time in my life. My recently slimmed body, now packed with towels around the waist to affect a kokeshi doll fit, was not sure what had happened to its mobility, while my mind scrambled to recall the order of procedure. I then remembered that the kimono itself likely had more experience than I did, so I took advantage of the obisash to help support my possibly slumping posture, and the long sleeves gave me a practical reason to hold my arms erect as if to hug a tree. Now, with years of practice within my body, I try not to over-think the temae, procedure, rather to rely on my sensei’s indelible trust that I have met her standards to let the tea happen while the mind plays shotgun.
Special Occasions
I had the honor to accompany Matsumoto Sensei to Washington DC when she received her National Heritage Fellowship award from the NEA. We presented tea to the other NHF awardees at the Japanese ambassador’s residence. In addition to celebrating each decade of her teaching Urasenke chanoyu, she held a special thank -you event at the elegant chandelier-studded Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the LA County Music Center during which time another student and I demonstrated in tandem a mirror image temaewith me doing the gyakugate,left viewed, version. It was a perfect balance to other demonstrations such as the annual Peace Begins in a Garden observance of the nuclear bomb drop on Hiroshima on August 6 at the sparkly Garden of Oz in Hollywood and the Osaka-Glendale Sister City event at a private house where Sensei offered me a can of sweet tea from a six-pack during our rehearsal.
With her approval, I attended the Midorikai program at Konnichian, Kyoto (Urasenke headquarters) as a short-term guest student a few times and have met so many wonder practitioners from around the world. Merely mentioning that I was her student would open doors of tea shops in Kyoto, with the proprietors’ proffering gifts for your Sensei.
Sensei’s hatsugama, new year’s tea celebration, was held for over 60 years at her home. Upwards of 100 invited guests – accommodated in four to five sittings -- would be treated to a chakai, tea gathering with thick and thin teas and a kaisekimeal. It took about 20 – 30 of her students helped clean the first floor of her house, move furniture, prepare the intricate meal, refresh the two roji, tea garden, set up three chashitsu, tea rooms, create the parlor game in which each person will get a small gift, plus serve tea and sweets. It took an entire week to prepare with each person learning and doing their tasks with focus and appreciation. At the end of the long day, everything was put back exactly into its original place. She also presented tea with her students at the annual Obon Carnival at Nishihongwanji Temple in Little Tokyo, monthly for seniors at the Keiro Home in Boyle Heights and in alternate years at Nisei Week.
Lessons
My lessons relied on my keen sense of learning by oral method; there were no books in English about the seemingly endless ways one can put down or pick up a small object on a tatami in each of the four seasons and seemingly manifold micro-seasons. Most of the time her comments were in Japanese, a language I still don’t speak very well. After many post-work weekday classes ending after 10pm, I would retire to a nearby late-night sushi bar and scribble notes about what I had learned on the paper sleeve of the chopsticks, only to realize that I didn’t remember one nuance. It would not be until a month later that I would have the opportunity to try to do it again. Still, there were maxims I will never forget:
"No short cuts!"Every gesture needs to be accomplished in full for the entire temae, procedure to be considered complete. Like walking in the garden toward the chashitsu, tea hut. The destination is in sight, but one really needs to step on each stone to get there. This is especially important at the beginning of any pursuit. She emphasized this at the beginning of each student’s practice as host by admonishing, “Center yourself!” during which time she also took an initial breath.
“1 – 10; 1 - 10” ... Sensei would say there is no “graduation”. “If you graduate, you stop learning, generally.” She truly never stopped.
“Appreciate First!” Among sensei’s corrections / directions the term kansha,in the practice of the guest raising up a bowl of freshly made matcha, is the most important. While the teishu, host, places the chawan, teabowl containing the tea on the tatami mat rather than to hand it to the guest, it is not drunk until it is raised up ... and received as if from a higher source.
"Show your mind!" Every gesture on the outside reflects our inner nature. During one class, I was about to replace the tea scoop on the tea container. Just before the bamboo touched the lacquer lid, she said that. No other explanation. Never repeated it. It shook me to the core.
“Zen Philosophy” The Way of tea is steeped in philosophy, but it’s not religious by any means. It’s not even a “ceremony”, but a way in which everyday activities – especially those offering genuine generous hospitality -- can be conducted in full awareness. While sensei’s husband, Eddie, was an engineer who contributed expertise to the 1969 moon landing, she felt that computers took people, especially younger generations, away from this moment, here and now. Everything is too fast. This was the portal into one of chado’s maxims: Ichi go. Ichi e.The irreproducible preciousness of this very moment.
Having experienced the racism that surrounded World War II on all sides of the conflict, Sensei welcomed a wide diversity of people to experience chanoyu.It was a demonstration of her understanding of another tea maxim: wa kei sei jaku, harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. “My dream is always to make people feel relaxed and happy,” Sensei said.
Practice of the ‘Broken Heart’
I will miss my Dear Teacher of course! But I believe that my practice, as nurtured since 1985 by Matsumoto Sensei, is truly a Way of life that is firmly imbedded in my soul. Like Zen poets, the Jewish sage Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810) suggested that we must practice, even with a “broken heart”.
