Tea Huts 'R' Us?

As a 34 year practitioner of the Japanese tea "ceremony" chanoyu, literally tea’s hot water, I naturally gravitate to opportunities to see how contemporary artists try to replicate the architectural features that foster a unique ambiance in which a host and guest sit together to share a bowl of matcha. 

Thus, I was thus intrigued by the recent installation of Mineo Mizuno’s HARMONY on the lawn outside on SWP next to Resnick Pavilion. It reminded me of the nursery rhyme finger game "here is the church, here is the steeple ..." It seems to project an ambience without literally being a useful space!

In fact, typically one doesn't see any of the occupants of a tea hut. I intimacy is the cornerstone of hospitality of a tea gathering. 

Like most “classic” tearooms, it’s about 9’ x 9’, accommodating a maximum of 5 guests and one host. His interpretation includes a nijiriguchi, wriggling in entrance, that requires the guest to stoop and slide inside on knees, and a tokohoma, raised alcove for a hanging scroll and/or flower arrangement. It has wabi and sabi sentimentality of simplicity and rusticity. Inasmuch as the entire structure is constructed in branches of local wood, having a special tokobashira, the usually unfinished wood pillar at one side of the alcove, is redundant. This important structure punctuates the otherwise sparse interior with a sense of nature. Can you imagine sitting on the floor, much like a spot in the virgin woods?

He brings in the harmony, purity, respect and tranquility that is at the core of the mindfulness practice by the use of kanji characters of wa written on the outside of the tea bowl nested inside the wood stump to the left of the hut. Another bowl, to the right, has the characters for mizu, water, written on its surface. This could stand for the tsukubai, fresh water basin, that is always present in a roji, the garden in which a tea hut is situated. The guest will walk through the small garden en route to the tea hut as a liminal journey, a path of purification to leave all mundane cares and concerns outside.

Just for fun, I'm showing a comparison of Mizuno's nijiriguchi (center) with guests entering Shogetsuan at Hakone Gardens in Saratoga CA, (left), and Tom Sachs' (pictured, right) seen as host through his guest entrance at his installation at the Isamu Noguchi Museum (2016). 

A chaji, informal tea gathering, can be held just about anywhere one can whisk matcha in hot water and enjoy the company of friends.

Below (left) is the Water Pavilion created for the 1st Los Angeles (City) Public Art Triennial (2016 in Balboa Park) by Rirkrit Tiravanija, for which I produced a weekend of tea demonstrations celebrating the LA River. Right is a photo of my making tea for Eric Lloyd Wright and Mary Wright atop their yet-unfinished home in Malibu overlooking the ocean. (I used the rebars to contain the space.) 

For more information on contemporary interpretations of the chashitsu, I recommend Japanese Designers and Tea Houses. 

Lauren "Sochi" Deutsch has been a LACMA school docent since 2014. She is a licensed instructor of the Urasenke Tradition of Chanoyu and has done many tea demonstrations at schools, colleges and public events. She studied under the late Matsumoto Sosei, sensei beginning in 1985, and also was a guest in Kyoto at the Midorikai program. Lauren is a long-time contributing editor and board member of Kyoto Journal. Professionally, she currently is a free lance grant writer mostly in the arts and environmental issues. In addition to volunteering at LACMA, she is on the Community Advisory Board of Public Media Group of Southern California/KCET and deckhand-in-training for Los Angeles Maritime Institute. More info @ www.pacificrimarts.org. (All photos from the author.)
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Sensei, Okeiko Domo Arigato Gozaimasu!

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”. 

"Buddhist Ceremonial Tea" Exhibition @ Chado Research Center, Kyoto

Next time you're in a tea gathering, imagine that osaki-ni is coming from one of those rambunctious arhats! But which one? There are many from which to chose!

Perhaps your otemae chodai itashimasu is directed toward a venerable immortal!

The exhibition "Buddhist Ceremonial Tea" which ends a dual installation run December 3 at Urasenke's Chado Research Center, will help you truly conjure up the power of camelia sinensis through time and space. On view are many mandalas, diagrams for ritual altars, dogu from by-gone eras that venerated ocha in its rightful place -- the traditional Chinese pharmacopoeia -- for its medicinal as well as, perhaps, magical properties. No wonder that many of these objects are National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties.

Thanks to Gretchen Mittwer for translating the exhibition introduction (Japanese only) that was placed on the gallery foyer presented here for your (and my!) edification. We need more of these hand-outs and Romanized transliterations if not also translations of objects on display in Kyoto museums.

In addition to items from the Konnichian Library and Chado Research Center, lenders to the exhibition include Saikyo-ji, Honkoku-ji, Shomyo-ji (Kanagawa Prefectural Kanazawa-Bunko Museum), Rozan-ji, Sanzen-in, Daigo-ji, Kakakura-ji of Hohaku-in, Ryosoku-in, Daitoku-ji, Tofuku-ji, Ryosoku-in, Sennyu-ji, Hasadera Noman-in, and Hogon-ji temples; Kitano Tenmangu shrine, National Museums of Tokyo, Nara and Kyoto;  Kyoto and Ritsumeikan (Fujii Eikan Bunko Collection) universities; as well as Sakyo Ward Kuta Region Self-Gov. Promotion Assn., Kyoto Institute Library and Archives; and Nezu and Seikado Bunko Art museums.

CHA no YU no CHA no YU no CHA no YU no CHA no YU ...yes!

The Source of the Water. The Source of the Practice.

"Sensei," the novice monk asked his teacher in the heat of summer, "Which really came first? The tea or the water?"

 "OY! It's getting cold," was the wise reply.

What is commonly referred to as the “Japanese Tea Ceremony”, is literally, “tea’s hot water”. Sen no Rikyu (1522-1592), the founder of our Way of Tea, admonished practitioners to pay strict attention to the source of water for tea, to draw it from a pure source at an auspicious time of day.

For the "Water Pavilion" Project of CURRENT:LA the first Los Angeles Public Art Biennial, we practitioners of chado (the Way of Tea), have been invited by Rirkrit Tiravanija to perform demonstrations in the structure (below) being built over the LA River in Sepulveda Basin Park near Lake Balboa. We will source precious water from the Los Angeles River that has been purified on site through modern methods and is potable, another of the important aspects of his presentation.

As our water is from the many streams feeding the L.A. River, the sources of the practice are the many streams of Zen Buddhism. As if to fortell Los Angeles’ unique cultural diversity, the great teacher Eihei Dogen Zenji (1200 – 1253) wrote in the Sansui-Kyo (Mountains and Rivers Sutra), “Ikken Shisui” (One View, Four [Different kinds of] Water). This can be interpreted as not only is there is water in the world, but there is a world in water. It is not just in water.

Presentation on July 16 (2-3pm) and July 17 (3 - 4pm), 6300 Balboa Ave., Van Nuys

In addition to its practical use in the host’s making a bowl of green tea for a guest, the notion of “water” will be reflected in the thematic aspects of today’s presentation of two distinct procedures appropriate to the summer season and auspicious occasion.

Meisuidate 名水点 Koichademae: The formal preparation of matcha (powdered green tea) utilizing water drawn from a famous source. Upon entering the space, the guest notices the tsurube, an unfinished well bucket made of hinoki cypress with special paper decorations to denote the purity of the water. This prompts a request to taste the water from the well bucket before the hot water is added from the kettle to make a bowl of tea.

Araijakin 洗茶巾 Usuchademae: As it is summertime, we will do an informal preparation utilizing a rather shallow tea bowl that is brought into the preparation area filled with water. A broad leaf (habuta), with dew drops, stands in for the lid on the fresh water container, all done to evoke a sense of coolness.

Additionally, poetic names of utensils will reflect the greater understanding and realization of the purpose of the gathering ... just that the host makes a bowl of tea for the guest. The guest receives the bowl of tea from the host.

Thus, the fundamental embodiment of tea preparation, Wa. Kei. Sei. Jaku. (Harmony. Respect. Purity. Tranquility.), we hope will be realized.

30th Year Reflection: Dr. Genshitsu Sen, Daisosho About Raku

A reflection on this my 30th year as a practitioner / student of Chado Urasenke.


The recent exhibition of Raku chadogu at the Los Angeles Museum of Art attracted many dignitaries, particularly Dr. Genshitsu Sen XV, retired o-Iemoto of Chado Urasenke. At his generous presentation of kencha, koicha and a lecture, he reminisced about how Raku was important in his initiation in Chado and as the wakasosho of his lineage.

At age 6 years, 6 months and 6 days it is customary for him to begin his formal training under the tutelage of his father, Tantansai, Sen XIV. At that time he was given a chawan made for him by Seinyu, Raku XIII created for that initiatory experience toward becoming the grand master of Urasenke. Subsequently, he was given chawan of Hagi and Karatsu kilns, the other great historical sources of Japanese ceramics. He learned the names of all the Raku grand masters as a young man. 

He stated that the word "Raku" implies fun, a modern / progressive design. He learned how to make chawan in the workshop of Kakunyu, Raku XIV and was taught that a chawan is a living thing, like a prayer, when one puts palms together. "There is "amazing electricity" that comes from touching a Raku bowl.

In addition to his personal impressions about the gathering, he delivered a speech emphasizing "Tradition and Transmission" of Wisdom, being the heart of his remarks. He stated that kencha is rather more the "ceremony". Our purpose is for host and guest(s) to be "one in spirit", united through the chawan itself.

This being my 30th year as a student of Chado Urasenke, and having heard his maxim, "Peace through a bowl of tea" many times, I must congratulate Dr. Sen for having the integrity to sustain his vision. Not only was he generous in making this practice accessible to so many people around the world, it is clear that he has indeed committed his life to this "simple" promise. It has proven to me to be a very reasonable path in greatly human terms.

My own sensei, Sosei Matsumoto, is a long time friend of the Sen Family and a truly devoted practitioner. I also owe here great thanks for taking me on as a student in 1985, for encouraging my attending Midorikai in Kyoto as a guest student (1987, 1989 and 1991) and for her dear friendship and support in the tea community of Los Angeles and beyond. 

The “Dewy Path” to the Tea House

Originally Published in Parabola (Fall 2009)

Since the Dewy Path Is a way that lies outside, This most impure world Shall we not, on entering it, Cleanse our hearts from earthly mire?[1] --- Sen no Rikyu

 “Please come for tea.”

My invitation to attend a chaji 茶事[2], a formal Japanese tea gathering, offered a poem by the venerable Bashô (1644 – 1694):

Haru nare ya	It has become spring!
Na-mo-naki-yama no	Even on the nameless mountains
Usu-gasumi!	A thin mist!

By all accounts, spring, indeed, had arrived! Blossoms were appearing on the plum trees; butterflies were celebrating near rape flowers; earthworms were weaving in and out of bright green new shoots of grasses encouraged forth by the blessings of rain. All proceeding in due time, at a natural pace. The process of chanoyu

(茶の湯) preparing hot water for tea, another name for the ritual, was very appropriate for such an occasion.

Practitioners of “the Way of Tea” (sado[3] 茶道) know that the guest (kyaku 客)　arrives in the same way, in due time and with a clear, natural intention: to create a singular union of mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart with the host   (teishu 亭主）and fellow guests. Together we would engage in this once-in-a-lifetime meeting (ichi go ichi e 一期一会).  The Hebrew prayer commonly known as the “Shehechiyanu”, fits the moment perfectly:

Baruch ata Hashem,	Blessed are You,
Eloheinu Melech Haolam	Master of the Universe
Shechehiyanu	Who has kept us alive,
V’ki'imanu	And sustained us,
V’higiyanu lazman hazeh	And enabled us to reach this moment.

The beauty and complexity of the tea event, with its ritualized preparation of matcha (抹茶), the powdered form of the green leaf of camelia sinensis, was codified and inspired in Japan by Zen Buddhists, early in the Muromachi Period. The taste of tea and Zen have been said to be equals in matters of attainment of nothingness, (mu 無) and emptiness (kû 空). Our modern practice has come to us through an unbroken lineage of  over 16 generations of tea masters, of whom Sen no Rikyu (1522 – 1591), is considered to be our greatest ancestor.

Chanoyu captivated the imaginations of egomaniacal warlords and their swashbuckling samurai retainers, providing a moment of peace in the midst of battle, and instilled a reasonable amount of refinement and upward social mobility. To be the ultimate action hero of the time, a warrior needed to know how to prepare tea for one’s “enemy” while seated together in a tiny, rustic, no-swords-allowed hut with walls no thicker than a sheet of paper. In later years geisha training included performing the ritual for clients.

Images abound of the host methodically and seemingly mysteriously wiping precious utensils and scooping water from a sunken kettle barely visible above the tatami mat floor, its steamy voice hissing, “matsukaze” (松風), the sound of “wind in the pines”. The quest of the guest is less known. She[4] is usually depicted silently awaiting the tea sitting motionless, on her heels, hands resting in her lap. But in fact, if she’s in the tearoom, she would have just traversed the path of “The Great Way”[5] and is engaged in a liminal journey of rebirth.

Slowing it Down to Promote Social Harmony, Appreciation

"Day and night, with the monastic rules of the Zen temples as my guide ...

I unfolded the world of the Pure Land in the locus of the roji..."

-- Sen no Rikyu "Metsugo" section of Namporoku[6]

Today, while the world is smaller and the battlefields seeming more distant, individuals of all backgrounds throughout the world find in chanoyu practice opportunities for purification and self-refinement. While contemporary technology moves us at the speed of light and multi-tasking is considered a valuable capacity, there are no “short cuts” in chanoyu. We continue to aspire to attain Rikyu’s objectives: to create a condition of tranquility (jaku 寂), then harmony (wa 和), respect (kei 敬) and purity (sei 清). 

in an ideal setting of repose, free from anxiety, where there is “no guest, no host”,[7] our roles are nonetheless specifically defined along the lines of studied procedures learned over many years of practice that foster the communitas we seek.

On the outside, all the bowing might be misconstrued as a duel of humbleness, but in sado, too low is too rude and professing great skills and utensils is nothing short of vulgarity. The essence of this journey is implied in the notion of wabi, わび, a Japanese poetic “ideal that finds surpassing beauty and deep significance in what is humble or commonplace and appears natural or artless.”[8] Combined with the notion of sabi, さび, withered with age, the expanded concept conveys the sentiment of a life well-lived in harmony with the laws of nature.

Along the “Dewy Path”

I was one of a handful of invited guests who had arrived at the location. While the journey is extremely personal, we needed to become a cohesive group. We unanimously invited the respected chanoyu instructor among us to serve as the first guest (shokyaku 正客); she would conduct the prescribed discourse with our host on our behalf.

Chanoyu begins in the roji (露地）[9] the “dewy path” of the garden that leads to the rustic tea hut (chashitsu 茶室).

The feeling is traveling along a metaphorical riverside “mountain” path through a symbolic forest. According to the monk Jakuan Sotaku of the Eastern Capital, “…

“ … ro 露 means “to be disclosed,” “to appear,” and ji, 地　ground, refers to the heart and mind. Thus, the term actually means “to discloser self-nature.” Eradicating all blind passions, one manifests one’s original nature.”[10]

The roji is designed, constructed and maintained as if it were indeed the path to Buddha’s Pure Land. Like the Israelites fleeing bondage in Egypt in the mystical interpretation of the Exodus, we would progress through a series of progressively smaller and lower gates, our “narrow” places, leaving behind the dusty defilement of the mundane world. Freed of all such encumbrances and purified, we hope to be reborn by the end of this experience.

In its earliest form the roji was an empty space, neither planned nor conceived as a garden. It was void of vegetation, resembling more the barren “open space at a crossroads,” referred to in the third chapter (“Smile and Parable”) of the Lotus Sutra.

Today most rojis include tightly-manicured, low, naturally placed foliage, such as moss, as well as evergreen, bamboo and broad-leafed trees that one would find by a mountain path running adjacent to a year-round creek. Our host’s roji included a “sleeve brushing” pine tree (sode-zuri matsu 袖摺の松) near the path to enhance a feeling of being on a narrow path in a dense forest. The garden sparkled as a result of his having carefully sprinkled water with “refined discrimination” just before we arrived.

Passing through the first gate, that of the outer garden, we reached a rustic roofed waiting arbor (machiai 待合; the bench was covered in dark blue felt upon which were straw cushions. The host was there and with a silent gesture  he opened the small gate to the “inner” garden, then turned and walked away to the tea hut.

The roji footpath itself is a series of elevated, uneven rocks (tobi-ishi, 飛) and occasional slate pavers naturally set into the bare earth through grass and moss covered areas. The layout subtly coaxed us to turn this way and that, providing views of the tiny garden from many vantages. The sound of our shoes on the rocks gave the host a sense of our progress toward the tea hut. The experience of walking on irregular ground immediately made us mindful of our gross, physical body. Over the three-hour chaji experience, the reminders will become more subtle as we become more attuned to the more spiritual aspects of our journey.

Here and there, our host allowed a small cluster of freshly fallen leaves appropriate for the seasonal, temporal nature of our reality. There were no flowering tress or plants that would otherwise compromise the use of naturally arranged flowers in the tea room itself. in a few feet, the roji path split, the wrong-of-way was indicated through the placement of a “barrier-keeper” stone (sekimori-ishi, 関守石), a fist-sized rock tied with a black straw chord placed in the middle of one of the stepping stones.

Purification of the Body and Mind

In about a minute’s time, we reached the proverbial “river’s edge”, represented by an informal patch of ferns shading the stooping basin rock (tsukubai 蹲踞). A signature elements of a roji, the large, low rock had a natural depression in the top into which fresh, cool water trickled from a system of freshly-cut bright green and yellow bamboo “pipes”, flowing over into the river stones below. Proceeding one by one, we each crouched down to perform the purification ritual (misogi 禊) of rinsing hands and mouth, and thereby the mind, using the bamboo dipper. A stone lantern (ishi-tuorou 石灯籠, another signature of a roji, stood sentry nearby.

  

“His body cleansed, the guest passes from one world to another and, with a sense of keen awareness increasing at each step of the way, finally arrives at the teahouse, whose interior has become less the realm of the connoisseur than a sacred space.”

--- Kimakura Isao[11]

Arriving

After about 15 minutes since we first gathered, the small frame of the chashitsu around the corner, resembling the hermitage o a lone aesthete, was now apparent through the trees. The host intentionally left the sliding hatch door of the guest’s entrance (nijiri-guchi 躙口) slightly ajar. The nijiri-guchi is about 26” high and 25” wide and is yet another “narrow place” for the guests, regardless of rank, to traverse as equals: one must duck inside and slide forward with the hands propelling the knees. In the earliest days of chanoyu the nijiri-guchi was the entrance through the outer wall of the garden – hut complex itself.

Negotiating the large rocks needed to access the raised entrance, one by one, we removed our shoes and made our way through the hatch, pulling one’s head and shoulders and knees up into the space. The last guest slid the door shut, touching the wood to the door frame with a “click” to indicate to the host that we were now inside. inside the room, the host had hung a scroll in the raised alcove (tokonoma 床の間), “Kan. Nan Boku Tô-zai Katsu Ro Tsûzu”,  interpreted as “Barrier. South. North. East. West. Make your escape anyway you can,” setting the mood for the remainder of the gathering.

Together At Last!

“[He] had left the burning house of the three worlds, and dwells now in the pristine garden (byakuroji). To leave the roji and take one’s seat at chanoyu is the same as escaping the afflicted world of desire and becoming a person without rank in this existence. Therein lies true “unconditional freedom.”

-- Hounsai, Sen Soshitsu XV (Daisosho, Genshitsu, 

Retired Grand Master, Urasenke)[12]

The full chanoyu, including the host’s serving a multi-course meal and sweets (and not eating with the guests!), the laying of charcoal to heat the water and two preparations of tea, took an additional three hours. It was a seamless “dance” of give and take, engaging the Taoist paradigms of yin and yang, and the five elements (earth, wind, fire, water and metal). Nothing was lacking in that tiny space.

After the final tea preparation utensils were inspected by the guests and returned to the host, he requested our pardon for having made any mistakes. Then we made a final exchange of bows and prepared to reenter the mundane world from which we came. At once physically tired but spiritually renewed, we wriggled out of the nijiri-guchi, the last guest closing it with a “click”, signaling to the host that the room was empty. The garden sparkled as it did earlier as the host had lightly watered it anew. One by one, we walked back through the “narrow places”, which seemed to be roomier than before. Closing the gates one by one, we left the “Pure Land”. Bidding each other a safe return to our homes, we went our separate ways.

If you do not see the Way, you do not see it even as you walk on it.

When you walk the Way, it is not near, it is not far.

If you are deluded, you are mountains and rivers away from it.[13]

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A note from the author: I hope you enjoyed this article written for Parabola, a nonprofit journal. The original publication has many additional photographs. Please consider purchasing a copy of the magazine, (volume 35, no. 3) and support this wonderful publication. (www.parabola.org). Thanks!

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[1] Sen no Rikyu quoted in Sadler, A.L., Cha-No-Yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony (Tuttle, Boston, 1962)

[2] Several sources of kanji, Chinese characters used in Japanese language, were used for this article, including http://japanese-tea-ceremony.net/chashitsu.html\ , http://www.j-prep.com , http://en.wikipedia.org/ and http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/. While one cannot fully acquire the skills and heart to practice chanoyu from any media, it is gratifying to have these language tools to help me go deeper into what I have learned through direct oral transmission of my dear sensei, Sosei Matsumoto.

[3] Also pronounced “cha-do”.

[4] The roles of host and guest in chanoyu are not gender-specific; although, the position of Grand Master and his official agents, gyotei sensei, are male.

[5] ibid, quoting the Nampôroku, the collection of writings about chanoyu attributed to Sen no Rikyu.

[6] http://wiki.chado.no/Roji

[7] ibid.

[8] www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus. A concept that combines the literal notion of “languishing” and the sentiment of “spiritual loneliness”. This is the essence of the legacy of Sen no Rikyu and his teacher Murata Juko of the 16^th Century.

[9] Originally roji was written 路次 or 路地 indicating a "path through which one passes" on the way to the chashitsu.

[10] From Zencharoku (The Zen Tea Record) by Jakuan Sotaku of the Eastern Capital, included in Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the way of Tea as a Buddhist Path, Hirota, Dennis, ed. (Asian Humanities Press, Kyoto, 1995)

[11] Kumakura, Isao, “Sen no Rikyu” in Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu

[12] Sen Soshitsu XV (Sen Genshitsu, Hounsai Daisosho, Fifteenth Generation Grand Master of the Urasenke Tradition of Chanoyu) ”Reflections on Chanoyu”, in Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, Varley, Paul and Kumakura, Isao, eds. (University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 1989)

[13] Sandokai (Harmony of Sameness and Difference) by Sekito Kisen (700-790)

Reviews: "The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan" and "Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History and Practice"

Reviews by LAUREN W. DEUTSCH
KYOTO JOURNAL 71


The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-presenting the Past
by Etsuko Kato
(2004, Routledge Curzon, New York)

Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History and Practice
Morgan Pitelka, ed.
(2001, Routledge Curzon, New York)

Coffee–table books about tea tend to offer pristine views of paradise and bowls of world peace. Page after page of steamy shadows and shadowy steam, dewy landscapes fashioned by gods with impeccable taste, a solitary red maple leaf or cherry blossom petal captured mid-fall, fresh green tea froth (or sludge, depending upon your “school”) glaring up through ceramic ensos like the third eye of the Wizard of Oz. Enough!

For a breath of fresh wind in the pines, two books from the scholastic press of Routledge Curzon are recommended for those with a serious inquiry into the world and way, practice and place of the tea ritual in Japanese culture: The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-presenting the Past, a dissertation by Etsuko Kato, and Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History and Practice, a collection of sometimes quirky but scholarly essays edited by Morgan Pitelka.

“We participate in a tradition of commentary and critique that extends back to the sixteenth century … In writing, we participate in the ongoing cultural production of tea,” states editor Morgan Pitelka, editor of the first book mentioned. One thing for sure is that the do (way) of cha, like the yu (hot water) for cha, is not a catalyst strictly speaking. It has changed in the process of changing culture.

Kato’s book illuminated and clarified many of my own observations as a practitioner of chanoyu for 24 years, mostly in the company of Nisei, Sansei and recent Ise expats living in Southern California. She presents a thoughtful critique from behind-the-scenes of the growth and development of chanoyu as enterprise for women in particular.

On the other hand, Pitelka, a professor of Japanese culture with an expertise in ceramics for tea practice, is the “outsider.” His contributors look at tea through a diverse set of filters, from social and art historians, current and former functionaries of tea schools, museum curators and an academic anthropologist. He promises that “This book is in no way representative of a new school or movement of tea scholarship.” Neither is it another gospel patronized by or in homage to the current chanoyu “establishment”.

Each book has a section that addresses the sanctification of Sen no Rikyu, chanoyu’s great tea ancestor and in whose name we study and practice the craft / art. The fact of Rikyu’s imprint on tea since the mid 16th Century, and through him, the likes of scholar-priest Eisai, Murata Shuko Takeno Joo, Kobori Enshu and his contemporary Furuta Oribe and progeny are admired, is not in question, but his “word” has become legendary and subject to commentary, much like what Talmud is to Torah.

In Pitelka’s book the essay “Rikyu Has Left the Tea Room”, tackles Rikyu’s star-power through analysis of three modern biographical films. Kato, on the other hand, looks at the commodification of the Rikyu mythology and the bloodline of the iemoto system (hereditary lineages producing quasi-monopolistic authorities).

If we were to take Rikyu literally, we would we only need to acquire tea, carry water, chop wood, make a fire, boil water and knead the mixture. By alchemical extension, we would convert history into tradition, tradition into spirituality, spiritually into social propriety, social propriety into intellectual expose.

Both books also discuss in detail how chanoyu’s economic, social and cultural “capital” have developed and been manipulated to suit the needs the tea establishment. Tea as enterprise impacted clusters of complementary professionals (e.g. ceramic craftspeople and merchants) who were able to make a living sharing the practice, even if only limitedly, to a willing and impressionable populace.

If there was such a cultural complex as chanoyu a half century ago in the USA, it would have been studied as home economics. To elevate it to the status it enjoys in Japan would require patronage by someone as pop culturally powerful as Martha Stewart or Oprah Winfrey. This is clear from Kato’s feminist approach. For example she takes us to a Japanese department store “art” gallery exhibition entitled “Saint Rikyu”. More than just “big box” stores of today, in Japan they are to women in the tea world the equivalent of men’s social clubs: natural, “safe” places that present chanoyu as “high” art and socially acceptable places for women to gather in public outside the home and tea room. I was told by a tea informant that Japanese women were more liable to travel independently of their husbands and with their female friends to national or international destinations following their grand master teachers around in the name of tea. The delegations of dozens of middle age women chajins who have visited Los Angeles over the years is proof.

A significant portion of her writing covers the practice of temae, the set of choreographed movements comprising the modular elements of the longer, more “formal” chaji tea gathering. The “birth of tea as “sogo-bunka” discourse, the “cultural synthesis” or compendium of every traditional Japanese cultural “art” form has important implications. She also distinguishes tea benkyo (study) of tea as geijutsu (artistic form) fromsaho(“etiquette or good manners with emphasis on mind”). Given the emphasis on “bodies” in the subtitle, I did expect a deeper discussion by Kato about body image and the physicality of practice. She does mention wearing of kimono but doesn’t mention anything about the painful practice of sitting seiza.

Both Pitelka and Kato utilize chanoyu as a portal, rather than as metaphor for further social and cultural studies. She takes the tack of feminist theory and looks at the lives of women in the post-Pacific War period, their achievements in higher education, marriage-ability, vocation / avocations, etc. Chanoyu practice is regarded with high status among all cultural elites in Japan, and a woman’s top rank could even place her in some circles above her corporate executive husband.

One of Pitelka’s authors presents how 20th Century excavations on Sanjo-dori in Kyoto at known sites of ceramics merchants’ shops are revealing how Momoyama folks shopped for “pots for tea”, what types and styles of goods were sold during that period.

Pitelka’s own writing examine the Edosenke school’s “warrior tea”, prominent in the late Tokugawa period, and the often-marginalized Sen Koshin Sosa, the founder of Omotesenke tea school. Another of his contributors offers insight into the early karamono (Chinese objects) utensils as they made the transition from use in sencha (leaf tea) ceremonies to matcha (powdered tea). Two other essays explore how chanoyu utensils were valued by warlords’ as battle spoils. In some ways chanoyu seems a bit like a Mata Hari, something that could stop the boys in their tracks and make them find true happiness.

I have always wondered whether there was any tea practice among Japanese-Americans relegated to remote concentration camps and the chado studies of my own sensei who spent that period in Japan at the home of the XIV Urasenke grandmaster. I cannot imagine that making tea was as forbidden as was the practice kyudo or kendo, Zen archery and sword, respectively for two reasons. First, neither tea ladle nor scoop could be mistaken for a weapon; although they are handled with those in mind. Secondly, no one would consider a female master chajin’s making a bowl of tea a threat to national security.