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THE BOOK OF TEA
THE BOOK OF TEA
BY
OKAKURA-KAKUZO

NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
Copyright 1906, by
FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY
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To
JOHN LAFARGE
CONTENTS
PAGE
Chapter I. The Cup of Humanity
Tea ennobled into Teaism, a religion of aestheti-
cism, the adoration of the beautiful among
everyday facts—Teaism developed among both
nobles and peasants—The mutual misunder-
standing of the New World and the Old—The
Worship of Tea in the West— Early records of
Tea in European writing — The Taoists' version
of the combat between Spirit and Matter—The
modern struggle for wealth and power 3
Chapter II. The Schools of Tea
The three stages of the evolution of Tea—The
Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped
Tea, representative of the Tang, the Sung, and
the Ming dynasties of China — Luwuh, the first
apostle of Tea—The Tea-ideals of the three
dynasties—To the latter-day Chinese Tea is a
delicious beverage, but not an ideal — In Japan
Tea is a religion of the art of life 25
Chapter III. Taoism and Zennism
The connection of Zennism with Tea—Taoism,
and its successor Zennism, represent the indi-
vidualistic trend of the Southern Chinese mind
—Taoism accepts the mundane and tries to find
beauty in our world of woe and worry—Zennism
CONTENTS
. , PAGE
emphasizes the teachings of Taoism — Through
consecrated meditation may be attained supreme
self-realisation—Zennism, like Taoism, is the
worship of Relativity— Ideal of Teaism a result
of the Zen conception of greatness in the small-
est incidents of life—Taoism furnished the basis
for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them prac-
tical , 47
Chapter IV. The Tea-Room The tea-room does not pretend to be other than
a mere cottage—The simplicity and purism of
the tea-room — Symbolism in the construction of
the tea-room—The system of its decoration—A
sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world 73
Chapter V. Art Appreciation
Sympathetic communion of minds necessary for
art appreciation—The secret understanding be-
tween the master and ourselves—The value of
suggestion—Art is of value only to the extent
that it speaks to us — No real feeling in much of
the apparent enthusiasm to-day — Confusion of
art with archaeology—We are destroying art in
destroying the beautiful in life 103
Chapter VI. Flowers
Flowers our constant friends—The Master of
Flowers—The waste of flowers among Western
communities—The art of floriculture in the East—The Tea-Masters and the Cult of Flowers—The Art of Flower Arrangement — The adoration
of the Flower for its own sake—The Flower-
Masters —Two main branches of the schools of
Flower Arrangement, the Formalistic and the
Naturalesque 123
CONTENTS
Chapter VII. Tea-Masters
Real! appreciation of art only possible to those
who i aake of it a living influence — Contribu-
tions of the Tea-Masters to art—Their influence
on the conduct of life—The Last Tea of Rikiu 131
tx
1
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
THE BOOK OF TEA
I
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
Tea began as a medicine and grew
into a beverage. In China, in the
eighth century, it entered the realm of
poetry as one of the polite amusements.
The fifteenth century saw Japan enno-
ble it into a religion of aestheticism—
Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on
the adoration of the beautiful among
the sordid facts of everyday existence.
It inculcates purity and harmony, the
mystery of mutual charity, the roman-
ticism of the social order. It is essen-
tially a worship of the Imperfect, as it
is a tender attempt to accomplish some-
THE BOOK OF TEA
thing possible in this impossible thing
we know as life.
The Philosophy of Tea is not mere
aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance
of the term, for it expresses conjointly
with ethics and religion our whole point
of view about man and nature. It is
hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it
is economics, for it shows comfort in
simplicity rather than in the complex
and costly; it is moral geometry, inas-
much as it defines our sense of propor-
*o the universe. It represents the
**- ~^ "eastern democracy by
votaries aristocrats in
don of Japan from the
rest of the world, so conducive to in-
trospection, has been highly favourable
to the development of Teaism. Our
home and habits, costume and cuisine, 4
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature—all have been subject to its
influence. No student of Japanese cul-
ture could ever ignore its presence. It
has permeated the elegance of noble
boudoirs, and entered the abode of the
humble. Our peasants have learned to
arrange flowers, our meanest labourer
to offer his salutation to the rocks and
waters. In our common parlance we
speak of the man " with no tea " in him,
when he is insusceptible to the serio-
comic interests of the personal drama.
Again we stigmatise the untamed aes-
thete who, regardless of the mundane
tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of
emancipated emotions, as one " with too
much tea" in him.
The outsider may indeed wonder at
this seeming much ado about nothing.
What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will
5
THE BOOK OF TEA
say. But when we consider how small
after all the cup of human enjoyment
is, how soon overflowed with tears, how
easily drained to the dregs in our
quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall
not blame ourselves for making so
much of the tea-cup. Mankind has
done worse. In the worship of Bac-
chus, we have sacrificed too freely; and
we have even transfigured the gory
image of Mars. Why not consecrate
ourselves to the queen of the Camelias,
and revel in the warm stream of sym-
pathy that flows from her altar? In
the liquid amber within the ivory-porce-
lain, the initiated may touch the sweet
reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Saky-
amuni himself.
Those who cannot feel the littleness
of great things in themselves are apt to
6
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
overlook the greatness of little things in
others. The average Westerner, in his
sleek complacency, will see in the tea
ceremony but another instance of the
thousand and one oddities which con-
stitute the quaintness and childishness
of the East to him. He was wont to
regard Japan as barbarous while she
indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he
calls her civilised since she began to
commit wholesale slaughter on Manchu-
rian battlefields. Much comment has
been given lately to the Code of the
Samurai,—the Art of Death which
makes our soldiers exult in self-sacri-
fice; but scarcely any attention has been
drawn to Teaism, which represents so
much of our Art of Life. Fain would
we remain barbarians, if our claim to
civilisation were to be based on the grue-
some glory of war. Fain would we
7
THE BOOK OF TEA
await the time when due respect shall
be paid to our art and ideals.
When will the West understand, or
try to understand, the East? We
Asiatics are often appalled by the curi-
ous web of facts and fancies which has
been woven concerning us. We are pic-
tured as living on the perfume of the
lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches.
It is either impotent fanaticism or else
abject voluptuousness. Indian spiritu-
ality has been derided as ignorance,
Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese
patriotism as the result of fatalism. It
has been said that we are less sensible
to pain and wounds on account of the
callousness of our nervous organisation!
Why not amuse yourselves at our ex-
pense? Asia returns the compliment.
There would be further food for merri-
ment if you were to know all that we
8
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
have imagined and written about you.
All the glamour of the perspective is
there, all the unconscious homage of
wonder, all the silent resentment of the
new and undefined. You have been
loaded with virtues too refined to be
envied, and accused of crimes too pic-
turesque to be condemned. Our writers
in the past—the wise men who knew—
informed us that you had bushy tails
somewhere hidden in your garments,
and often dined off a fricassee of new-
born babes! Nay, we had something
worse against you: we used to think you
the most impracticable people on the
earth, for you were said to preach what
you never practised.
Such misconceptions are fast vanish-
ing amongst us. Commerce has forced
the European tongues on many an
Eastern port. Asiatic youths are flock-
9
THE BOOK OF TEA
ing to Western colleges for the equip-
ment of modern education. Our in-
sight does not penetrate your culture
deeply, but at least we are willing to
learn. Some of my compatriots have
adopted too much of your customs and
too much of your etiquette, in the delu-
sion that the acquisition of stiff collars
and tall silk hats comprised the attain-
ment of your civilisation. Pathetic
and deplorable as such affectations are,
they evince our willingness to approach
the West on our knees. Unfortunately
the Western attitude is unfavourable
to the understanding of the East. The
Christian missionary goes to impart,
but not to receive. Your information
is based on the meagre translations of
our immense literature, if not on the
unreliable anecdotes of passing trav-
ellers. It is rarely that the chivalrous
10
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
pen of a Laf cadio Hearn or that of the
author of " The Web of Indian Life"
enlivens the Oriental darkness with the
torch of our own sentiments.
Perhaps I betray my own ignorance
of the Tea Cult by being so outspoken.
Its very spirit of politeness exacts that
you say what you are expected to say,
and no more. But I am not to be a
polite Teaist. So much harm has been
done already by the mutual misunder-
standing of the New World and the
Old, that one need not apologise for
contributing his tithe to the furtherance
of a better understanding. The begin-
ning of the twentieth century would
have been spared the spectacle of san-
guinary warfare if Russia had conde-
scended to know Japan better. What
dire consequences to humanity lie in
the contemptuous ignoring of Eastern
11
THE BOOK OF TEA
problems! European imperialism, which
does not disdain to raise the absurd cry
of the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that
Asia may also awaken to the cruel
sense of the White Disaster. You may
laugh at us for having " too much tea,"
but may we not suspect that you of the
West have "no tea" in your consti-
tution?
Let us stop the continents from
hurling epigrams at each other, and be
sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain
of half a hemisphere. We have devel-
oped along different lines, but there is
no reason why one should not supple-
ment the other. You have gained ex-
pansion at the cost of restlessness; we
have created a harmony which is weak against aggression. Will you believe
it?—the East is better off in some re-
spects than the West!
12
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
Strangely enough humanity has so
far met in the tea-cup. It is the only
Asiatic ceremonial which commands
universal esteem. The white man has
scoffed at our religion and our morals,
but has accepted the brown beverage
without hesitation. The afternoon tea
is now an important function in West-
ern society. In the delicate clatter of
trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of
feminine hospitality, in the common
catechism about cream and sugar, we
know that the Worship of Tea is estab-
lished beyond question. The philo-
sophic resignation of the guest to the
fate awaiting him in the dubious de-
coction proclaims that in this single
instance the Oriental spirit reigns
supreme.
The earliest record of tea in Enro-
ls
THE BOOK OF TEA
pean writing is said to be found in the
statement of an Arabian traveller, that
after the year 879 the main sources of
revenue in Canton were the duties on
salt and tea. Marco Polo records the
deposition of a Chinese minister of
finance in 1285 for his arbitrary aug-
mentation of the tea-taxes. It was at
the period of the great discoveries that
the European people began to know
more about the extreme Orient. At the
end of the sixteenth century the Hol-
landers brought the news that a pleas-
ant drink was made in the East from
the leaves of a bush. The travellers
Giovanni Batista Itamusio (1559), L.
Almeida (1576), MaiFeno (1588),
Tareira (1610), also mentioned tea.1
In the last-named year ships of the
Dutch East India Company brought
i Paul Kransel, Dissertations, Berlin, 1902.
14
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
the first tea into Europe. It was known
in France in 1636, and reached Russia
in 1638.2 England welcomed it in 1650
and spoke of it as " That excellent and
by all physicians approved China drink,
called by the Chineans Tcha, and by
other nations Tay, alias Tee."
Like all the good things of the world,
the propaganda of Tea met with opposition. Heretics like Henry Saville
(1678) denounced drinking it as a filthy
custom. Jonas Hanway (Essay on
Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to
lose their stature and comeliness, wo-
men their beauty through the use of tea.
Its cost at the start (about fifteen or
sixteen shillings a pound) forbade pop-
ular consumption, and made it " regalia
for high treatments and entertainments,
presents being made thereof to princes
2 Mcrcurius Politicus, 10*56.
15
THE BOOK OF TEA
and grandees." Yet in spite of such
drawbacks tea-drinking spread with
marvellous rapidity. The coffee-houses
of London in the early half of the
eighteenth century became, in fact, tea-
houses, the resort of wits like Addison
and Steele, who beguiled themselves
over their " dish of tea." The beverage
soon became a necessary of life—a tax-
able matter. We are reminded in this
connection what an important part it
plays in modern history. Colonial
America resigned herself to oppression
until human endurance gave way before
the heavy duties laid on Tea. Ameri-
can independence dates from the throw-
ing of tea-chests into Boston harbour.
There is a subtle charm in the taste
of tea which makes it irresistible and
capable of idealisation. Western hu-
mourists were not slow to mingle the
16
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
fragrance of their thought with its
aroma. It has not the arrogance of
wine, the self-consciousness of coffee,
nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.
Already in 1711, says the Spectator:
"I would therefore in a particular
manner recommend these my specula-
tions to all well-regulated families that
set apart an hour every morning for
tea, bread and butter; and would ear-
nestly advise them for their good to
order this paper to be punctually served
up and to be looked upon as a part
of the tea-equipage." Samuel Johnson
draws his own portrait as "a hardened
and shameless tea-drinker, who for
twenty years diluted his meals with only
the infusion of the fascinating plant;
who with tea amused the evening, with
tea solaced the midnight, and with tea
welcomed the morning."
17
THE BOOK OF TEA
Charles Lamb, a professed devotee,
sounded the true note of Teaism when
he wrote that the greatest pleasure he
knew was to do a good action by stealth, and to have found it out by ac-
cident. For Teaism is the art of con-
cealing beauty that you may discover it,
of suggesting what you dare not reveal.
It is the noble secret of laughing at
yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and
is thus humour itself,—the smile of
philosophy. All genuine humourists
may in this sense be called tea-philoso-
phers,—Thackeray, for instance, and,
of course, Shakespeare. The poets of
the Decadence (when was not the world
in decadence?), in their protests against
materialism, have, to a certain extent,
also opened the way to Teaism. Per-
haps nowadays it is our demure con-
templation of the Imperfect that the
18
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
West and the East can meet in mutual
consolation.
The Taoists relate that at the great
beginning of the No-Beginning, Spirit
and Matter met in mortal combat. At
last the Yellow Emperor, the Sun of
Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung,
the demon of darkness and earth. The
Titan, in his death agony, struck his
head against the solar vault and shiv-
ered the blue dome of jade into frag-
ments. The stars lost their nests, the
moon wandered aimlessly among the
wild chasms of the night. In despair
the Yellow Emperor sought far and
wide for the repairer of the Heavens.
He had not to search in vain. Out of
the Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine
Niuka, horn-crowned and dragon-
tailed, resplendent in her armour of
fire. She welded the five-coloured rain-
19
THE BOOK OF TEA
bow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt
the Chinese sky. But it is also told that
Niuka forgot to fill two tiny crevices
in the blue firmament. Thus began the
dualism of love—two souls rolling
through space and never at rest until
they join together to complete the uni-
verse. Everyone has to build anew his
sky of hope and peace.
The heaven of modern humanity
is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean
struggle for wealth and power. The
world is groping in the shadow of ego-
tism and vulgarity. Knowledge is
bought through a bad conscience, be-
nevolence practised for the sake of
utility. The East and West, like two
dragons tossed in a sea of ferment, in
vain strive to regain the jewel of life.
We need a Niuka again to repair the
grand devastation; we await the great
20
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a sip
of tea. The afternoon glow is bright-
ening the bamboos, the fountains are
bubbling with delight, the soughing
of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let
us dream of evanescence, and linger in
the beautiful foolishness of things.
21
II
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
II
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
Tea is a work of art and needs a
master hand to bring out its no-
blest qualities. We have good and bad
tea, as we have good and bad paintings
—generally the latter. There is no sin-
gle recipe for making the perfect tea,
as there are no rules for producing a
Titian or a Sesson. Each preparation
of the leaves has its individuality, its
special affinity with water and heat, its
hereditary memories to recall, its own
method of telling a story. The truly
beautiful must be always in it. How
much do we not suffer through the con-
stant failure of society to recognise this
simple and fundamental law of art and THE BOOK OF TEA
life; Lichihlai, a Sung poet, has sadly
remarked that there were three most de-
plorable things in the world: the spoil-
ing of fine youths through false educa-
tion, the degradation of fine paintings
through vulgar admiration, and the
utter waste of fine tea through incompe-
tent manipulation.
Like Art, Tea has its periods and its
schools. Its evolution may be roughly
divided into three main stages: the
Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the
Steeped Tea. We moderns belong to
the last school. These several methods
of appreciating the beverage are indi-
cative of the spirit of the age in which
they prevailed. For life is an expres-
sion, our unconscious actions the con-
stant betrayal of our innermost thought.
Confucius said that "man hideth not."
Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much
26
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
in small things because we have so little
of the great to conceal. The tiny inci-
dents of daily routine are as much a
commentary of racial ideals as the high-
est flight of philosophy or poetry.
Even as the difference in favourite
vintage marks the separate idiosyn-
crasies of different periods and nation-
alities of Europe, so the Tea-ideals
characterise the various moods of Ori-
ental culture. The Cake-tea which was
boiled, the Powdered-tea which was
whipped, the Leaf-tea which was
steeped, mark the distinct emotional im-
pulses of the Tang, the Sung, and the
Ming dynasties of China./If we were
inclined to borrow the much-abused ter-
minology of art-classification, we might
designate them respectively, the Classic,
the Romantic, and the Naturalistic
schools of Tea.
27
THE BOOK OF TEA
The tea-plant, a native of southern
China, was known from very early
times to Chinese botany and medicine.
It is alluded to in the classics under the
various names of Tou, Tseh, Chung,
Kha, and Ming, and was highly prized
for possessing the virtues of relieving
fatigue, delighting the soul, strength-
ening the will, and repairing the eye-
sight. It was not only administered
as an internal dose, but often applied
externally in form of paste to alleviate
rheumatic pains. The Taoists claimed
it as an important ingredient of the
elixir of immortality. The Buddhists
used it extensively to prevent drowsi-
ness during their long hours of medi-
tation.
By the fourth and fifth centuries Tea
became a favourite beverage among the
inhabitants of the Yangtse-Kiang val-
28
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
ley. It was about this time that the
modern ideograph Cha was coined, evi-
dently a corruption of the classic Tou.
The poets of the southern dynasties
have left some fragments of their ferv-
ent adoration of the "froth of the liquid
jade." Then emperors used to bestow
some rare preparatiqn^of the leaves on
their high ministers as a reward for
eminent services. Yet the method^of
drinking tea at, jthis^stage was primi-
tive injthe extreme. The leaves were
steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into
a cake, and boiled together with rice,
ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk,
and sometimes with onions! The cus-
tom obtains at the present day among
the Thibetans and various Mongolian
tribes, who make a curious syrup of
these ingredients. The use of lemon
slices by the Russians, who learned to
29
THE BOOK OP TEA
take tea from the Chinese caravansaries,
points to the survival of the ancient
method.
It needed the genius of the Tang dy-
nasty to emancipate Tea from its crude
state and lead to its final idealisation.
With Luwuh in the middle of the eighth
century we have our first apostle of tea.
He was born in an age when Bud-
dhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were
seeking mutual synthesis. The pan-
theistic symbolism of the time was urg-
ing one to mirror the Universal in the
Particular. Luwuh, a poet, saw in the
Tea-service the same harmony and order
which reigned through all things. In
his celebrated work, the "Chaking"
(The Holy Scripture of Tea) he form-
ulated the Code of Tea. He has since
been worshipped as the tutelary god of
the Chinese tea merchants.
30
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
The " Chaking " consists of three vol-
umes and ten chapters. In the first
chapter Luwuh treats of the nature of
the tea-plant, in the second of the im-
plements for gathering the leaves, in
the third of the selection of the leaves.
According to him the best quality of
the leaves must have "creases like the
leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl
like the dewlap of a mighty bullock,
unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine,
gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr,
and be wet and soft like fine earth newly
swept by rain."
The fourth chapter is devoted to
the enumeration and description of the
twenty-four members of the tea-equip-
age, beginning with the tripod brazier
and ending with the bamboo cabinet for
containing all these utensils. Here we
notice Luwuh's predilection for Taoist
31
THE BOOK OF TEA
symbolism. Also it is interesting to ob-
serve in this connection the influence of tea on Chinese ceramics. The Celestial
porcelain, as is well known, had its
origin in an attempt to reproduce the
exquisite shade of jade, resulting, in the
Tang dynasty, in the blue glaze of the
south, and the white glaze of the north.
Luwuh considered the blue as the ideal
colour for the tea-cup, as it lent addi-
tional greenness to the beverage, where-
as the white made it look pinkish and
distasteful. It was because he used
cake-tea. Later on, when the tea mas-
ters of Sung took to the powdered tea,
they preferred heavy bowls of blue-
black and dark brown. The Mings,
with their steeped tea, rejoiced in light
ware of white porcelain.
In the fifth chapter Luwuh describes
the method of making tea. He elimi-
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
nates all ingredients except salt. He
dwells also on the much-discussed ques-
tion of the choice of water and the de-
gree of boiling it. According to him,
the mountain spring is the best, the river
water and the spring water come next
in the order of excellence. There are
three stages of boiling: the first boil is
when the little bubbles like the eye of
fishes swim on the surface; the second
boil is when the bubbles are like crystal
beads rolling in a fountain; the third
boil is when the billows surge wildly in
the kettle. The Cake-tea is roasted be-
fore the fire until it becomes soft like
a baby's arm and is shredded into pow-
der between pieces of fine paper. Salt
is put in the first boil, the tea in the sec-
ond. At the third boil, a dipperful of
cold water is poured into the kettle to
settle the tea and revive the "youth of
33
THE BOOK OF TEA
the water." Then the beverage was
poured into cups and drunk. O nectar!
The filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds
in a serene sky or floated like water-
lilies on emerald streams. It was of
such a beverage that Lotung, a Tang
poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens
my lips and throat, the second cup
breaks my loneliness, the third cup
searches my barren entrail but to find
therein some five thousand volumes of
odd ideographs.- The fourth cup raises
a slight perspiration,—all the wrong of
life passes away through my pores. At
the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth
cup calls me to the realms of immortals.
The seventh cup—ah, but I could
take no more! I only feel the breath
of cool wind that rises in my sleeves.
Where is Horaisan? * Let me ride
iThe Chinese Eljsium.
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
on this sweet breeze and waft away
thither."
The remaining chapters of the " Cha-
king" treat of the vulgarity of the
ordinary methods of tea-drinking, a
historical summary of illustrious tea-
drinkers, the famous tea plantations of
China, the possible variations of the tea-
service and illustrations of the tea-
utensils. The last is unfortunately lost.
The appearance of the "Chaking"
must have created considerable sensa-
tion at the time. Luwuh was be-
friended by the Emperor Taisung
v( 763-779), and his fame attracted
many followers. Some exquisites were
said to have been able to detect the tea
made by Luwuh from that of his dis-
ciples. One mandarin has his name im-
mortalised by his failure to appreciate
the tea of this great master.
35
THE BOOK OF TEA
In the Sung dynasty the whipped tea
came into fashion and created the sec-
ond school of Tea. The leaves were
ground to fine powder in a small stone
mill, and the preparation was whipped
in hot water by a delicate whisk made
of split bamboo. The new process led
to some change in the tea-equipage of
Luwuh, as well as the choice of leaves.
Salt was discarded forever. The enthu-
siasm of the Sung people for tea knew
no bounds. Epicures vied with each
other in discovering new varieties, and
regular tournaments were held to decide
their superiority. The Emperor Kia-
sung (1101-1124), who was too great
an artist to be a well-behaved monarch,
lavished his treasures on the attainment
of rare species. He himself wrote a
dissertation on the twenty kinds of
tea, among which he prizes the
36
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
"white tea" as of the rarest and finest
quality.
The tea-ideal of the Sungs differed
from the Tangs even as their notion of
life differed. They sought to actual-
ise what their predecessors tried to sym-
bolise. To the Neo-Confucian mind the
cosmic law was not reflected in the phe-
nomenal world, but the phenomenal
world was the cosmic law itself. iEons
were but moments—Nirvana always
within grasp. The Taoist conception
that immortality lay in the eternal
change permeated all their modes of
thought. It was the process, not the
deed, which was interesting. It was
the completing, not the completion,
which was really vital. Man came thus
at once face to face with nature. A
new meaning grew into the art of life.
The tea began to be not a poetical pas-
37
THE BOOK OF TEA
time, but one of the methods of self-
realisation. Wangyucheng eulogised
tea as "flooding his soul like a direct
appeal, that its delicate bitterness re-
minded him of the after-taste of a
good counsel." Sotumpa wrote of the
strength of the immaculate purity in
tea which defied corruption as a truly
virtuous man. Among the Buddhists,
the southern Zen sect, which incorpo-
rated so much of Taoist doctrines,
formulated an elaborate ritual of tea.
The monks gathered before the image
of Bodhi Dharma and drank tea out of
a single bowl with the profound formal-
ity of a holy sacrament. It was this
Zen ritual which finally developed into
the Tea-ceremony of Japan in the fif-
teenth century.
Unfortunately the sudden outburst
of the Mongol tribes in the thirteenth
38
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
century which resulted in the devasta-
tion and conquest of China under the
barbaric rule of the Yuen Emperors,
destroyed all the fruits of Sung culture.
The native dynasty of the Mings which
attempted re-nationalisation in the mid-
dle of the fifteenth century was harassed
by internal troubles, and China again
fell under the alien rule of the Manchus
in the seventeenth century. Manners
and customs changed to leave no vestige
of the former times. The powdered tea
is entirely forgotten. We find a Ming
commentator at loss to recall the shape
of the tea whisk mentioned in one of
the Sung classics. Tea is now taken
by steeping the leaves in hot water
in a bowl or cup. The reason why
the Western world is innocent of the
older method of drinking tea is ex-
plained by the fact that Europe knew
39
THE BOOK OF TEA
it only at the close of the Ming
dynasty.
To the latter-day Chinese tea is a de-
licious beverage, but not an ideal. The
long woes of his country have robbed
him of the zest for the meaning of
life. He has become modern, that is to
say, old and disenchanted. He has lost
that sublime faith in illusions which con-
stitutes the eternal youth and vigour
of the poets and ancients. He is an
eclectic and politely accepts the tradi-
tions of the universe. He toys with
Nature, but does not condescend to
conquer or worship her. His Leaf-tea
is often wonderful with its flower-like
aroma, but the romance of the Tang
and Sung ceremonials are not to be
found in his cup.
Japan, which followed closely on the footsteps of Chinese civilisation, has 40
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
known the tea in all its three stages.
As early as the year 729 we read of
the Emperor Shomu giving tea to one
hundred monks at his palace in Nara.
The leaves were probably imported by
our ambassadors to the Tang Court and
prepared in the way then in fashion.
In 801 the monk Saicho brought back
some seeds and planted them in Yeisan.
Many tea-gardens are heard of in the
succeeding centuries, as well as the de-
light of the aristocracy and priesthood
in the beverage. The Sung tea reached
us in 1191 with the return of Yeisai-
zenji, who went there to study the south-
ern Zen school. The new seeds which
he carried home were successfully
planted in three places, one of which,
the Uji district near Kioto, bears still
the name of producing the best tea in
the world. The southern Zen spread
41
THE BOOK OF TEA
with marvellous rapidity, and with-it
tfthe tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the
Sung. By the fifteenth century, under
the patronage of the Shogun, AshTk-
aga-yoshirljasa, the tea ceremony is fully
constituted and made into an independ-
ent and secular performance. Since
then Teaism is fully established in
Japan. The use of the steeped tea of
the later China is comparatively recent
among us, being only known since the
middle of the seventeenth century. It
has replaced the powdered tea in ordi-
nary consumption, though the latter
still continues to hold its place as the tea
of teas.
It is in the Japanese tea ceremony
that we see the culmination of tea-ideals.
Our successful resistance of the Mongol
invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry
on the Sung movement so disastrously THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
cut off in China itself through the no-
madic inroad. Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form
of drinking; itjs a religion of the art
of life./'The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and
refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence
where weary travellers could meet to
drink from the common spring of art-
appreciation. The ceremony was an
improvised drama whose plot was woven
about the tea, the flowers, and the paint-
ings. Not a colour to disturb the tone
of the room, not a sound to mar the
rhythm of things, not a gesture to ob-
trude on the harmony, not a word to
break the unity of the surroundings, all
THE BOOK OF TEA
movements to be performed simply
and naturally—such were the aims
of the tea-ceremony. And strangely
enough it was often successful. A sub-
tle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise.
44
Ill
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
Ill
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
The connection of Zennism with
tea is proverbial. We have al-
ready remarked that the tea-ceremony
was a development of the Zen ritual.
The name of Laotse, the founder of
Taoism, is also intimately associated
with the history of tea. It is written in
the Chinese school manual concerning
the origin of habits and customs that
the ceremony of offering tea to a guest
began with Kwanyin, a well-known dis-
ciple of Laotse, who first at the gate of
the Han Pass presented to the "Old
Philosopher" a cup of the golden elixir.
We shall not stop to discuss the authen-
ticity of such tales, which are valuable,
47
THE BOOK OF TEA
however, as confirming the early use of
the beverage by the Taoists. Our in-
terest in Taoism and Zennism here lies
mainly in those ideas regarding life and
art which are so embodied in what we
call Teaism.
It is to be regretted that as yet there
appears to be no adequate presentation
of the Taoists and Zen doctrines in any
foreign language, though we have had
several laudable attempts.1 Translation is always a treason, and
as a Ming author observes, can at its
best be only the reverse side of a bro-
cade,—all the threads are there, but not
the subtlety of colour or design. But,
after all, what great doctrine is there
which is easy to expound? The ancient
iWe should like to call attention to Dr. Paul
Carus's admirable translation of the 'Taotei King: The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, 1898,
48
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
sages never put their teachings in sys-
tematic form. They spoke in para-
doxes, for they were afraid of uttering
half-truths. They began by talking
like fools and ended by making their
hearers wise. Laotse himself, with his
quaint humour, says, " If people of in-
ferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they
laugh immensely. It would not be the
Tao unless they laughed at it."
The Tao literally means a Path. It
has been severally translated as the
Way, the Absolute, the Law, Nature,
Supreme Reason, the Mode. These
renderings are not incorrect, for the use
of the term by the Taoists differs ac-
cording to the subject-matter of the in-
quiry. Laotse himself spoke of it thus:
"There is a thing which is all-contain-
ing, which was born before the exist-
ence of Heaven and Earth. How si-
49
THE BOOK OF TEA
lent! How solitary! It stands alone
and changes not. It revolves without
danger to itself and is the mother of
the universe. I do not know its name
and so call it the Path. With reluct-
ance I call it the Infinite. Infinity is
the Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanish-
ing, the Vanishing is the Reverting."
The Tao is in the Passage rather than
the Path. It is the spirit of Cosmic
Change,—the eternal growth which re-
turns upon itself to produce new forms.
It recoils upon itself like the dragon,
the beloved symbol of the Taoists. It
folds and unfolds as do the clouds. The
Tao might be spoken of as the Great
Transition. Subjectively it is the Mood
of the Universe. Its Absolute is the
Relative.
It should be remembered in the first
place that Taoism, like its legitimate
50
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
successor Zennism, represents the indi-
vidualistic trend of the Southern Chi-
nese mind in contra-distinction to the
communism of Northern China which
expressed itself in Confucianism. The
Middle Kingdom is as vast as Europe
and has a differentiation of idiosyncra-
sies marked by the two great river sys-
tems which traverse it. The Yangste-
Kiang and Hoang-Ho are respectively
the Mediterranean and the Baltic.
Even to-day, in spite of centuries of
unification, the Southern Celestial dif-
fers in his thoughts and beliefs from
his Northern brother as a member of the
Latin race differs from the Teuton. In
ancient days, when communication was
even more difficult than at present, and
especially during the feudal period,
this difference in thought was most pro-
nounced. The art and poetry of the
51
THE BOOK OF TEA
one breathes an atmosphere entirely
distinct from that of the other. In
Laotse and his followers and in Kutsu-
gen, the forerunner of the Yangtse-
Kiang nature-poets, we find an ideal-
ism quite inconsistent with the prosaic
ethical notions of their contemporary
northern writers. Laotse lived five
centuries before the Christian Era.
The germ of Taoist speculation may
be found long before the advent of La-
otse, surnamed the Long-Eared. The
archaic records of China, especially the
Book of Changes, foreshadow his
thought. But the great respect paid
to the laws and customs of that classic
period of Chinese civilisation which cul-
minated with the establishment of the
Chow dynasty in the sixteenth century
B. C., kept the development of individ-
ualism in check for a long while, so that
52
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
it was not until after the disintegration
of the Chow dynasty and the establish-
ment of innumerable independent king-
doms that it was able to blossom fortK
in the luxuriance of free-thought. La-
otse and Soshi (Chuangtse) were both
Southerners and the greatest exponents
of the New School. On the other hand
Confucius with his numerous disciples
aimed at retaining ancestral conven-
tions. Taoism cannot be understood
without some knowledge of Confucian-
ism and vice versa.
We have said that the Taoist Abso-
lute was the Relative. In ethics the
Taoist railed at the laws and the moral
codes of society, for to them right and
wrong were but relative terms. Defi-
nition is always limitation—the " fixed"
and "unchangeless" are but terms ex-
pressive of a stoppage of growth. Said
53
THE BOOK OF TEiJ
Kuzugen,—" The Sages move the
world." Our standards of morality are
begotten of the past needs of society,
but is society to remain always the same?
The observance of communal traditions
involves a constant sacrifice of the in-
dividual to the state. Education, in
order to keep up the mighty delusion,
encourages a species of ignorance. Peo-
ple are not taught to be really virtuous,
but to behave properly. We are wicked
because we are frightfully self-con-
scious. We never forgive others be-
cause we know that we ourselves are in
the wrong. We nurse a conscience be-
cause we are afraid to tell the truth to
others; we take refuge in pride because
we are afraid to tell the truth to our-
selves. How can one be serious with
the world when the world itself is
so ridiculous! The spirit of barter
54
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
is everywhere. Honour and Chastity!
Behold the complacent salesman retail-
ing the Good and True. One can even
buy a so-called Religion, which is really
but common morality sanctified with
flowers and music. Rob the Church of
her accessories and what remains be-
hind? Yet the trusts thrive marvel-
lously, for the prices are absurdly cheap,
—a prayer for a ticket to heaven, a
diploma for an honourable citizenship.
Hide yourself under a bushel quickly,
for if your real usefulness were known
to the world you would soon be knocked
down to the highest bidder by the public
auctioneer. Why do men and women
like to advertise themselves so much?
Is it not but an instinct derived from
the days of slavery?
The virility of the idea lies not less in
its power of breaking through con-
55
THE BOOK OF TEA
temporary thought than in its capacity
for dominating subsequent movements. Taoism was an active power during the
Shin dynasty, that epoch of Chinese
unification from which we derive the
name China. It would be interesting
had we time to note its influence on con-
temporary thinkers, the mathematicians,
writers on law and war, the mystics
and alchemists and the later nature-
poets of the Yangste-Kiang. We
should not even ignore those specu-
lators on Reality who doubted whether
a white horse was real because he was
white, or because he was solid, nor the
Conversationalists of the Six dynasties
who, like the Zen philosophers, revelled
in discussions concerning the Pure and
the Abstract. Above all we should pay
homage to Taoism for what it has done
toward the formation of the Celestial
56
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
■-'
character, giving to it a certain capacity
for reserve and refinement as " warm as
jade." Chinese history is full of in-
stances in which the votaries of Taoism,
princes and hermits alike, followed
with varied and interesting results the
teachings of their creed. The tale will
not be without its quota of instruction
and amusement. It will be rich in
anecdotes, allegories, and aphorisms.
We would fain be on speaking terms
with the delightful emperor who never
died because he never lived. We may
ride the wind with Liehtse and find it
absolutely quiet because we ourselves
are the wind, or dwell in mid-air with
the Aged One of the Hoang-Ho, who
lived betwixt Heaven and Earth be-
cause he was subject to neither the one
nor the other. Even in that grotesque
apology for Taoism which we find in m
THE BOOK OP TEA
China at the present day, we can revel
in a wealth of imagery impossible to
find in any other cult. But the chief contribution of Taoism
to Asiatic life has been in the realm of
aesthetics. Chinese historians have al-
ways spoken of Taoism as the " art of
being in the world," for it deals with
the present—ourselves. It is in us that
God meets with Nature, and yesterday
parts from to-morrow. The Present is
the moving Infinity, the legitimate
sphere of the Relative. Relativity seeks
Adjustment; Adjustment is Art. The
art of life lies in a constant readjust-
ment to our surroundings, i Taoism ac-
cepts the mundane as it is and, unlike
the Confucians and the Buddhists,
tries to find beauty in our world of woe
and worry. The Sung allegory of the
Three Vinegar Tasters explains ad-
C8
WSINNHZ «NV WSIOV.L
layumuDVA in Xpio qmji. poumqo ojj
•lunnoT?^ oq; jo joqch^out o^unoArcj
siq by fioiTUisnjjT osioxtrj This qxm
-piAiptn oin jo itHfl. uj jsoj oq joaou isnui
^ip?^oi jo uopcloouoo oq; is^jticl *mo
501? A[.iodo.t<l oq. Jop.ro til Xx?id ojoqAV oq;
mou>i Tfsnui We "tHinwp ouupunui oq; uj SSOOOIIS JO )0.100S 0\[\ SlfAV U01)lS0(luavo
s^ouo Suisoj qnoqiiM sjoqio oq. ooiqd oaiS
pin? sftinqi jo woi;.iodo,id oq; doo>[ oj,
"sor|iun oq; oa.ioso.icI ppioM ouoA.toAO ji
.ftmisoao^ur o.iotn opmw be ppioo ojq jo
Xpouuoo oq; ^i?qi pouunqo s^sionj, oqx •;ooms it poounou
pro- osioi?rx pun '-TOTjiq 1J po[p?o t?qppng;
oq; '.inos V.l)UnoJ Confucius ;oi?j-jo
-.ioi|t?ui oqj, *MO.iq oqi o;sx?i oi joSuij
siq u; poddip qoi?o pm?-—ojq jo uio[quio
oqq. —xbSouia jo .tr?f x? o.rojoq poo^s once osicwj pun 'sruonjuo^ 'jmifrnfopig
-soinjqoop ooaqi oqi jo puo.ii oq} X[qi?i[Ul
r . '"■ ~ I, i i' ■ —
c><?
THE BOOK OF TEA
the truly essential. The reality of a
room, for instance, was to be found in
the vacant space enclosed by the roof
and walls, not in the roof and walls
themselves. The usefulness of a water
pitcher dwelt in the emptiness where
water might be put, not in the form of
the pitcher or the material of which it
was made. Vacuum is all potent be-
cause all containing. In vacuum alone
motion becomes possible. One who
could make of himself a vacuum into
which others might freely enter would
become master of all situations. The
whole can always dominate the part.
These Taoists- idea& have greatly in-
fluenced all our theories of action, even
to those of fencing and wrestling. Jiu-
jitsu, the Japanese art of self-defence,
owes its name to a passage in the Tao-
teiking. In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw
60
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
out and exhaust the enemy's strength
by non-resistance, vacuum, while con-
serving one's own strength for victory
in the final struggle. In art the im-
portance of the same principle is illus-
trated by the value of suggestion. In
leaving something unsaid the beholder
is given a-chance to complete the jdea
and thus a great masterpiece irresisti-
bly rivets your attention until you seem
to become actually ^-part of it. A vac-
uum is there for you to enter and fill
up to the full measure of your aesthetic
emotion.
He who had made himself master of
the art of living was the Real Man of
the Taoist. At birth he enters the realm
of dreams only to awaken to reality at
death. He tempers his own brightness
in order to merge himself into the ob-
scurity of others. He is "reluctant,
61
THE BOOK OF TEA
as one who crosses a stream in winter;
hesitating as one who fears the neigh-
bourhood; respectful, like a guest; trembling, like ice that is about to melt;
unassuming, like a piece of wood not
yet carved; vacant, like a valley; form-
less, like troubled waters." To him the
three jewels of life were Pity, Econ-
omy, and Modesty,
If now we turn our attention to
Zennism we shall find that it empha-
sises the teachings of Taoism. Zen is
a name derived from the Sanscrit word Dhyana, which signifies meditatioi^It
claims that through consecrated medi-
tation may be attained supreme self-
realisation. Meditation is one of the
six ways through which Buddhahood
may be reached, and the Zen sectarians
affirm that Sakyamuni laid special stress
on this method in his later teachings,
62
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
handing down the rules to his chief dis-
ciple Kashiapa. According to their tra-
dition Kashiapa, the first Zen patriarch,
imparted the secret to Ananda, who in
turn passed it on to successive patriarchs
until it reached Bodhi-Dharma, the
twenty-eighth. Bodhi-Dharma came
to Northern China in the early half of
the sixth century and was the first
patriarch of Chinese Zen. There is
much uncertainty about the history of
these patriarchs and their doctrines. In
its philosophical aspect early Zennism
seems to have affinity on one hand to
the Indian Negativism of Nagarjuna
and on the other to the Gnan phil-
osophy formulated by Sancharacharya.
The first teaching of Zen as we know it
at the present day must be attributed
to the sixth Chinese patriarch Yeno
(637-713), founder of Southern Zen,
63
THE BOOK OF TEA
so-called from the fact of its predomi-
nance in Southern China. He is closely
followed by the great Baso (died 788)
who made of Zen a living influence in
Celestial life. Hiakujo (719-814) the pupil of Baso, first instituted the Zen
monastery and established a ritual and
regulations for its government. In the
discussions of the Zen school after the
time of Baso we find the play of the
Yangtse-Kiang mind causing an acces-
sion of native modes of thought in con-
trast to the former Indian idealism.
Whatever sectarian pride may assert to
the contrary one cannot help being im-
pressed by the similarity of Southern
Zen to the teachings of Laotse and the
Taoist Conversationalists. In the Tao-
teiking we already find allusions to the
importance of self-concentration and
the need of properly regulating the
64
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
breath—essential points in the practice
of Zen meditation. Some of the best
commentaries on the Book of Laotse
have been written by Zen scholars.
Zennism, like Taoism, is the worship
of Relativity. One master defines Zen
as the art of feeling the polar star in
the southern sky. Truth can be reached
only through the comprehension of op-
posites. Again, Zennism, Jike^ Taoism,,
is a strong advocate of indjyidualism.
JNTdthing is real except that which^con^cerns the working of our own_mind&^
Yeno, the sixth patriarch, once saw two
monks watching the flag of a pagoda
fluttering in the wind. One said "It
is the wind that moves," the other said
"It is the flag that moves "; but Yeno
explained to them that the real move-
ment was neither of the wind nor the
flag, but of something within their own
65
THE BOOK OF TEA
minds. Hiakujo was walking in the
forest with a disciple when a hare scur-
ried off at their approach. "Why does
the hare fly from you?" asked Hia-
kujo. "Because he is afraid of me,"
was the answer. "No," said the master,
"it is because you have a murderous
instinct." This dialogue recalls that
of Soshi (Chauntse), the Taoist. One
day Soshi was walking on the bank of
a river with a friend. "How delight-
fully the fishes are enjoying themselves
in the water!" exclaimed Soshi. His
friend spake to him thus: "You are
not a fish; how do you know that the
fishes are enjoying themselves?" "You
are not myself," returned Soshi; "how
do you know that I do not know that
the fishes are enjoying themselves?"
Zen was often opposed to the pre-
cepts of orthodox Buddhism even as
66
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
Taoism was opposed to Confucianism.
To the transcendental insight of the
Zen, words were but an incumbrance to
thought; the whole sway of Buddhist
scriptures only commentaries on per-
sonal speculation. The followers of
Zen aimed at direct communion with the
inner nature of things, regarding their
outward accessories only as impedi-
ments to a clear perception of Truth.
It was this love of the Abstract that led
the Zen to prefer black and white
sketches to the elaborately coloured
paintings of the classic Buddhist School.
Some of the Zen even became icono-
clastic as a result of their endeavour to
recognise the Buddha in themselves
rather than through images and sym-
bolism. We find Tankawosho break-
ing up a wooden statue of Buddha
on a wintry day to make a fire.
67
THE BOOK OF TEA
"What sacrilege!" said the horror-
stricken bystander. "I wish to get
the Shali2 out of the ashes," calmly
rejoined the Zen. "But you certainly
will not get Shali from this image!"
was the angry retort, to which Tanka
replied, "If I do not, this is cer-
tainly not a Buddha and I am com-
mitting no sacrilege." Then he turned
to warm himself over the kindling fire.
A special contribution of Zen to
Eastern thought was its recognition of
the mundane as of equal importance
with the spiritual. It held that in the
great relation of things there was no
distinction of small and great, an atom
possessing equal possibilities with the
universe. The seeker for perfection
must discover in his own life the re2 The precious jewels formed in the bodies of
Buddhas after cremation. 68
TAOISM AND ZENNISM
flection of the inner light. The organi-
sation of the Zen monastery was very
significant of this point of view. To
every member, except the abbot, was
assigned some special work in the care-
taking of the monastery, and curiously
enough, to the novices were committed
the lighter duties, while to the most re-
spected and advanced monks were given
the more irksome and menial tasks.
Such services formed a part of the Zen
discipline and every least action must
be done absolutely perfectly. Thus
many a weighty discussion ensued while
weeding the garden, paring a turnip,
or serving tea. The whole ideal of Tea-
ism is a result of this Zen conception
of greatness in the smallest incidents of
life. Taoism furnished the basis for
aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them
practical.
69
THE TEA-ROOM
IV
THE TEA-ROOM
To European architects brought
up on the traditions of stone
and brick construction, our Japanese
method of building with wood and bam-
boo seems scarcely worthy to be ranked
as architecture. It is but quite recently
that a competent student of Western
architecture has recognised and paid
tribute to the remarkable perfection of
our great temples.1 Such being the case
as regards our classic architecture, we
could hardly expect the outsider to ap-
preciate the subtle beauty of the tea-
room, its principles of construction and
iWe refer to Ralph N. Cram's Impressions of
Japanese Architecture and the Allied Arts. The
Baker & Taylor Co., New York, 1905.
.73
THE BOOK OF TEA
decoration being entirely different from
those of the West.
The tea-room (the Sukiya) does not
pretend to be other than a mere cottage
—a straw hut, as we call it. The orig-
inal ideographs for Sukiya mean the
Abode of Fancy. Latterly the various
tea-masters substituted various Chinese
characters according to their conception
of the tea-room, and the term Sukiya
may signify the Abode of Vacancy or
the Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It
is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it
is an ephemeral structure built to house
a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of
Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of
ornamentation except for what may be
placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic
need of the moment. It is an Abode of
the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is
consecrated to the worship of the Im-
74
THE TEA-ROOM
perfect, purposely leaving some thing
unfinished for the play of the imagina-
tion to complete. The ideals of Teaism
have since the sixteenth~^cenMTy^nflu-enced our architecture to such degree
that the ordinary Japanese interior of
the present day, on account of the ex-
treme simplicity and chasteness of its
scheme of decoration, appears to for-
eigners almost barren.
T^The jfirst independent tea-roomjwas
the creation of Senno-Soyeki, com-
monly known by his later name of Ri-
kiu, the greatest of all tea-masters,
who, in the sixteenth century, under the patronage of Taiko-Hideyoshi, in-
stituted and brought to a high state of
perfection the formalities qfjthe Tea-
ceremony. The proportions of the tea-
room had been previously determined
by Jowo—a famous tea-master of the
75
THE BOOK OF TEA
fifteenth century. The early tea-room
consisted merely of a portion of the
ordinary drawing-room partitioned off
by screens for the purpose of the tea-
gathering. The portion partitioned off was called the Kakoi (enclosure),
a name still applied to those tea-rooms
which are built into a house and are not independent constructions. The Su-
kiya consists of the tea-room proper,
designed to accommodate not more than
five persons, a number suggestive of
the saying "more than the Graces and
less than the Muses," an anteroom
[(midsuya) where the tea utensils are
washed and arranged before being
brought in, a portico (machiai) in which
the guests wait until they receive the
summons to enter the tea-room, and a
garden path (the roji) which connects
the machiai with the tea-room. ^The
76
THE TEA-ROOM
tea-room is unimpressive in appearance.
It is smaller than the smallest of Jap-
anese houses, while the materials used
in its construction are intended to give
the suggestion of refined poverty. Yet
we must remember that all this is the
result of profound artistic forethought,
and that the details have been worked
out with care perhaps even greater than
that expended on the building of the
richest palaces and temples. A good
tea-room is more costly than an ordi-
nary mansion, for the selection of its
materials, as well as its workmanship,
requires immense care and precision.
Indeed, the carpenters employed by the
tea-masters form a distinct and highly
honoured class among artisans, their
work being no less delicate than that
of the makers of lacquer cabinets.
The tea-room is not only different
77
THE BOOK OF TEA
from any production of Western archi-
tecture, but also contrasts strongly with
the classical architecture of Japan it-
self. Our ancient noble edifices,
whether secular or ecclesiastical, were
not to be despised even as regards their
mere size. The few that have been
spared in the disastrous conflagrations
of centuries are still capable of aweing
us by the grandeur and richness of their
decoration. Huge pillars of wood from
two to three feet in diameter and from
thirty to forty feet high, supported, by
a complicated network of brackets, the
enormous beams which groaned under
the weight of the tile-covered slanting
roofs. The material and mode of con-
struction, though weak against fire,
proved itself strong against earth-
quakes, and was well suited to the cli-
matic conditions of the country. In the
78
THE TEA-ROOM
Golden Hall of Horiuji and the Pagoda
of Yakushiji, we have noteworthy ex-
amples of the durability of our wooden
architecture. These buildings have
practically stood intact for nearly
twelve centuries. The interior of the
old temples and palaces was profusely
decorated. In the Hoodo temple at
Uji, dating from the tenth century, we
can still see the elaborate canopy and
gilded baldachinos, many-coloured and
inlaid with mirrors and mother-of-pearl,
as well as remains of the paintings and
sculpture which formerly covered the
walls. Later, at Nikko and in the
Nijo castle in Kyoto, we see structural
beauty sacrificed to a wealth of orna-
mentation which in colour and exquisite
detail equals the utmost gorgeousness
of Arabian or Moorish effort. The simplicity and purism of the tea-
19
THE BOOK OF TEA
room resulted from emulation of the
Zen monastery. A Zen monastery dif-
fers from those of other Buddhist sects
inasmuch as it is meant only to be__a
dwelling place for the monks. Its
chapel is not a place of worship or pil-
grimage, but a college room where the
students congregate for discussion and
the practice of meditation. The room
is bare except for a central alcove in
which, behind the altar, is a statue of
Bodhi Dhama, the founder of the sect, or
of Sakyamuni attended by Kaphiapa
and Ananda, the two earliest Zen patri-
archs. On the altar, flowers and incense
are offered up in memory of the great
contributions which these sages made
to Zen. We have already said that it
was the ritual instituted by the Zen
monks of successively drinking tea out
of a bowl before the image of Bodhi
80
THE TEA-ROOM
Dhama, which laid the foundations of
the tea-ceremony. We might add Here that the altar of the Zen chapel was the
prototype of the Tokonoma,—the place
of honour in a Japanese room where
paintings and flowers are placed for the
edification of the guests.
All our great tea-masters were stu-
dents of Zen and attempted to introduce
the spirit of Zennism into the actual-
ities of life. Thus the room, like the
other equipments of the tea-ceremony, reflects many of the Zen doctrines. The
size of the orthodox tea-room, which is
four mats and a half, or ten feet square,
is determined by a passage in the Sutra
of Vikramadytia. In that interesting
work, Vikramadytia welcomes the Saint
Manjushiri and eighty-four thousand
disciples of Buddha in a room of this
size,—an allegory based on the theory;
81
THE BOOK OF TEA
of the non-existence of space tojthe^
truly enlightened. Again thev roji,
the garden path which leads from the
machiai to the tea-room, signified the first stage of meditation,—the passage
into self-illumination. The roji was
intended to break connection with the
outside world, and to produce a fresh
sensation conducive to the full enjoy-
ment of aestheticism in the tea-room it-
self. One who has trodden this garden
path cannot fail to remember how his
spirit, as he walked in the twilight of
evergreens over the regular irregulari-
ties of the stepping stones, beneath
which lay dried pine needles, and passed
beside the moss-covered granite lan-
terns, became uplifted above ordinary
thoughts. One may be in the midst of
a city, and yet feel as if he were in the
forest far away from the dust and din THE TEA-ROOM
of civilisation. Great was the ingenuity displayed by the tea-masters in produc-
ing these effects of serenity and purity.
The nature of the sensations to be
aroused in passing through the roji
differed with different tea-masters.
Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneli-
ness, and claimed the secret of mak-
ing a roji was contained in the ancient
ditty:
"I look beyond;
Flowers are not,
Nor tinted leaves.
On the sea beach
A solitary cottage stands
In the waning light
Of an autumn eve."
Others, like Kobori-Enshiu, sought
for a different effect. Enshiu said the
idea of the garden path was to be found
in the following verses: THE BOOK OF TEA]
"A cluster of summer trees,
A bit of the sea,
A pale evening moon."
It is not difficult to gather his meaning.
He wished to create the attitude of a
newly awakened soul still lingering
amid shadowy dreams of the past, yet
bathing in the sweet unconsciousness of
a mellow spiritual light, and yearning
for the freedom that lay in the expanse
beyond.
Thus prepared the guest will silently
approach the sanctuary, and, if a sa-
murai, will leave his sword on the rack
beneath the eaves, the tea-room being
preeminently the house of peace. Then
he will bend low and creep into the room
through a small door not more than
three feet in height. This proceeding
was incumbent on all guests,—high and
low alike,—and was intended to incul-
84
THE TEA-ROOM
cate humility. The order of precedence
having been mutually agreed upon
while resting in the machiai, the guests
one by one will enter noiselessly and
take their seats, first making obeisance
to the picture or flower arrangement on
the tokonoma. The host will not enter
the room until all the guests have seated
themselves and quiet reigns with noth-
ing to break the silence save the note
of the boiling water in the iron kettle.
The kettle sings well, for pieces of iron
are so arranged in the bottom as to pro-
duce a peculiar melody in which one
may hear the echoes of a cataract muf-
fled by clouds, of a distant sea break-
ing among the rocks, a rainstorm sweep-
ing through a bamboo forest, or of the
soughing of pines on some faraway hill.
Even in the daytime the light in the
room is subdued, for the low eaves of
85
THE BOOK OF TEA
the slanting roof admit but few of the
sun's rays. Everything is sober in tint
from the ceiling to the floor; the guests
themselves have carefully chosen gar-
ments of unobtrusive colours. The
mellowness of age is over all, every-
thing suggestive of recent acquirement
being tabooed save only the one note
of contrast furnished by the bamboo
dipper and the linen napkin, both im-
maculately white and new. However
faded the tea-room and the tea-equip-
age may seem, everything is absolutely
clean. Not a particle of dust will be
found in the darkest corner, for if any
exists the host is not a tea-master. One
of the first requisites of a tea-master
is the knowledge of how to sweep,
clean, and wash, for there is an art in
cleaning and dusting. A piece of an-
tique metal work must not be attacked
86
THE TEA-ROOM
with the unscrupulous zeal of the Dutch housewife. Dripping water from a
flower vase need not be wiped away, for
it may be suggestive of dew and
coolness.
In this connection there is a story of
Rikiu which well illustrates the ideas of
cleanliness entertained by the tea-mas-
ters. Rikiu was watching his son Shoan
as he swept and watered the garden
path. "Not clean enough," said Rikiu,
when Shoan had finished his task, and
bade him try again. After a weary
hour the son turned to Rikiu: " Father,
there is nothing more to be done. The
steps have been washed for the third
time, the stone lanterns and the trees
are well sprinkled with water, moss and
lichens are shining with a fresh verdure;
not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the
ground." "Young fool," chided the
87
THE BOOK OF TEA:
tea-master, "that is not the way a gar-
den path should be swept." Saying
this, Rikiu stepped into the garden,
shook a tree and scattered over the gar-
den gold and crimson leaves, scraps of
the brocade of autumn! What Rikiu
demanded was not cleanliness alone,
but the beautiful and the natural also.
The name, Abode of Fancy, implies
a structure created to meet some indi-
vidual artistic requirement. The tea-
room is made for the tea-master, not
the tea-master for the tea-room. It is
not intended for posterity and is there-
fore ephemeral. The idea that every-
one should have a house of his own is
based on an ancient custom of the Jap-
anese race, Shinto superstition ordain-
ing that every dwelling should be evacu-
ated on the death of its chief occupant.
Perhaps there may have been some un-
88
THE TEA-ROOM
realised sanitary reason for this practice.
Another early custom was that a newly
built house should be provided for each
couple that married. It is on account
of such customs that we find the Im-
perial capitals so frequently removed
from one site to another in ancient days.
The rebuilding, every twenty years, of
Ise Temple, the supreme shrine of the
Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of
these ancient rites which still obtain at
the present day. The observance of
these customs was only possible with
some such form of construction as that
furnished by our system of wooden
architecture, easily pulled down, easily
built up. A more lasting style, employ-
ing brick and stone, would have ren-
dered migrations impracticable, as in-
deed they became when the more stable
and massive wooden construction of!
89
THE ROOK OF TEA
China was adopted by us after the Nara
period.
With the predominance of Zen in-
dividualism in the fifteenth century,
however, the old idea became imbued
with a deeper significance as conceived
in connection with the tea-room. Zenn-
ism, with the Buddhist theory of evan-
escence and its demands for the mastery
of spirit over matter, recognised the
house only as a temporary refuge for
the body. The body itself was but as
a hut in the wilderness, a flimsy shelter
made by tying together the grasses that
grew around,—when these ceased to be
bound together they again became re-
solved into the original waste. In the
tea-room fugitiveness is suggested in
the thatched roof, frailty in the slender
pillars, lightness in the bamboo support,
apparent carelessness in the use of com-
90
THE TEA-ROOM
monplace materials. The eternal is to
be found only in the spirit which, em-
bodied in these simple surroundings,
beautifies them with the subtle light of
its refinement.
That the tea-room should be built to
suit some individual taste is an enforce-
ment of the principle of vitality in art.
Art, to be fully appreciated, must be
true to contemporaneous life. It is not
that we should ignore the claims of pos-
terity, but that we should seek to enjoy
the present more. It is not that we
should disregard the creations of the
past, but that we should try to assimi-
late them into our consciousness. Sla-
vish conformity to traditions and
formulas fetters the expression of indi-
viduality in architecture. We can but
weep over those senseless imitations of
European buildings which one beholds
91
THE BOOK OF TEA
in modern Japan. We marvel why,
among the most progressive Western
nations, architecture should be so de-
void of originality, so replete with rep-
etitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we
are now passing through an age of dem-
ocratisation in art, while awaiting the
rise of some princely master who shall
establish a new dynasty. Would that
we loved the ancients more and copied
them less! It has been said that the
Greeks were great because they never
drew from the antique.
The term, Abode of Vacancy, besides
conveying the Taoist theory of the all-
containing, involves the conception of a
continued need of change in decorative
motives. The tea-room is absolutely
empty, except for what may be placed
there temporarily to satisfy some aes-
thetic mood. Some special art object is
92
THE TEA-ROOM
brought in for the occasion, and every-
thing else is selected and arranged to
enhance the beauty of the principal
theme. One cannot listen to different
pieces of music at the same time, a real
comprehension of the beautiful being
possible only through concentration
upon some central motive. Thus it will
be seen that the system of decoration
in our tea-rooms is opposed to that
which obtains in the West, where the
interior of a house is often converted
into a museum. To a Japanese, accus-
tomed to simplicity of ornamentation
and frequent change of decorative
method, a Western interior perma-
nently filled with a vast array of pic-
tures, statuary, and bric-a-brac gives
the impression of mere vulgar display
of riches. It calls for a mighty wealth
of appreciation to enjoy the constant
93
THE BOOK OF TEA
sight of even a masterpiece, and limit-
less indeed must be the capacity for ar-
tistic feeling in those who can exist
day after day in the midst of such con-
fusion of colour and form as is to be
often seen in the homes of Europe and
America.
The "Abode of the Unsymmetri-
cal" suggests another phase of our dec-
orative scheme. The absence of sym-
metry in Japanese art objects has been
often commented on by Western critics.
This, also, is a result of a working out
through Zennism of Taoist ideals. Con-
fucianism, with its deep-seated idea of
dualism, and Northern Buddhism with
its worship of a trinity, were in no way
opposed to the expression of symmetry.
As a matter of fact, if we study the
ancient bronzes of China or the relig-
ious arts of the Tang dynasty and the
94
THE TEA-ROOM
Nara period, we shall recognise a con-
stant striving after symmetry. The
decoration of our classical interiors was
decidedly regular in its arrangement.
The Taoist and Zen conception of per-
fection, however, was different. The
dynamic nature of their philosophy laid
more stress upon the process through
which perfection was sought than upon
perfection itself. True beauty could
be discovered only by one who mentally
completed the incomplete. The virility
of life and art lay in its possibilities for
growth. In the tea-room it is left for
each guest in imagination to complete
the total effect in reIation_ta~ himself.
Since Zennism has become the prevail-
ing mode of thought, the art of the ex-
treme Orient has purposely avoided the
symmetrical as expressing not only
completion, but repetition. Uniformity
95
THE BOOK OF TEA
of design was considered as fatal to the
freshness of imagination. Thus, land-
scapes, birds, and flowers became the
favourite subjects for depiction rather
than the human figure, the latter being
present in the person of the beholder
himself. We are often too much in
evidence as it is, and in spite of our
vanity even self-regard is apt to be-
come monotonous.
In the tea-room the fear of repetition
is a constant presence. The various ob-
jects for the decoration of a room
should be so selected that no colour or
design shall be repeated. If you have
a living flower, a painting of flowers is
not allowable. If you are using a round
kettle, the water pitcher should be
angular. A cup with a black glaze
should not be associated with a tea-
caddy of black lacquer. In placing a
96
THE TEA-ROOM
vase on an incense burner on the toko-
noma, care should be taken not to put
it in the exact centre, lest it divide the
space into equal halves. The pillar of
the tokonoma should be of a different
kind of wood from the other pillars,
in order to break any suggestion of
monotony in the room.
Here again the Japanese method of
interior decoration differs from that of
the Occident, where we see objects ar-
rayed symmetrically on mantelpieces
and elsewhere. In Western houses we
are often confronted with what appears
to us useless reiteration. We find it
trying to talk to a man while his full-
length portrait stares at us from behind
his back. We wonder which is real, he
of the picture or he who talks, and feel
a curious conviction that one of them
must be fraud. Many a time have we
97
THE BOOK OF TEA
sat at a festive board contemplating,
with a secret shock to our digestion,
the representation of abundance on the
dining-room walls. Why these pic-
tured victims of chase and sport, the
elaborate carvings of fishes and fruit?
Why the display of family plates, re-
minding us of those who have dined and
are dead?
The simplicity of the tea-room and
its freedom from vulgarity make it
truly a sanctuary from the vexations of
the outer world. There and there alone
can one consecrate himself to undis-
turbed adoration of the beautiful. In
the sixteenth century the tea-room af-
forded a welcome respite from labour
to the fierce warriors and statesmen
engaged in the unification and recon-
struction of Japan. In the seventeenth
century, after the strict formalism of
98
THE TEA-ROOM
the Tokugawa rule had been developed,
it offered the only opportunity possible
for the free communion of artistic
spirits. Before a great work of art
there was no distinction between dai-
myo, samurai, and commoner. Nowa-
days industrialism is making true re-
finement more and more difficult all the
world over. Do we not need the tea-
room more than ever?
99
V
ART APPRECIATION
ART APPRECIATION
Have you heard the Taoist tale of
the Taming of the Harp?
Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine
of Lungmen 1 stood a Kiri tree, a ver-
itable king of the forest. It reared its
head to talk to the stars; its roots
struck deep into the earth, mingling
their bronzed coils with those of the sil-
ver dragon that slept beneath. And it
came to pass that a mighty wizard made
of this tree a wondrous harp, whose
stubborn spirit should be tamed but by
the greatest of musicians. For long
the instrument was treasured by the
Emperor of China, but all in vain were
i The Dragon Gorge of Honan.
103
TJIE BOOK OF TEA
the efforts of those who in turn tried to
draw melody from its strings. In re-
sponse to their utmost strivings there
came from the harp but harsh notes of
disdain, ill-according with the songs
they fain would sing. The harp refused
to recognise a master.
At last came Peiwoh, the prince of
harpists. With tender hand he caressed
the harp as one might seek to soothe an
unruly horse, and softly touched the
chords. He sang of nature and the
seasons, of high mountains and flowing
waters, and all the memories of the tree
awoke! Once more the sweet breath of
spring played amidst its branches. The
young cataracts, as they danced down
the ravine, laughed to the budding
flowers. Anon were heard the dreamy
voices of summer with its myriad in-
sects, the gentle pattering of rain, the
104*
ART APPRECIATION
wail of the cuckoo. Hark! a tiger roars,
—the valley answers again. It is au-
tumn; in the desert night, sharp like
a sword gleams the moon upon the
frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and
through the snow-filled air swirl flocks
of swans and rattling hailstones beat
upon the boughs with fierce delight.
Then Peiwoh changed the key and
sang of love. The forest swayed like
an ardent swain deep lost in thought.
On high, like a haughty maiden, swept
a cloud bright and fair; but passing,
trailed long shadows on the ground,
black like despair. Again the mode was
changed; Peiwoh sang of war, of clash-
ing steel and trampling steeds. And
in the harp arose the tempest of Lung-
men, the dragon rode the lightning, the
thundering avalanche crashed through
the hills. In ecstasy the Celestial mon-
105
THE BOOK OF TEA
arch asked Peiwoh wherein lay the se-
cret of his victory. "Sire," he replied,
"others have failed because they sang
but of themselves. I left the harp to
choose its theme, and knew not truly
whether the harp had been Peiwoh or
Peiwoh were the harp."
This story well illustrates the mystery
of art appreciation. The masterpiece
is a symphony played upon our finest
feelings. True art is Peiwoh, and we
the harp of Lungmen. At the magic
touch of the beautiful the secret chords
of our being are awakened, we vibrate
and thrill in response to its call. Mind
speaks to mind. We listen to the un-
spoken, we gaze upon the unseen. The
master calls forth notes we know not of.
Memories long forgotten all come back
to us with a new significance. Hopes
stifled by fear, yearnings that we dare
106
ART APPRECIATION
not recognise, stand forth in new glory.
Our mind is the canvas on which the
artists lay their colour; their pigments
are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the
light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The
masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of
the masterpiece.
The sympathetic communion of
minds necessary for art appreciation
must be based on mutual concession.
The spectator must cultivate the proper
attitude for receiving the message, as
the artist must know how to impart it.
The tea-master, Kobori-Enshiu, him-
self a daimyo, has left to us these mem-
orable words: " Approach a great paint-
ing as thou wouldst approach a great
prince." In order to understand a mas-
terpiece, you must lay yourself low be-
fore it and await with bated breath its
least utterance. An eminent Sung
107
THE BOOK OF TEA
critic once made a charming confession.
Said he: " In my young days I praised
the master whose pictures I liked, but
as my judgment matured I praised
myself for liking what the masters had
chosen to have me like." It is to be
deplored that so few of us really take
pains to study the moods of the mas-
ters. In our stubborn ignorance we
refuse to render them this simple cour-
tesy, and thus often miss the rich repast
of beauty spread before our very eyes.
A master has always something to
offer, while we go hungry solely be-
cause of our own lack of appreciation.
To the sympathetic a masterpiece
becomes a living reality towards which
we feel drawn in bonds of comradeship.
The masters are immortal, for their
loves and fears live in us over and over
again. It is rather the soul than the
108
ART APPRECIATION
hand, the man than the technique, which
appeals to us,—the more human the
call the deeper is our response. It is
because of this secret understanding
between the master and ourselves that
in poetry or romance we suffer and re-
joice with the hero and heroine. Chika-
matsu, our Japanese Shakespeare, has
laid down as one of the first principles
of dramatic composition the importance
of taking the audience into the confi-
dence of the author. Several of his
pupils submitted plays for his approval,
but only one of the pieces appealed to
him. It was a play somewhat resem-
bling the Comedy of Errors, in which
twin brethren suffer through mistaken
identity. "This," said Chikamatsu,
"has the proper spirit of the drama,
for it takes the audience into consider-
ation. The public is permitted to know
109
THE BOOK OF TEA
more than the actors. It knows where
the mistake lies, and pities the poor fig-
ures on the board who innocently rush
to their fate."
The great masters both of the East
and the West never forgot the value of
suggestion as a means for taking the
spectator into their confidence. Who
can contemplate a masterpiece without
being awed by the immense vista of
thought presented to our consideration?
How familiar and sympathetic are
they all; how cold in contrast the mod-
ern commonplaces! In the former we
feel the warm outpouring of a man's
heart; in the latter only a formal sa-
lute. Engrossed in his technique, the
modern rarely rises above himself. Like
the musicians who vainly invoked the
Lungmen harp, he sings only of him-
self. His works may be nearer science,
110
ART APPRECIATION
but are further from humanity. We
have an old saying in Japan that a wo-
man cannot love a man who is truly
vain, for there is no crevice in his heart
for love to enter and fill up. In art
vanity is equally fatal to sympathetic
feeling, whether on the part of the
artist or the public.
Nothing is more hallowing than the
union of kindred spirits in art. At the
moment of meeting, the art lover tran-
scends himself. At once he is and is
not. He catches a glimpse of Infinity,
but words cannot voice his delight, for
the eye has no tongue. Freed from
the fetters of matter, his spirit moves
in the rhythm of things. It is thus that
art becomes akin to religion and enno-
bles mankind. It is this which makes a
masterpiece something sacred. In the
old days the veneration in which the
111
THE BOOK OF TEA
Japanese held the work of the great
artist was intense. The tea-masters
guarded their treasures with religious
secrecy, and it was often necessary to
open a whole series of boxes, one within
another, before reaching the shrine
itself—the silken wrapping within
whose soft folds lay the holy of holies.
Rarely was the object exposed to view,
and then only to the initiated.
At the time when Teaism was in the
ascendency the Taiko's generals would
be better satisfied with the present of a
rare work of art than a large grant of
territory as a reward of victory. Many
of our favourite dramas are based on
the loss and recovery of a noted master-
piece. For instance, in one play the
palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which
was preserved the celebrated painting
of Dharuma by Sesson, suddenly takes in
ART APPRECIATION
fire through the negligence of the
samurai in charge. Resolved at all
hazards to rescue the precious painting,
he rushes into the burning building and
seizes the kakemono, only to find all
means of exit cut off by the flames.
Thinking only of the picture, he
slashes open his body with his sword,
wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson
and plunges it into the gaping wound.
The fire is at last extinguished. Among
the smoking embers is found a half-
consumed corpse, within which reposes
the treasure uninjured by the fire. Hor-
rible as such tales are, they illustrate
the great value that we set upon a mas-
terpiece, as well as the devotion of a
trusted samurai.
We must remember, however, that
art is of value only to the extent that it
speaks to us. It might be a universal
113
THE BOOK OF TEA!
language if we ourselves were universal
in our sympathies. Our finite nature,
the power of tradition and convention-
ality, as well as our hereditary instincts,
restrict the scope of our capacity for
artistic enjoyment. Our very individ-
uality establishes in one sense a limit to
our understanding; and our aesthetic
personality seeks its own affinities in
the creations of the past. It is true that
with cultivation our sense of art appre-
ciation broadens, and we become able
to enjoy many hitherto unrecognised
expressions of beauty. But, after all,
we see only our own image in the uni-
verse,—our particular idiosyncracies
dictate the mode of our perceptions. The tea-masters collected only objects
which fell strictly within the measure
of their individual appreciation.
One is reminded in this connection
114
ART APPRECIATION
of a story concerning Kobori-Enshiu.
Enshiu was complimented by his disci-
ples on the admirable taste he had dis-
played in the choice of his collection.
Said they, "Each piece is such that no
one could help admiring. It shows that
you had better taste than had Rikiu,
for his collection could only be appre-
ciated by one beholder in a thousand."
Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This
only proves how commonplace I am.
The great Rikiu dared to love only
those objects which personally appealed
to him, whereas I unconsciously cater
to the taste of the majority. Verily,
Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea-
masters."
It is much to be regretted that so
much of the apparent enthusiasm for
art at the present day has no founda-
tion in real feeling. In this democratic
115
THE BOOK OF TEA
age of ours men clamour for what is
popularly considered the best, regard-
less of their feelings. They want the
costly, not the refined; the fashionable,
not the beautiful. To the masses, con-
templation of illustrated periodicals, the
worthy product of their own industrial-
ism, would give more digestible food
for artistic enjoyment than the early
Italians or the Ashikaga masters, whom
they pretend to admire. The name of
the artist is more important to them
than the quality of the work. As a
Chinese critic complained many centu-
ries ago, "People criticise a picture by
their ear." It is this lack of genuine
appreciation that is responsible for the
pseudo-classic horrors that to-day greet
us wherever we turn.
Another common mistake is that of
confusing art with archaeology. The
116
ART APPRECIATION
veneration born of antiquity is one of
the best traits in the human character,
and fain would we have it cultivated
to a greater extent. The old masters
are rightly to be honoured for opening
the path to future enlightenment. The
mere fact that they have passed un-
scathed through centuries of criticism
and come down to us still covered with
glory commands our respect. But we
should be foolish indeed if we valued
their achievement simply on the score
of age. Yet we allow our historical
sympathy to override our aesthetic dis-
crimination. We offer flowers of ap-
probation when the artist is safely laid
in his grave. The nineteenth century,
pregnant with the theory of evolution,
has moreover created in us the habit of
losing sight of the individual in the
species. A collector is anxious to ac-
117
THE BOOK OF TEA
quire specimens to illustrate a period
or a school, and forgets that a single
masterpiece can teach us more than any
number of the mediocre products of a
given period or school. We classify
too much and enjoy too little. The
sacrifice of the aesthetic to the so-called
scientific method of exhibition has been
the bane of many museums.
The claims of contemporary art can-
not be ignored in any vital scheme of
life. The art of to-day is that which
really belongs to us: it is our own re-
flection. In condemning it we but
condemn ourselves. We say that the
present age possesses no art:—who is
responsible for this? It is indeed a
shame that despite all our rhapsodies
about the ancients we pay so little at-
tention to our own possibilities. Strug-
gling artists, weary souls lingering in
IIS
ART APPRECIATION
the shadow of cold disdain! In our
self-centred century, what inspiration
do we offer them? The past may well
look with pity at the poverty of our
civilisation; the future will laugh at the
barrenness of our art. We are destroy-
ing art in destroying the beautiful in
life. Would that some great wizard
might from the stem of society shape a
mighty harp whose strings would re-
sound to the touch of genius.
119
VI
FLOWERS
VI
FLOWERS
IN the trembling grey of a spring
dawn, when the birds were whisper-
ing in mysterious cadence among the
trees, have you not felt that they were
talking to their mates about the flow-
ers? Surely with mankind the appre-
ciation of flowers must have been
coeval with the poetry of love. Where
better than in a flower, sweet in its
unconsciousness, fragrant because of
its silence, can we image the unfolding
of a virgin soul? The primeval man
in offering the first garland to his
maiden thereby transcended the brute.
He became human in thus rising above
the crude necessities of nature. He
123
THE BOOK OF TEA
entered the realm of art when he
perceived the subtle use of the use-
less.
In joy or sadness, flowers are our
constant friends. We eat, drink, sing,
dance, and flirt with them. We wed
and christen with flowers. We dare not
die without them. We have worshipped
with the lily, we have meditated with the
lotus, we have charged in battle array
with the rose and the chrysanthemum.
We have even attempted to speak in
the language of flowers. How could
we live without them? It frightens one
to conceive of a world bereft of their
presence. What solace do they not
bring to the bedside of the sick, what a
light of bliss to the darkness of weary
spirits? Their serene tenderness re-
stores to us our waning confidence in
the universe even as the intent gaze of a FLOWERS
beautiful child recalls our lost hopes.
When we are laid low in the dust it is
they who linger in sorrow over our
graves.
Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the
fact that in spite of our companionship
with flowers we have not risen very far
above the brute. Scratch the sheepskin
and the wolf within us will soon show
his teeth. It has been said that man at
ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at
thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at
fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a
criminal because he has never ceased to
be an animal. Nothing is real to us but
hunger, nothing sacred except our own
desires. Shrine after shrine has crum-
bled before our eyes; but one altar for-
ever is preserved, that whereon we burn
incense to the supreme idol,—ourselves.
Our god is great, and money is his
125
THE BOOK OF TEA
Prophet! We devastate nature in order
to make sacrifice to him. We boast
that we have conquered Matter and for-
get that it is Matter that has enslaved
us. What atrocities do we not perpe-
trate in the name of culture and refine-
ment!
Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of
the stars, standing in the garden, nod-
ding your heads to the bees as they sing
of the dews and the sunbeams, are you
aware of the fearful doom that awaits
you? Dream on, sway and frolic while
you may in the gentle breezes of sum-
mer. To-morrow a ruthless hand will
close around your throats. You will be
wrenched, torn asunder limb by limb,
and borne away from your quiet homes.
The wretch, she may be passing fair.
She may say how lovely you are while
her fingers are still moist with your
126
FLOWERS
blood. Tell me, will this be kindness?
It may be your fate to be imprisoned
in the hair of one whom you know to be
heartless or to be thrust into the button-
hole of one who would not dare to look
you in the face were you a man. It
may even be your lot to be confined in
some narrow vessel with only stagnant
water to quench the maddening thirst
that warns of ebbing life.
Flowers, if you were in the land of
the Mikado, you might some time meet
a dread personage armed with scissors
and a tiny saw. He would call himself
a Master of Flowers. He would claim
the rights of a doctor and you would
instinctively hate him, for you know a
doctor always seeks to prolong the trou-
bles of his victims. He would cut, bend,
and twist you into those impossible po-
sitions which he thinks it proper that m
THE BOOK OF TEA
you should assume. He would contort
your muscles and dislocate your bones
like any osteopath. He would burn
you with red-hot coals to stop your
bleeding, and thrust wires into you to
assist your circulation. He would diet
you with salt, vinegar, alum, and
sometimes, vitriol. Boiling water would
be poured on your feet when you
seemed ready to faint. It would be his
boast that he could keep life within you
for two or more weeks longer than
would have been possible without his
treatment. Would you not have pre-
ferred to have been killed at once when
you were first captured? What were
the crimes you must have committed
during your past incarnation to warrant
such punishment in this?
The wanton waste of flowers among
Western communities is even more ap-
128
FLOWERS
palling than the way they are treated
by Eastern Flower Masters. The num-
ber of flowers cut daily to adorn the
ballrooms and banquet-tables of Europe
and America, to be thrown away on
the morrow, must be something enor-
mous; if strung together they might
garland a continent. Beside this utter
carelessness of life, the guilt of the
Flower-Master becomes insignificant.
He, at least, respects the economy of
nature, selects his victims with careful
foresight, and after death does honour
to their remains. In the West the dis-
play of flowers seems to be a part of
the pageantry of wealth,—the fancy of
a moment. Whither do they all go,
these flowers, when the revelry is over?
Nothing is more pitiful than to see a
faded flower remorselessly flung upon
a dung heap.
129
THE BOOK OF TEA
1 Why were the flowers born so beauti-
ful and yet so hapless? Insects can
sting, and even the meekest of beasts
will fight when brought to bay. The
birds whose plumage is sought to deck
some bonnet can fly from its pursuer,
the furred animal whose coat you covet
for your own may hide at your ap-
proach. Alas! The only flower known
to have wings is the butterfly; all others
stand helpless before the destroyer. If
they shriek in their death agony their
cry never reaches our hardened ears.
We are ever brutal to those who love
and serve us in silence, but the time may
come when, for our cruelty, we shall
be deserted by these best friends of
ours. Have you not noticed that the
wild flowers are becoming scarcer every
year? It may be that their wise men
have told them to depart till man be-
130
FLOWERS
comes more human. Perhaps they have
migrated to heaven.
Much may be said in favour of him
who cultivates plants. The man of the
pot is far more humane than he of the
scissors. We watch with delight his
concern about water and sunshine, his
feuds with parasites, his horror of
frosts, his anxiety when the buds come
slowly, his rapture when the leaves at-
tain their lustre. In the East the art of
floriculture is a very ancient one, and
the loves of a poet and his favourite
plant have often been recorded in story
and song. With the development of
ceramics during the Tang and Sung
dynasties we hear of wonderful recep-
tacles made to hold plants, not pots, but
jewelled palaces. A special attendant
was detailed to wait upon each flower
and to wash its leaves with soft brushes
131
THE BOOK OF TEA
made of rabbit hair. It has been writ-
ten * that the peony should be bathed
by a handsome maiden in full costume,
that a winter-plum should be watered
by a pale, slender monk. In Japan,
one of the most popular of the No-
dances, the Hachinoki, composed dur-
ing the Ashikaga period, is based upon
the story of an impoverished knight,
who, on a freezing night, in lack of fuel
for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in
order to entertain a wandering friar.
The friar is in reality no other than
Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Ras-
chid of our tales, and the sacrifice is not
without its reward. This opera never
fails to draw tears from a Tokio audi-
ence even to-day.
Great precautions were taken for the
preservation of delicate blossoms. Emi " Pingtse," by Yuenchunlang. 132
FLOWERS
peror Huensung, of the Tang dynasty,
hung tiny golden bells on the branches
in his garden to keep off the birds. He
it was who went off in the springtime
with his court musicians to gladden the
flowers with soft music. A quaint tab-
let, which tradition ascribes to Yoshit-
sune, the hero of our Arthurian legends,
is still extant in one of the Japanese
monasteries.2 It is a notice put up for
the protection of a certain wonderful
plum-tree, and appeals to us with the
grim humour of a warlike age. After
referring to the beauty of the blossoms,
the inscription says: "Whoever cuts a
single branch of this tree shall forfeit
a finger therefor." Would that such
laws could be enforced nowadays
against those who wantonly destroy
flowers and mutilate objects of art!
2 Sumadera, near Kobe.
133
THE BOOK OF TEA
Yet even in the case of pot flowers
we are inclined to suspect the selfishness
of man. Why take the plants from
their homes and ask them to bloom mid
strange surroundings? Is it not like
asking the birds to sing and mate
cooped up in cages? Who knows but
that the orchids feel stifled by the arti-
ficial heat in your conservatories and
hopelessly long for a glimpse of their
own Southern skies?
i The ideal lover of flowers is he who
visits them in their native haunts, like
Taoyuenming,3 who sat before a broken
bamboo fence in converse with the wild
chrysanthemum, or Linwosing, losing
himself amid mysterious fragrance as
he wandered in the twilight among the
plum-blossoms of the Western Lake.
'Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a
8 All celebrated Chinese poets and philosophers.
134
FLOWERS

boat so that his dreams might mingle
with those of the lotus. It was this
same spirit which moved the Empress
Komio, one of our most renowned Nara
sovereigns, as she sang: "If I pluck
thee, my hand will defile thee, O
Flower! Standing in the meadows as
thou art, I offer thee to the Buddhas
of the past, of the present, of the
future."
However, let us not be too sentimen-
tal. Let us be less luxurious but more
magnificent. Said Laotse: "Heaven
and earth are pitiless." Said Kobodai-
shi: " Flow, flow, flow, flow, the current
of life is ever onward. Die, die, die,
die, death comes to all." Destruction
faces us wherever wej:urn. Destruction
below and above, destruction behind
and before. Change is the only Eter-
nal,—why not as welcome Death as
135
THE BOOK OF TEA
Life? They are but counterparts one
of the other,—the Night and Day of
Brahma. Through the disintegration
of the old, re-creation becomes possible.
We have worshipped Death, the relent-
less goddess of mercy, under many dif-
ferent names. It was the shadow of the
'All-devouring that the Gheburs greeted
in the fire. It is the icy purism of the
sword-soul before which Shinto-Japan
prostrates herself even to-day. The
mystic fire consumes our weakness, the
sacred sword cleaves the bondage of
desire. From our ashes springs the
phoenix of celestial hope, out of the
freedom comes a higher realisation of
manhood.
Why not destroy flowers if thereby we can evolve new forms ennobling the world idea? We only ask them to join in our sacrifice to the beautiful. We 136
FLOWERS
shall atone for the deed by consecrating
ourselves to Purity and Simplicity.
Thus reasoned the tea-masters when
they established the Cult of Flowers.
Anyone acquainted with the ways
of our tea- and flower-masters must
have noticed the religious veneration
with which they regard flowers. They
do not cull at random, but carefully se-
lect each branch or spray with an eye to
the artistic composition they have in
mind. They would be ashamed should
they chance to cut more than were abso-
lutely necessary. It may be remarked
in this connection that they always asso-
ciate the leaves, if there be any, with the
flower, for their object is to present the
whole beauty of plant life. In this
respect, as in many others, their method
differs from that pursued in Western
countries. Here we are apt to see only in
THE BOOK OF TEA
the flower stems, heads, as it were, with-
out body, stuck promiscuously into a
vase.
When a tea-master has arranged a
flower to his satisfaction he will place
it on the tokonoma, the place of honour
in a Japanese room. Nothing else will
be placed near it which might interfere
with its effect, not even a painting, un-
less there be some special aesthetic rea-
son for the combination. It rests there
like an enthroned prince, and the guests
or disciples on entering the room will
salute it with a profound bow before
making their addresses to the host.
Drawings from masterpieces are made
and published for the edification of
amateurs. The amount of literature on
the subject is quite voluminous. When
the flower fades, the master tenderly
consigns it to the river or carefully bur-
138
FLOWERS
ies it in the ground. Monuments even
are sometimes erected to their memory.
The birth of the Art of Flower Ar-
rangement seems to be simultaneous
with that of Teaism in the fifteenth
century. Our legends ascribe the first
flower arrangement to those early
Buddhist saints who gathered the flow-
ers strewn by the storm and, in their
infinite solicitude for all living things,
placed them in vessels of water. It is
said that Soami, the great painter and
connoisseur of the court of Ashikaga-
Yoshimasa, was one of the earliest
adepts at it. Juko, the tea-master, was
one of his pupils, as was also Senno,
the founder of the house of Ikenobo, a
family as illustrious in the annals of
flowers as was that of the Kanos in
painting. With the perfecting of the
tea-ritual under Rikiu, in the latter
139
THE BOOK OF TEA
part of the sixteenth century, flower
arrangement also attains its full growth.
Rikiu and his successors, the celebrated
Ota-wuraka, Furuka-Oribe, Koyetsu,
Kobori-Enshiu, Katagiri-Sekishiu, vied
with each other in forming new combi-
nations. We must remember, however,
that the flower worship of the tea-mas-
ters formed only a part of their aesthetic
ritual, and was not a distinct religion
by itself. A flower arrangement, like
the other works of art in the tea-room,
was subordinated to the total scheme of
decoration. Thus Sekishiu ordained
that white plum blossoms should not be
made use of when snow lay in the gar-
den. "Noisy " flowers were relentlessly
banished from the tea-room. A flower
arrangement by a tea-master loses its
significance if removed from the place
for which it was originally intended,
140
FLOWERS
for its lines and proportions have been
specially worked out with a view to its
surroundings.
The adoration of the flower for its
own sake begins with the rise of " Flow-
er-Masters/' toward the middle of the
seventeenth century. It now becomes
independent of the tea-room and knows
no law save that that the vase imposes
on it. New conceptions and methods of
execution now become possible, and
many were the principles and schools re-
sulting therefrom. A writer in the mid-
dle of the last century said he could
count over one hundred different schools
of flower arrangement. Broadly speak-
ing, these divide themselves into two
main branches, the Formalistic and the
Naturalesque. The Formalistic schools,
led by the Ikenobos, aimed at a classic
idealism corresponding to that of the in
THE BOOK OF TEA
Kano-academicians. We possess rec-
ords of arrangements by the early mas-
ters of this school which almost repro-
duce the flower paintings of Sansetsu
and Tsunenobu. The Naturalesque
school, on the other hand, as its name
implies, accepted nature as its model,
only imposing such modifications of
form as conduced to the expression of
artistic unity. Thus we recognise in its
works the same impulses which formed
the Ukiyoe and Shi jo schools of
painting.
It would be interesting, had we time,
to enter more fully than is now possi-
ble into the laws of composition and
detail formulated by the various flower-
masters of this period, showing, as they
would, the fundamental theories which
governed Tokugawa decoration. We
find them referring to the Leading in
FLOWERS
Principle (Heaven), the Subordinate
Principle (Earth), the Reconciling
Principle (Man), and any flower ar-
rangement which did not embody these
principles was considered barren and
dead. They also dwelt much on the
importance of treating a flower in its
three different aspects, the Formal, the
Semi-Formal, and the Informal. The
first might be said to represent flowers
in the stately costume of the ballroom,
the second in the easy elegance of after-
noon dress, the third in the charming
deshabille of the boudoir.
Our personal sympathies are with the
flower-arrangements of the tea-master
rather than with those of the flower-
master. The former is art in its proper
setting and appeals to us on account of
its true intimacy with life. We should
like to call this school the Natural in
143
THE BOOK OF TEA
contradistinction to the Naturalesque
and Formalistic schools. The tea-mas-
ter deems his duty ended with the selec-
tion of the flowers, and leaves them to
tell their own story. Entering a tea-
room in late winter, you may see a slen-
der spray of wild cherries in combina-
tion with a budding camellia; it is an
echo of departing winter coupled with
the prophecy of spring. Again, if you
go into a noon-tea on some irritatingly
hot summer day, you may discover in
the darkened coolness of the tokonoma
a single lily in a hanging vase; dripping
with dew, it seems to smile at the fool-
ishness of life.
A solo of flowers is interesting, but
in a concerto with painting and sculp-
ture the combination becomes entran-
cing. Sekishiu once placed some water-
plants in a flat receptacle to suggest the
144
FLOWERS
vegetation of lakes and marshes, and on
the wall above he hung a painting by
Soami of wild ducks flying in the air.
Shoha, another tea-master, combined a
poem on the Beauty of Solitude by
the Sea with a bronze incense burner
in the form of a fisherman's hut and
some wild flowers of the beach. One of
the guests has recorded that he felt in
the whole composition the breath of
waning autumn.
Flower stories are endless. We shall
recount but one more. In the sixteenth
century the morning-glory was as yet
a rare plant with us. Rikiu had an
entire garden planted with it, which
he cultivated with assiduous care. The
fame of his convolvuli reached the ear
of the Taiko, and he expressed a desire
to see them, in consequence of which
Rikiu invited him to a morning tea at
145
THE BOOK OF TEA
his house. On the appointed day Taiko
walked through the garden, but no-
where could he see any vestige of the
convolvulus. The ground had been
leveled and strewn with fine pebbles and
sand. With sullen anger the despot en-
tered the tea-room, but a sight waited
him there which completely restored his
humour. On the tokonoma, in a rare
bronze of Sung workmanship, lay a
single morning-glory—the queen of the
whole garden!
In such instances we see the full sig-
nificance of the Flower Sacrifice. Per-
haps the flowers appreciate the full sig-
nificance of it. They are not cowards,
like men. Some flowers glory in death
—certainly the Japanese cherry blos-
soms do, as they freely surrender them-
selves to the winds. Anyone who has
stood before the fragrant avalanche at
146
FLOWERS
Yoshino or Arashiyama must have rea-
lised this. For a moment they hover
like bejewelled clouds and dance above
the crystal streams; then, as they sail
away on the laughing waters, they seem
to say: "Farewell, O Spring! We are
on to Eternity."
W
VII
TEA MASTERS
[VII
TEA-MASTERS
IN religion the Future is behind us.
In art the Present is the eternal.
The tea-masters held that real apprecia-
tion of art is only possible to those who
make of it a living influence. Thus
they sought to regulate their daily life
by the high standard of refinement
which obtained in the tea-room. In all
circumstances serenity of mind should
be maintained, and conversation should
be so conducted as never to mar the
harmony of the surroundings. The
cut and colour of the dress, the poise of
the body, and the manner of walking
could all be made expressions of artistic
personality. These were matters not
151
THE BOOK OF TEA
to be lightly ignored, for until one has
made himself beautiful he has noright
to approach beauty. Thus the tea-mas-
ter strove to be something more than
the artist,—art itself. It was the Zen
of aestheticism. Perfection is every-
where if we only choose to recognise it.
Rikiu loved to quote an old poem which
says: "To those who long only for
flowers, fain would I show the full-
blown spring which abides in the toiling
buds of snow-covered hills."
Manifold indeed have been the con-
tributions of the tea-masters to art.
They completely revolutionised the
classical architecture and interior deco-
rations, and established the new style
which we have described in the chapter
of the tea-room, a style to whose influ-
ence even the palaces and monasteries
built after the sixteenth century have
152
TEA-MASTERS
all been subject. The many-sided
Kobori-Enshiu has left notable exam-
ples of his genius in the Imperial villa
of Katsura, the castles of Najoya and
Nijo, and the monastery of Kohoan.
All the celebrated gardens of Japan
were laid out by the tea-masters. Our
pottery would probably never have at-
tained its high quality of excellence if
the tea-masters had not lent to it their
inspiration, the manufacture of the
utensils used in the tea ceremony calling
forth the utmost expenditure of inge-
nuity on the part of our ceramists. The
Seven Kilns of Enshiu are well known
to all students of Japanese pottery.
Many of our textile fabrics bear the
names of tea-masters who conceived
their colour or design. It is impossible,
indeed, to find any department of art
in which the tea-masters have not left
153
THE BOOK OF TEA
marks of their genius. In painting and
lacquer it seems almost superfluous to
mention the immense service they have
rendered. One of the greatest schools
of painting owes its origin to the tea-
master Honnami-Koyetsu, famed also
as a lacquer artist and potter. Beside
his works, the splendid creation of his
grandson, Koho, and of his grand-
nephews, Korin and Kenzan, almost
fall into the shade. The whole Korin
school, as it is generally designated, is
an expression of Teaism. In the broad
lines of this school we seem to find the
vitality of nature herself.
Great as has been the influence of the
tea-masters in the field of art, it is as
nothing compared to that which they
have exerted on the conduct of life.
Not only in the usages of polite society,
but also in the arrangement of all our
154
TEA-MASTERS
domestic details, do we feel the presence
of the tea-masters. Many of our deli-
cate dishes, as well as our way of serv-
ing food, are their inventions. They
have taught us to dress only in gar-
ments of sober colours. They have in-
structed us in the proper spirit in which
to approach flowers. They have given
emphasis to our natural love of sim-
plicity, and shown us the beauty of hu-
mility. In fact, through their teachings
tea has entered the life of the people.
Those of us who know not the secret
of properly regulating our own exist-
ence on this tumultuous sea of foolish
troubles which we call life are con-
stantly in a state of misery while vainly
trying to appear happy and contented.
We stagger in the attempt to keep our
moral equilibrium, and see forerunners
of the tempest in every cloud that floats
155
THE BOOK OF TEA
on the horizon. Yet there is joy and
beauty in the roll of the billows as they
sweep outward toward eternity. Why
not enter into their spirit, or, like
Liehtse, ride upon the hurricane itself?
He only who has lived with the beau-
tiful can die beautifully. The last
moments of the great tea-masters were
as full of exquisite refinement as had
been their lives. Seeking always to be
in harmony with the great rhythm of
the universe, they were ever prepared to
enter the unknown. The "Last Tea
of Rikiu" will stand forth forever as
the acme of tragic grandeur.
Long had been the friendship be-
tween Rikiu and the Taiko-Hideyoshi,
and high the estimation in which the
great warrior held the tea-master. But
the friendship of a despot is ever a dan-
gerous honour. It was an age rife
156
TEA-MASTERS
with treachery, and men trusted not
even their nearest kin. Rikiu was no
servile courtier, and had often dared
to differ in argument with his fierce
patron. Taking advantage of the cold-
ness which had for some time existed be-
tween the Taiko and Rikiu, the enemies
of the latter accused him of being im-
plicated in a conspiracy to poison the
despot. It was whispered to Hidey-
oshi that the fatal potion was to be ad-
ministered to him with a cup of the
green beverage prepared by the tea-
master. With Hideyoshi suspicion was
sufficient ground for instant execution,
and there was no appeal from the will
of the angry ruler. One privilege alone
was granted to the condemned—the
honour of dying by his own hand.
On the day destined for his self-im-
molation, Rikiu invited his chief dis-
157
THE BOOK OF TEA'
ciples to a last tea-ceremony. Mourn-
fully at the appointed time the guests
met at the portico. As they look into
the garden path the trees seem to shud-
der, and in the rustling of their leaves
are heard the whispers of homeless
ghosts. Like solemn sentinels before
the gates of Hades stand the grey stone
lanterns. A wave of rare incense is
wafted from the tea-room; it is the sum-
mons which bids the guests to enter.
One by one they advance and take their
places. In the tokonoma hangs a kake-
mono,—a wonderful writing by an an-
cient monk dealing with the evanescence
of all earthly things. The singing ket-
tle, as it boils over the brazier, sounds
like some cicada pouring forth his woes
to departing summer. Soon the host
enters the room. Each in turn is served
with tea, and each in turn silently drains
158
TEA-MASTERS
his cup, the host last of all. Accord-
ing to established etiquette, the chief
guest now asks permission to examine
the tea-equipage. Rikiu places the
various articles before them, with the
kakemono. After all have expressed
admiration of their beauty, Rikiu pre-
sents one of them to each of the assem-
bled company as a souvenir. The bowl
alone he keeps. "Never again shall
this cup, polluted by the lips of mis-
fortune, be used by man." He speaks,
and breaks the vessel into fragments.
The ceremony is over; the guests with
difficulty restraining their tears, take
their last farewell and leave the room.
One only, the nearest and dearest, is
requested to remain and witness the end.
Rikiu then removes his tea-gown and
carefully folds it upon the mat, thereby
disclosing the immaculate white deat^
15&
THE BOOK OF TEA
robe which it had hitherto concealed.
Tenderly he gazes on the shining blade
of the fatal dagger, and in exquisite
verse thus addresses it:
"Welcome to thee,
O sword of eternity!
Through Buddha
And through Dharuma alike
Thou hast cleft thy way."
With a smile upon his face Rikiu
passed forth into the unknown.
I6C
A
-7 V
'?:.'
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHk
GRADUATE LIBRARY
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE
<WN o 5 2003
MOV 0 9 2005
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 90
00216 5978
SEP utrfi^HiOT.
JAN 2005
ir

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