tea ceremony

tea ceremony, time-honoured institution in Japan, rooted in the principles of Zen Buddhism and founded upon the reverence of the beautiful in the daily routine of life. It is an aesthetic way of welcoming guests, in which everything is done according to an established order.

The ceremony takes place in a tea house (cha-shitsu), which ideally is a small structure detached from the main house but which is often simply a special room of the house. Great care is taken in the choice of materials for and construction of the cha-shitsu so as to give it a sense of rustic yet refined simplicity. The room is usually about 3 m (9 feet) square or smaller; at one end there is an alcove, called the tokonoma, in which is displayed a hanging scroll, a flower arrangement, or both. The room also contains a small sunken fireplace (ro) that is used in the winter months for heating the tea kettle; in the summer a portable brazier is used. The cha-shitsu is entered through a small, low door, which is designed to suggest humility.

The tea ceremony consists of the host first bringing the tea utensils into the room, offering the guests special sweets, and then preparing and serving them tea made of pulverized tea leaf stirred in hot water. The prepared tea is usually thin and frothy with a mildly astringent flavour; on certain occasions a much thicker “heavy tea” (koicha) is made. The serving of sweets and tea may be preceded by a light meal. After the tea is consumed, the guests are free to inquire about the various implements, which are afterward carried from the room and the ceremony concluded.

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Japanese art: The tea ceremony

Ritual tea drinking, which originated in China, was first practiced in Japan during the Kamakura period (1192–1333) by Zen monks, who drank tea to keep awake during long sessions of meditation. It later became an active part of Zen ritual honouring the first patriarch, Bodhidharma (Japanese: Daruma). During the 15th century it came to be a gathering of friends in an isolated atmosphere to drink tea and discuss the aesthetic merits of paintings, calligraphy, and flower arrangements displayed in the tokonoma or quite often to discuss the merits of the tea utensils themselves.

The most famous exponent of the tea ceremony was Sen Rikyū, an aesthete at the 16th-century court of the military dictator Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who codified the ceremony into a style known as wabi-cha (meaning roughly “simplicity,” “quietude,” and “absence of ornament”), which still enjoys popularity in Japan. The preference of the wabi tea masters for simple, seemingly rustic objects for use in the tea ceremony led to the production of tea utensils in this style (see raku ware). Sen and other developers of the tea ceremony emphasized the following four qualities: harmony between the guests and the implements used; respect, not only among the participants but also for the utensils; cleanliness, derived from Shintō practices and requiring participants to wash their hands and rinse their mouths as symbolic gestures of cleansing before entering the cha-shitsu; and tranquillity, which is imparted through long and caring use of each article of the tea ceremony.