Three cups of tea
Encounters with Japanese Tea Ceremonies on the Kyoto Intensive Seminar+
The photos will be in the publication
In October 2018 I joined the Intensive Seminar+ of the Centre for Research in Japanese Garden Art and History, which is part of the Kyoto University of Art and Design. I attended because I wanted to engage is a serious study of Japanese Gardens and an opportunity to visit gardens in expert company. I must say that the Seminar vastly exceeded my expectations and I felt privileged to attend. The talks, activities and visits gave me many interesting frameworks to structure my ideas and organise my knowledge of Japanese gardens.
As part of our programme we attended three different tea ceremonies. Anyone interested in the generality of Japanese gardens has to be interested in tea in Japanese culture. Even before Sen no Rikyū formalised tea ceremonies, and their associated gardens, gardens were often designed for entertaining guests, and as an enthusiast for infusions of Camellia Sinensis I endorse the celebration of drinking tea with friends.
Our first encounter was in a tea house constructed within the grounds of Kyoto University of Art and Design. We were told we would have an experience of a Sencha tea ceremony. Tea comes in two main varieties in Japan: matcha which is finely powdered green tea and would be familiar to anyone who has participated in a tea ceremony (or bought a Japanese variety of a popular chocolate wafer biscuit), and sencha which is unformented leaf green tea- the kind most commonly taken and is also sold in a refreshing cold bottled form at every street corner.
Tea ceremonies follow the ways of “Schools”, who each have their own philosophy, methods and apparatus for making tea, and on the way it is served. People devote many years to perfect their understanding of any given school. These schools all are developed from the rules originally set down by Sen no Rikyū over 400 years ago. Having a Welsh background I can understand how minor differences in interpretation give rise to schisms and new schools. The first School we encounter was based around Sencha tea, The Ogawa School of Sencha. Our ceremony was lead by Ogawa Koraku, head of the Ogawa School of Tea since 1973, in an unbroken line, from father to sun for 150 years.
As well as being differentiated by the use of Sencha tea, the Ogawa school is different because it centred on bringing tea drinking closer to nature and drinking tea in picnics outdoors. Hence the equipment used in Ogawa tea ceremonies is different from the more traditional tea Schools, which in turn alters the various order of doing things and the “skills” involved. The tradition is relatively modern having been established in the 19th century in during the Meiji restoration.
What is surprising is when the tea arrives there is barely enough tea to cover the bottom of the bowl - three drops. It is followed by a second cup with slightly more(just) tea along with a mochi sweet and then finally a full cup of hot water to quench the thirst. Apparently the tea, which is certainly flavoursome, is to nourish and harmonise and not for satisfying one’s need for a drink. Esoteric and intellectual - tea as part of a search for truth
Our second cup was under quite different circumstances. We were in the company of Mr. Tokushirou Tamane, the Head Gardener of Kinkaku-Ji, the garden of the Golden Temple. We had been given privileged access to parts of the garden far from its normal madding crowds. We sat in the head priest’s house looking out on a garden built and designed 40 years earlier by Mr. Tokushirou Tamane and Professor Makoto Nakamura, and we were taken trough a guarded gate to do the complete stroll around the temple lake. The stroll ended by the tea house where we were served mocha tea and another mocha cake. Although the whole afternoon was auspicious beyond my imagining, this tea ceremony was one of the continuous tea ceremonies provided at Kinkaku-Ji all day and every day as part of the admission ticket. An experience for experience collectors.
Our final tea ceremony was held on the beautiful surroundings of Jiko-in on the outskirts of Nara. This temple is set on a hill and its garden captures the scenery of the valley and on to the distant hills with carefully layers hedges and nearby trees. There are exquisite and venerable pines, and the karikomi clipped Azaleas were perfect. Every tokonoma had refined ikebana and its enclosed courtyards the epitome of perfection. We sat cross legged, waiting for tea, on mats in a room whose shoji were drawn to reveal the garden. We were addressed by the officiating priest. “There are no rules for how you drink your tea or eat your cake. You may do as you like, as long as you enjoy the surroundings”. He is one of the kind hearted.
Footnotes
1 Quite small Welsh villages might have six or more different non-conformist chapels with slightly different interpretations of worship
2 In an earlier article I cite Zen priest Muso Kokushi’s reasons people have for making gardens. He describes four reasons which in short are:
There are those who have no particular liking for landscape but they, themselves wish to be admired.
There are those who are collectors of things
There are “kind-heated” ones. They like a pretty garden as a place to read poetry and nourish their hearts with a garden view.
There are also people for whom a garden sustains their search for truth- a garden for enlightenment.