Rekyu

Rikyu

Rikyu the 'tea master'

Sen-no Rikyu was the most famous Japanese as for as the tea world is concerned. This refined tea man practiced Zen meditation and promoted the doctrine of wabi or 'simple and natural' a way of living. Rikyu was also the favorite of the then Emperor Hideyoshi who was very fond of tea as well. They both went on to conduct elaborate tea ceremonies of which Rikyu took care of the fine details.

The ceremony was something like a dinner, where you invite your close friends to your house. "...a tea ceremony is a communion of feeling, when good friends come together at the right moment, under the best conditions." - to quote Yasunari Kawabata.

The guests would walk silently through the garden, leaving the words behind to the world, while the birds chirruped and the cicada's screeched - establishing a harmony with nature. The newly bloomed flowers enhanced the beauty of the occasion.

A Doll of Sen-no Rikyu the tea master

The master room would be decorated with hanging scroll, parchments or paintings to suit the season. The guest, dressed in traditional robes, would take their seats on the carpeted floor, sitting cross legged - awaiting the quintessentially Japanese meal, Kiseki, which will served. After the main meal, guests will assemble in the garden for tea.

The master's words -"Make a delicious bowl of tea: arrange the charcoal to heat the water: arrange the flowers the way they are in the fields: in summer, suggest coolness, in winter, warmth: anticipate everything: be ready for rain: show the greatest possible consideration toward your guest." The tea ceremony is performed in a private tea house, known as Sukiya (abode of vacancy).

The host would carefully handle the delicate tea equipage. Water will be heated in a kettle placed on a charcoal stove sunk in the floor. The guest will be served tea on a porcelain bowl - the same bowl for everyone. That means each one of them, waited for their turn, to drink tea holding the bowl in both hands. After the tea, the host will serve cake followed by a weaker tea in a different bowl. The ceremony would conclude in silent contemplation and greetings in their own Japanese way of bowing to the waist level. The host would accompany the guests to see them off.

Beautiful and eloquent explanation of tea ceremony could be found in the writings of Kakuzo Okukura -

"It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination of tea ideals. Our successful resistance to the Mongol invasion of 1281 had enabled us to carry on the (Song dynasty) movement so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking: It is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function...

The tea room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travelers could meet to drink from the common spring of art appreciation. The ceremony was improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a color to disturb the tone of the room, not sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and naturally - such were the aims of the tea ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise". It was Rikyu, who refined and elevated the tea ceremony to a 'fine art'.

To be honest, I don't really get it. I have only seen these Japanese tea ceremonies in James Bond movies - a peculiar costume dressed affair with rather too elaborate gestures and movements by tiny tea ladies with the 'tingly' music at the background. May be its too loaded for a movie. Even then its really hard to appreciate a Japanese tea ceremony without being amused.

The following, eloquent quote by Basil Hall Chamberlain says it all -

"To a European the tea ceremony is lengthy and meaningless. When witnessed more than once, it becomes intolerably monotonous. Not being born with an Oriental fun of patience, he longs for something new, something lively, something with at least the semblance of logic and utility. But then it is not for him that the tea ceremonies were made. If they amuse those for whom they were made, they amuse them, and there is nothing more to be said. In any case, tea ceremonies are perfectly harmless...... Some may deem them pointless. None can stigmatize them as vulgar"

But then I can not really understand what is there in tea that makes people to go about creating a cult around it !. Chinese or the Japanese cultures might seem bit exotic for a foreigner but how to account for the fondness of tea in Europe. Well if you are looking for a proof that a cult existed in Europe then just read the following quote by De Quincey(1785-1859) in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater -

"For tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favored beverage of the intellectual..." Japanese were just going about expressing their fondness for tea in their own way, I suppose.

That brings us back to Rikyu - Well, in the end, at the grand old age of seventy, he fell out with his Emperor and in those days that meant 'you loose your life !'. Rikyu was given the choice of dying with his own hands and he took it.