Tea may be only a drink in the West, a mildly stimulating alternative to coffee, but in the East, and particularly in Japan, there’s tea and then there’s Tea. The one with a capital T is the tea ceremony, a centuries-old ritual that has profoundly influenced Japanese art, culture, and spiritual life.
In the traditional tea ceremony, every act and object has profound significance – from the style of garden path leading to the teahouse, to the design of the teahouse and all the utensils, to the precise actions and gestures of the tea master and the guests.
Its roots are in Zen Buddhism, and in practice it is like an extended meditation. But it’s also an art form, strictly choreographed and calling upon the talents of architects, designers, painters, and ceramists. The aesthetic foundation of today’s tea ceremony was laid down in the latter part of the 16th century by the great tea master Sen Rikyu, who stressed Zen-like simplicity and Samurai directness, a style the Japanese call wabi.
But what happens when the tea ceremony – which is all about tradition and rules – meets the freewheeling world of contemporary art? Does the practice require 16th century tea bowls and iron kettles, or can there be modern interpretations?
These questions are at the heart of “The New Way of Tea,” a joint exhibit at the Asia Society and Japan Society that tries to build a bridge between traditional forms and the more experimental styles of the modern and post-modern periods. It has seven tea ceremony spaces or “houses,” utensils, and vessels by a variety of contemporary designers, and will feature regular tea ceremony demonstrations throughout the show.
In Part 1 at the Japan Society, the base line of tradition is established in a charming, full-size reproduction of a 1647 teahouse. The original, Konnichi-an, sits on the grounds of Urasenke, a school of tea in Kyoto. About the size of a backyard shed, the sloped-roof, bamboo structure has a mere 191 square centimeters of floor space – room for only 1 1/2 rice-straw tatami mats – the bare minimum needed to properly do the ceremony.
In stark contrast with this charming rustic building are two contemporary settings. One, by industrial designer Toshiyuki Kita, is the barest of abstractions, 12 black-lacquered beams forming the skeleton of a cube. Transparent, empty of furnishings save for a small cluster of utensils, this is Zen simplicity carried to its ultimate conclusion. Architect Masayuki Kurokawa’s design is sort of the opposite – all furniture and no room. Drawing on the Japanese love of translucent rice-paper panels, he made a boxy table-and-chair set that is illuminated from within – a kind of miniature house with glowing windows. This setup, made for a less ascetic branch of the tea practice that permits sitting at a table, will be used for tea demonstrations at the Japan Society.
The tools of the tea ceremony can be found within the teahouses, and in an elegant, dramatically lit installation by Masayuki. Here are hefty iron kettles and the attachable rings used to lift them when hot, baskets for charcoal made from woven wisteria vines, brightly colored lacquer containers for holding the green powdered tea, slender long-handled tea scoops and short-handled whisks for whipping up the drink. (The tea used in the ceremony is not the brewed variety, but a frothy, bright green, bitter drink.)
The tea-making equipment is mostly from two periods, the Momoyama (late 16th century) and the contemporary (the last 25 years). The earliest piece is a beautifully elongated Crane-neck vase from the Chinese Ming dynasty (14th to 15th century), representative of the refined style of tea ceremony pieces before Sen Ryuku. (Sen, by the way, attained such fame that the Emperor Hideyoshi, a devotee of Tea, considered it an affront, and forced him to commit ritual suicide).
That the wabi aesthetic is alive and well is evident from three tea bowls by a modern master of tea ceramics, Kichizaemon Raku XV. (Only one bowl is used in the ceremony, as all the participants – usually four – drink from the same one.) Kichizaemon’s earthenware bowls – with allusive names like “Winter Rabbit” and “Lunar Waves,” have that rough, even flawed appearance favored by tea masters. Lopsided, decorated with seemingly random designs, they exemplify the intentionally “artless” aesthetic felt to be harmonious with nature.
Common to the displays at both galleries are pieces from a suite of fusuma (sliding door) paintings by Hiroshi Senju, an award winner at the 1995 Venice Biennale. In one, Hiroshi lets the paint and ink run down the translucent paper – abstract expressionist style – to create a waterfall effect.
Modern approaches are given free rein at the Asia Society display, where the first thing visitors encounter is a tunnel of rice paper, which designer Atsushi Kitagawara has used to suggest another aspect of the tea ceremony – the mood-setting garden pathway to the teahouse. (The garden is sprinkled with water to create a pure and dewy effect.) Another mood-setting device of the traditional tea ceremony is the small, low entryway that compels visitors to stoop over or crawl in, instilling a sense of humility. That feature has been retained in the “Long Abode” teahouse by the late Ikko Tanaka, and those who participate in Asia Society’s demonstrations will have a chance to try it out. It has walls made of thin tree trunks, the bark still on, and lashed together stockade-style. Inside is a long cherry wood table and appropriately rough-hewn implements.
Takashi Sugimoto’s tearoom has a traditional shape, with the entrance alcove and the low entry, but its walls and floors are made entirely of salvaged panels of decorative ironwork carefully welded together. The different patterns of the metal cast interesting textile-like patterns on the floor.
Some of the tea equipment here is boldly modern, such as the scoops with the wavy handles and the psychedelic colors, or the set of containers by Hiroshi Kojitani, which carry the idea of imperfection into the glass medium. Vessels look as if they might be on the verge of returning to the molten state.
If you visit the shows, you should try to take advantage of the tea demonstrations. No amount of looking can convey the spirit of this practice, which is more than merely enjoying a cup of tea in a stylized manner. Like the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion, it’s about purification, community, and becoming one with the spiritual element, whether God or nature. Its etiquette can seem rigid and overly meticulous, but it is really about simplicity and economy of movement, and when the ceremony is performed by an experienced master, it is a thing of beauty.
Japan Society, NYC
2002
