By MELANIE KIRKPATRICK
New York
The tea ceremony is said to be the essence of Japanese aesthetics -- architecture, ceramics, flower arranging, incense, calligraphy, painting, gardening -- packaged in a formalized ritual that dates back to the 16th century. That's when the illustrious tea master Sen no Rikyu perfected cha-do, or the "way of tea." It's a ceremony -- and, some would say, a state of mind -- that has changed very little in nearly half a millennium.
[Sen Sooku] Zina Saunders
Fast-forward 15 generations to a young man in a formal kimono kneeling on the floor of a newly constructed tea room at the Koichi Yanagi Oriental Fine Arts Gallery on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Sen So-oku, 33 years old, is the heir to the Mushakoji school of tea, one of the trio of competing schools founded by Sen no Rikyu's three great-grandsons. One day he will succeed his father as grand tea master. For now, he's spending a year in the U.S. as a representative of the Japanese Ministry of Culture and teaching art at Columbia University.
Mr. Sen wants to bring the tea ceremony into the 21st century. The first clue comes as I remove my shoes and step into the tea room that has been designed to his personal specifications. It's a what's-wrong-with-this-picture moment. The floor is covered with the usual straw mats, the kettle is warming on a brazier in the middle of the room, and the traditional tea-ceremony implements are laid out in the proper order near Mr. Sen. But wait -- what's that open trench that runs along one side of the room?
Call it a tea bleacher. Mr. Sen gestures to us to take our seats -- but not in the cramp-inducing, sit-on-your-knees posture that can make the tea ceremony a torturous experience for modern-day participants. Rather, the tea master invites us to sit on the floor and lower our legs into the trench. It's similar to the hole-in-the-floor seating arrangements at many Japanese restaurants outside Japan.
"This type of architectural structure serves two audiences," Mr. Sen says through an interpreter. "One is the new generation that is not necessarily used to sitting on their knees. The other is for people who have already had a long relationship with tea but are getting older [and] having trouble sitting on their knees." He has also designed a ceremony that can be performed in a room with a table and chairs.
Mr. Sen defends his approach, which traditionalists would call heretical. "Change is always a part of this cultural form," he says. The tea ceremony "changes along with the way life is carried out now." When the tea ceremony was invented, he notes, everyone wore kimonos and was used to living in tatami rooms. Today that's not the case. Four hundred years ago, there was "a very small difference between the concept of carrying out tea and everyday life." Today, he says, "The point is to be able to regain that short distance between life and the tea room."
At the same time, Mr. Sen stresses that "there are certain essential elements . . . of Japanese culture that can only be found in tea." He mentions "seasonality." Traditional Japanese culture, he says, "considers the focus on seasons -- understanding the differences between the seasons -- to be very important. So, for example, in Japan there is the concept of hanami, which is the viewing of the cherry blossoms. Or, for example, in autumn there's the concept of looking out at the moon. Of course, the moon is out all the time, but that's a specific celebration."
He tells the story of one of his students, an office worker in her 30s. "She works in Tokyo, a very cosmopolitan place. . . . In her day-to-day life, she gets up in the morning, takes the subway, gets off at a subway station, takes sort of an underground tunnel to work, gets into the office building, works all day and doesn't see a little bit of sunlight. And then, at the end of the day, she goes back and does the exact same thing" in reverse. For her, the tea ceremony "is really an opportunity to feel the seasonality of Japan."
Mr. Sen has woven several seasonal themes into today's tea ceremony. The flower motif on the incense burner is plum, a symbol of spring. The portrait on the scroll in the alcove is of Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the tea ceremony, the anniversary of whose death occurred a few days earlier.
Then there's the bowl in which Mr. Sen whisks the tea for me to drink. It was made in Kyoto in the 17th century, and Mr. Sen says he selected the bowl for me "because I wanted you to feel the historical lineage between it and the tea that we are experiencing today." It is a rustic, handmade Raku-ware bowl. Raku-ware was the first pottery "that was created specifically for the art and culture of tea," he says. "Before that, ceramics from China, as well as the Korean peninsula, were utilized."
The glaze on the bowl "has a very thick surface, but it also has a soft tactile sense," he explains. "As the hot tea permeates the thickness of the tea bowl, it's almost like the tea bowl will take on a sort of bodily temperature. So it's as if the tea bowl and the person drinking it will become one." That effect is further heightened by the bowl's color, he says, which is black. Before electricity, the tea room was much darker. And when someone drank from a Raku-ware bowl, it was as if the "existence of the tea bowl would be removed entirely, and the only thing there was the person drinking the tea, becoming one with the tea itself."
The tea ceremony is closely connected with Zen Buddhism, and Mr. Sen has trained as a monk in a temple in Kyoto. When he meditates, he says, "there is an opportunity for self-reflection, almost as if one sees oneself as well as an objective self viewing the self." This feeling is similar to what he experiences when he is performing the tea ceremony, he says.
"Tea provides an opportunity for self-reflection," Mr. Sen says, "for deepening human relationships. It's also an escape from the everyday." Which brings us to the readers of The Wall Street Journal. "You have a readership of important business people," he says, "who are very busy, who spend a lot of time at work." The first devotees of the tea ceremony were daimyo, or feudal lords, he says, who used the tea room to strike business deals and plot political moves. The modern-day analogue for business people is golf, he says.
But why not the tea ceremony? Tea is actually a "very simple pleasure," he says. Yes, it has a philosophical background, but at essence it is an "opportunity for people to experience good company, good food, good drink and good conversation." This, the master says, is the "charm of tea."
Ms. Kirkpatrick is a deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.
