The Imperfection Inside Chanoyu

The Imperfection inside Chanoyu written by Tan Wei Keong

For Ralph and my family

Table of Contents Introduction to Japanese Tea ceremony - page 1 Part one Chanoyu unfolds page 6 - The origin of tea as a beverage page 8 - Zen involvement in the Tea page 11 - Japanese Tea in chanoyu page 14 - The advent of wabi tea page 19 - Suki: Artistic taste in Tea page 25 - Kirei sabi in the art of chanoyu page 30 - Reviving the spirit of wabi Tea page 31 - The way of Tea Part two Understanding Chanoyu Chanoyu – an aesthetic manifestation of Zen ritual - page 35 The search for wabi - page 40 In Praise of sabi - page 43 Wabi-sabi – The Occident persepective to ‘Shibusa’ - Page 45 Rediscovering Wabi, Sabi and Shibusa - Page 47

Notes - page 56 -

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The mist in Spring, A cuckoo half-hidden by greenish leaves in Summer, A lonely looking sunset in Autumn, A snowy dawn in Winter 1 - Kakisute-bumi (Private Scribbling of Kobori Enshu), Kobori Enshu (1579 – 1647)

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Introduction to Japanese tea ceremony It was in Singapore that I had my first contact with the Japanese tea ceremony (also known as chanoyu). By coincidence, there was a commemoration of 25 years partnership formed between the Enshu Sado School and the National University of Singapore. A tea ceremony demonstration was performed in front of guests, followed by a screening of a documentary movie titled “My Father is the Grand Master” 2, which portrays the spirit of Enshu Sado ‘kirei sabi’ in the context of the life of the 13th generation Enshu Sado Grand Master Kobori Sojitsu. The movie, which was narrated through the different seasons of a year, gave me a glimpse into the Japanese Tea ceremony. Commonly seen as a ceremonial ritual performance, it is fascinating to learn of a simple bowl of tea having so many layers of interesting concepts.

Tea is not tea anymore when it comes to chanoyu (pronounced as cha-no-yu), but is a cup of humanity as described by Japanese art philosophy writer Okakura Kakuzo in the ‘Book of Tea’: “Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism – Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.” 3 He continued to examine the deeper fundamental notions central to the chanoyu: “The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is 1

hygiene, for it enforces cleaniness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.� 4 The green tea I tasted during this tea ceremony demonstration was different to what I had remembered when I first encounter green tea as a beverage in a Japanese restaurant. Perhaps there was a difference in the quality of tea, but certainly the different environment and context brought a significant awareness to what is in the tea bowl. Sweet refreshment was given to each guest before being presented with the tea. For the first time, I observed what was in this bowl of tea, very much similar to wine tasting, before actually taking the first sip. The taste of green tea, after the sweets, was refreshingly smoothing and immediately I fell in love with green tea.

This chanoyu introduction brought upon me great intrigue and fascination.

For a long time, although aware and exposed to different aspects of Japanese culture when in Singapore, I had never had the desire to understand or find out more in depth about Japanese culture and ideology.

Beyond the knowledge that ancient Japan had borrowed a lot in ideology and language from China, and the society of Japan has a strong practice of traditions passed down from generation to generation in a close circle, I knew very little about the stereotypical Japanese’s politeness and their strong sense of self-consciousness. I felt suddenly rather ashamed of myself being a descendant of a Chinese immigrant yet I knew very little of my Oriental teachings; back in the mid 1930s my grandfather had relocated from China to Singapore to seek refuge from the Sino-Japanese war. It certainly did not help that so much of Chinese heritage was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1950s and I lost my grandfather due to cancer in 1992 when I was only ten. I felt there was not much advancement and progress in Chinese culture and ideology when growing up. Modern China, after opening up its borders, has given top priority to capitalism development and cultural values are on a decline. It suddenly dawned on me that Japan has a lot to offer, with deeper insights, on Oriental culture and ideology that was influenced by China.

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After my introduction to Tea ceremony and a research into its history, I was very eager to try making green tea in my own time and thus bought a set of simple tea utensils, consisting of the tea scoop and the tea whisk, and not to forget a packet of matcha tea powder, otherwise known as green tea powder. As Sen no Rikyu famously implied that “the chanoyu consists merely of heating water and serving a cup of tea” 5. So with great excitement I opened the packet of matcha powder and brought it close to my nose to smell the fragrance. Instantly a wonderful sensation hit me; one can almost feel being transported to the hills of tea plantation where the tranquil scenery smooth and calms my soul. As the hot water flows into the bowl, a sea of green fills up. Next I picked up the tea whisk and began whisking the bowl of green tea till a nice froth surfaced, bringing to mind an image of the morning dews on a landscape of green grass. Perhaps this is where it all started. Being new to drinking green tea and also the chanoyu, there is obviously no instant enlightenment for me just by attending a tea demonstration, watching a documentary, reading up on the art of chado (Way of Tea) and sipping a bowl of green tea.

There is so much fascination overwhelming me towards the vast influence chado had on the many aspects of Japanese culture as well as philosophy.

Through chado a new aesthetics movement, wabi-sabi, was derived and made its way out of Japan to the continents. What is wabi-sabi and what exactly is beauty through the eyes of wabi-sabi? There has, since 1990s, an increasing number of writings about this wabi-sabi concept, especially in the Occident world. Wabi-sabi beauty is often perceived as celebrating things that revealed the imperfections through the passing of time.

However there are still many doubts hanging within me, as many of the writings represent the Occidental perspectives on wabi-sabi and might not necessarily be as true to the origins of Oriental Japan. “Translation is always treason” 6 as Okakura Kakuzo might say; everyone has his or her own perspective. I decided a careful investigation into the history of chanoyu was in my opinion, essential to understand the historical events of chanoyu and to understand what this ceremony contributed to the Way of Tea and its ideals about life and aesthetics. In addition to being an artist, as well as a ceramic craftsman, I am very intrigued what possible notions I can take up from chado in my artistic development.

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Part one

Chanoyu unfold

The origin of tea as a beverage Tea began as a medicine and then grew into a beverage. It started in China in the eighth century, entering the realm of poetry as a form of polite amusement. Throughout the ancient days China and Japan had frequently sent delegates to each country for exchange of ideas and it was then that Japan had imported a wide range of ideas, techniques of production, institutional models, and material objects from the Chinese mainland.

It was around the end of the eighth century that Tea was introduced to Japan. According to anthologies of poetry in Chinese, the culture of tea flowered during the Heian period (794 – 1185AD) imperial court, where noblemen would spend time fishing in the waters of the pond in the spacious garden surrounding a courtier’s residence, listening to the strains of koto music while enjoying a cup of tea. The tea used during that time was known as ‘brick tea’. This particular ‘brick tea’ was made by pounding the tea leaves into a paste and molding the paste into shapes resembling dumplings, which were then brewed and consumed. It had been revealed through the anthologies that koto music almost invariably accompanied such occasions.

“The site of tranquil pleasure; the court is filled with the aroma of tea” 7 It was only during the Kamakura period (1185 – 1336AD) that matcha, a form of powdered green tea was introduced by the priest Eisai (also known as Yosai). The priest Eisai who introduced the Rinzai teaching of Zen Buddhism from China, had originally used matcha as a stimulant for the monks to keep them awake during meditation. However by the early fourteenth century, matcha had emerged out of Zen monasteries, spreading to the samurai society and even to rural communities. Tea drinking outside of the Zen monasteries, during the Kamakura period, began to take form of what was to be known as ‘tea gatherings’ (cha yoriai) and it was a stark contrast to the quiet pleasure enjoyed by the Heian period nobility. The tranquil pleasure was taken over by ‘tea contests’ where participants vied with one another to identify the places of origin of the different kinds of tea.

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These tea gatherings, not at all restricted to priests and noblemen, began to become a form of extravagant luxury. People started collecting exquisite tea utensils, from both within Japan and China, and subsequently laying them out for display during the gathering. Soon a large part of Kyoto was hosting and trending these tea gatherings, and the tea world was lapsing into a mere showy and copious display of wares from China and Korea.

Such a movement was eventually criticized and publicly condemned (by an anonymous writer) in Kyoto, labeling such tea gatherings as ‘basara’. In this usage of the term basara, it condemned the lack of discipline in those men who relished an excessive life of luxury. Indeed these tea parties had raised the awareness of the luxurious beauty in artworks and tea utensils procured, especially the beauty of white porcelain wares from China, for tea gatherings. However, on the contrary, the basara in tea gatherings had also created an unlikely appreciation for the traditional ‘imperfect’ wares made in Japan. People who opposed basara began raising awareness of the ‘imperfect’ beauty in their own traditional wares. This might eventually provide an initial setting for further development in the chanoyu.

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Zen involvement in the Tea There was never any further development between matcha tea and Zen teachings other than to keep monks awake during their meditation. The relationship between matcha and Zen would run in parallel direction until Murata Juko (1422–1502) made his appearance in the Tea world. In 1471, Murata Juko – a man who would later be venerated as founder of Tea ceremony (chanoyu) – was given an opportunity to go to Kyoto. Juko, a son to a blind priest in Nara, went primarily to Kyoto to practise Zen meditation with Ikkyu Sojun (1394–1481), abbot of the Daitoku-ji temple since 1474.

Ikkyu Sojun was a severe critic of decadent Zen practices, and a promoter of popular forms of Zen, which could also have provided the foundation for Juko’s style of chanoyu. Juko involvement with Tea actually began in his hometown Nara, where he was learning chado under the guidance of Noami, an art appraiser in the imperial court. The tea that Juko had learned from Noami was known as rinkan chanoyu – an activity mainly for courtiers and noblemen, where they combined tea drinking with bathing.

When Juko moved to Kyoto, he became also acquainted with basara tea gathering. As time passes, he began developing his unique style of chanoyu, blending the rinkan chanoyu and basara Tea. In addition, Juko being under the guidance of abbot Sojun, began to include Zen to the fusion of the two style of tea gatherings. Juko wanted to rediscover the beauty in things that attributed Japanese. Hence he began promoting the concept of beauty in what is not completely perfect, as opposed to the perfection in Chinese wares. In addition to this ‘imperfect’ beauty, it was stipulated that the wares must still be ‘attractive and skillfully made’, pushing for creation that are shaped by originality and inventiveness. In a statement from Noh playwright and actor Komparu Zempo that attributed the ideal to Juko: “I have no taste for the full moon” 8 It was said that Juko felt more moved when the ideal beauty is hidden from sight. The concept of one appreciating and completing the ‘unrevealed’ beauty in the mind was what Juko practised in his Tea.

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Juko was the first to introduce a ‘4.5 tatami mats’ 9 room for the tea ceremony. Glossy light yellow paper were used to cover the walls, a joistless ceiling made out of pine boards installed and a pyramidal roof covered with small wooden shingles was constructed. He also created a six-foot alcove within the tea room, known as tokonoma, where ornaments will be displayed. In that tea room, he hung a rare and treasured calligraphy scroll by a Chinese Zen priest Yuan-wu, and displayed a tea-utensil stand, known as daisu, in the tokonoma. Juko then provided a sunken hearth for the firing of the water kettle, which the rims of the sunken hearth were decorated with a fine wooden frame. This arrangement of the chanoyu room was said to reflect the taste of the samurai aristocracy, especially in the selection of ornaments, though greatly reduced in numbers as compared to basara tea gatherings. It had also laid the foundation for future tea room designs. For all of who Juko was in stature as a Zen and Tea master, he could only introduce new concepts of Tea in small dosages. Juko’s style of chanoyu is now considered as ‘semiformal’, in comparison to the ‘formal’ of basara Tea, bringing the art of chanoyu a step closer to the simple world of ordinary people.

Evening Glow over a Fishing Village, attributed to Mu-ch’i (Fa-ch’ang).

One of a set of eight hand scrolls entitled Eight Views of the Hsiao and the Hsiang.

Ink of paper; height 33cm; length 113cm.

Southern Sung dynasty, 12th or 13th century.

Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo 9

View of Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s Dojinsai shoin room, showing staggered shelves at left and tsuke shoin at right.

1486. Togu-do, Jisho-ji (Ginkaku-ji), Kyoto

Haikatsugi (ash glaze) tenmoku tea bowl.

Diameter 12.8cm.

Southern Sung dynasty, 13th century.

Seikado, Tokyo

Yohen tenmoku tea bowl called Inaba Tenmoku.

Chien ware; diameter 12cm. Southern Sung dynasty, 13th century.

Seikado, Tokyo

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Japanese Tea in chanoyu Around fifty years after Juko first move to Kyoto, another man also made a similar moved to Kyoto. Takeno Jo-o (1502–55), the son and heir of a wealthy tanner of Sakai, moved to Kyoto in 1525 to get himself an education.

He was then twenty-three years of age. During his time in Kyoto, Jo-o started learning chanoyu under the guidance of Juko’s disciple Shimogyo.

When Jo-o eventually became a Tea master, he started to create his own chanoyu arrangements and design his tea room, like most other Tea master.

As mentioned previously Juko’s tea room design became a template for subsequent tea room design, Jo-o developed Juko’s design further with his own aesthetic inputs. Jo-o replaced the glossy light yellow paper with plain clay for the walls. He also used bamboo lattice ceiling in place of the wooden pine boards. In addition, he removed the wainscot on the paper sliding doors and to the base of the tokonoma frame, in place a thin coat of lacquer or left it bare in order to allow a direct view of the plain wood. The tokonoma was also simplified with the omission of a daisu. Another unusual feature of the tea room was that the lintel at the entrance was lower than normal, bringing about what will become a fundamental basic structural rule concerning the tearoom. This feature would later be emphasized even more in the nijiri-guchi (literary ‘wriggling-through’ entrance) – a small sliding door aperture by which guests enter the tearoom. This important feature can be seen in many subsequent tearoom designs till current day, had its starting point in Jo-o’s 4.5-mat room.

The exterior of Jo-o’s tea room was also designed thoughtfully. The tearoom of Jo-o’s design faced north, with a veranda attached to the entrance. The posts were of Japanese cypress wood, and above white-papered walls stretched a simple rustic ceiling of thin boards. The veranda functioned as a reception area (shoin), which guests would lay down their swords and prepare themselves to enter the tea room with calmness. The veranda faced the front courtyard garden in which there was only grass, while the side courtyard garden was formed by the path. The reason to have no trees or stones placed in the front courtyard garden was so that guests could devote themselves wholeheartedly to the chanoyu and the appreciation of the 11

meibutsu, which are renowned tea utensils of high value. To Jo-o, it was considered better to plant grass and a few trees in the garden facing the adjoining room or in the area of the basin where guests washed their hands.

Thus it was along the path that a gardenlike scene gradually took shape, and in the fullness of time played an important function as an access to the tea room.

Tea party records were frequently made throughout the centuries and there were frequent mentions in these records of where the tea room faced, especially during the Muromachi period (1336 – 1568). The reason for this is that tea rooms of those time had no windows at all, and the only source of light was the guests’ entrance. Hence the brightness within the room was determined by the direction which the guests’ entrance faced. This degree of brightness on the contrary played a psychological role to the tranquility of the tea ceremony, and it was also mentioned that the subdued light within the room made the tea utensils more beautiful, and the guest is more ready to appreciate things.

A set of guidelines were established, as a result, from Jo-o’s guidance for chanoyu room builders which consist the careful planning of measurements and materials, the search for delicate lighting effects, and the spatial structure of the Tea room. This would also mean that the builders were to possess very good eye for the beauty of the material and very skillful in their construction abilities.

The style of Jo-o’s chanoyu arrangements was eventually considered as ‘informal’ (sō) and it brought Tea to the simple world of ordinary people.

Jo-o’s chanoyu saw the 4.5- tatami mat room firmly established as a model room for tea ceremony. In no time most tea parties were held in this typical arrangement for the purpose of the townsmen to meet the nobility and also a chance to handle the meibutsu. This informal Tea that brought the chanoyu experience to townsmen, required them to know the correct etiquette in order to participate, hence a form of education for them too.

Tea ceremony, through Jo-o, had undoubtedly made a big step closer to the simple world of ordinary people. Jo-o’s style revealed a unique beauty, one 12

that showed the ‘pure’ beauty of ‘imperfect’ Japanese aesthetic. This is seen as a big transition from the “formal” (shin) Tea, based mainly on Chinese ideas and decorations and enjoyed mainly by aristocrats and noblemen. Tea had finally attained a Japanese identity in the arrangement of chanoyu.

The 4.5mat tea room in the Shisei-bo, Todai-ji, Nara.

This room was in the style of Takeno Jo-o’s 4.5 mat room, furnished with a veranda and a 6-shaku tokonoma.

The mats were arranged in the reverse style. The restoration drawings are based chiefly on the stand-up paper models from the collection of Matsudaira Rakuo.

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The advent of wabi Tea In 1540 Sen no Rikyu, then aged nineteen, was introduced to Jo-o who had just returned to Sakai, and Rikyu immediately became Jo-o’s disciple in learning the chanoyu. Prior to becoming Jo-o disciple, Rikyu had been taking tea lessons under the guidance of Kitamuki Dochin in the style of ‘formal’ rinkan chanoyu. Hence Rikyu’s style of Tea can also be considered a blend of both Chinese and Japanese ideals. The life of Sen no Rikyu is considered as the historical figure with the most profound influence on chanoyu and chado, and is also well documented. After completing his apprenticeship under Jo-o in Sakai, he was soon leading a relatively dedicated life as a grand tea master (chasho) in the service of the famous samurai-daimyo (warrior-lord) Oda Nobunaga (1534–82). Following the death of Nobunaga in 1582, Rikyu was appointed head tea master to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the military dictator who unified Japan after the long ‘age of warring provinces’. The relationship that Rikyu had as Hideyoshi’s tea master quickly deepened and Rikyu soon came to exert an influence on Hideyoshi that was vast but unobtrusive in his political affairs.

During Rikyu’s time as head tea master under the service of daimyo (Lord) Hideyoshi, chanoyu was further refined and the tea room further evolved, creating the concept of wabi. Rikyu once said, “the basis of the chanoyu is the daisu, but if we look for the heart of chanoyu we will find it nowhere other than in the small ‘informal’ room.” 10 It was during this stage, one of the profound significance in Rikyu’s life, that he began promoting the preference for somberness and simplicity, as opposed to the fancy for gold and gaudiness in the chanoyu of his day.

This can be perceived as a radical change to the mindset of the daimyo and noblemen that sought to make a display of their power through all the extravagance. Rikyu advocated his radical ideas with heavy emphasis on the soan chanoyu – tea ceremony in a thatched hermitage. Rikyu had designed the soan tea room with the aim to create a tranquil atmosphere close to nature for tea in contrast with the atmosphere of the town.

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The tea room during Juko and Jo-o’s time had strong emphasis on the tea utensils cabinet where various tea utensils were properly arranged and kept.

The tea utensils cabinet, once a prominent characteristic of the aristocrats’ tea parties, had its place in the chanoyu ma (tea-boiling room), and it is customary for the dobushu (special servant for tea) to keep the utensils clean and to make preparations for the ceremony. The chanoyu room was not itself a place for the reception of guests but simply an anteroom for readying the ceremony. Located in a secondary position vis-à-vis the main drawing room, and its use was reserved for people of lower class. The tea prepared was then carried to the guest room, which was adorned with a board-floored tokonoma, a tsuke shoin (a window whose broad sill served as a writing desk), and chigaidana (ornamental staggered shelves). This total separation of the rooms where tea was prepared and served was a prominent characteristic of “palace tea”.

Tea bowl called Oguro,

by Tanaka Chojiro.

Black raku ware, diameter 10.75cm.

Second half 16th century The chanoyu under Rikyu’s direction first saw the omission of the tea utensil cabinet, and subsequently very much later the daisu, creating a different setting when serving tea. This new practice, implemented in several gradual stages, highlighted the important functions of the utensils more than before. A host who served by the tokonoma with many tea utensils in the cabinet, in contrast to the sunken hearth with the daisu of essential selected tea utensils. Rikyu developed a new arrangement in the ceremonial setting – the host and guests would be seated in one room that combined the functions of the preparation room and the guests’ drawing room (shoin), paving the way for the introduction of the soan tea room in a simple environment of a impoverish thatched hermitage.

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Rikyu, when designing his tea room, made use of his teacher Jo-o’s guideline as a starting point, hence some similarity could be seen. He continued the development of the tea house design with his insight. The garden path was extended right up to the front of the tea room and the veranda was omitted from the design of the tea room. In place of the veranda are now just the overhanging eaves of the roof. A bench and sword rack for guests to rest and prepared themselves before entering the tea room were placed along the garden path by the side of the house. The stepping stones of the garden path is to lead guests from the gate of the tea house right up to the tea room’s nijiri-guchi entrance. It thus became a direct meeting point of tatami mat in the tea room and the garden. This particularly arrangement of the tea house showed his process of stripping down unnecessary elements in search of a purity essence in Tea. In his arrangement in the design of the tea house, the environment setting for the chanoyu is now unified between the garden, the tea room. The architectural form of the soan (thatched hermitage) has achieved its form.

Tea house built in the style of Rikyu’s soan View of of Kanden-an teahouse, ca 1790.

Arisawa family, Shimane Prefecture.

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Rikyu’s search for purity did not stop here at the soan tea house. He began to reduced the size of the subsequent tea rooms that he designed to an eventual 2-tatami mat (approximately 3.24sqm) area. The walls of the small tea room were finished freely with a fine compositional technique, although rough, to convey an extremely taut feeling of space. The realization of this small tea room was commonly seen as the pinnacle of Rikyu’s achievement in the search for truth in chado.

Interior view of Tai-an tea room, showing east wall.

Attributed to Sen no Rikyu, ca. 1582.

Myoki-an temple, Kyoto Prefecture

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Tea bowl called Muichibutsu,

by Tanaka Chojiro.

Red Raku ware; diameter 11cm.

Late 16th century.

Egawa family, Hyogo Prefecture.

Unfortunately Rikyu, being one of the close confidants to the shogunate Hideyoshi, unknowingly got entangled into the court of Hideyoshi’s politics.

The courtiers in Hideyoshi’s court began to plot against Rikyu. Rikyu fell victimed to many foul-tongued rumours circulating around Hideyoshi, in addition to the conflicting opinions he had to his shogunate’s decision to launch an attack against Korea (then part of China), he ultimately incurred Hideyoshi’s wrath. In the end Hideyoshi ordered Rikyu’s death through seppuku – a Japanese ritual suicide.

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Suki: Artistic taste in Tea From the time of Rikyu’s death to the end of the Azuchi-Momoyama period at the turn of the 17th century, Japan saw a decisive turning point in the history of the way of Tea. There were social and cultural developments taking place through the influence of Japan’s international trading.

Concurrently new aesthetics perspectives, brought in by foreign influences, were contributing to the development in the artistic taste (suki) in chanoyu.

It was not until the death of Hideyoshi in 1598, 7 years after Rikyu’s death, that another man, by the name of Furuta Oribe, was to be recognized to bring chado onwards into modern times. Furuta Oribe was a retainer to the shogunate Hideyoshi and a disciple of Rikyu. He was appointed as the first tea master of the second Tokugawa shogun, Hidetade and eventually rising to the highest position in the chanoyu world of his day. Oribe was known to hold contrasting ideals in some aesthetical perspective from Rikyu in chado.

Oribe was a pleasure-loving man and it was he who first introduced the concept of play into the chanoyu, bringing the ceremony towards an artistic platform, and even closer to the lives of common people.

Holding on to important teachings from Rikyu, he continued to implement the creative ingenuity required to make historical tradition serve a new creation. Like Rikyu, who had previously directed his attention towards local potteries from the Ise and Bizen regions, Oribe made positive efforts to adopt new aesthetics ideas through the cultural exchange from the influx of European delegates and traders in Japan. Oribe’s efforts in promoting decorative tea wares with simple patterns and interesting forms was a success along with his peculiar liking towards asymmetry in his preference for tea utensils, especially tea bowls. This new discovery of beauty in irregular shapes was truly related to a new awakening in the society of his day. It provided an outlet for fresh feelings in a world tightly bound by tradition, and inspired a unique genre of Japanese art. The asymmetry in round forms agreed with the ‘leaning’ of upright forms; it symbolized the mentality of self-indulgence from that time. This mentality was never found in the chado of Rikyu, but a characteristic that Oribe possess.

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Through Oribe’s way of Tea the development in Japanese artistic tradition took a big stride in its refinement, works of art made for the chanoyu showed the quintessence of aesthetic refinement (furyu). People in Japan, from the upper class of merchants to the lower class of townsmen, also took to this refined development of suki in their appreciation of arts, thus beginning a trail of the most superb cultural creation that Japan became known for.

Above: side dish containers (mukozuke). Designed by Furata Oribe. Height of each container 11cm.

Early 17th century.

Left: Tea bowl.

Black Oribe ware, diameter 13.8cm.

Second half of 16th century.

As mentioned earlier, Oribe came from the samurai warrior class and was a man of pleasure, hence this Tea style also paid great details to the entertainment of the nobles. In doing so, he gave a great impetus to the development of tea room arrangements that suited the samurai society.

Feeling that the 2-plus a daime-mat11 tea room arrangement perfected by Rikyu would place the host too close to the guest of honor, and as a result creating an uncomfortable situation for some, he revert the tearoom to a bigger format of 3-plus a daime-mat12 arrangement. This format of tea room placed the host between the guests of honor and other participants with a unique feature of a double sliding panel (fusuma) separating the main guest’s seat from those of the other participants. This gave the flexibility for 20

the tea master to change the size of the tea room to accommodate different number of guests in the chanoyu. In this change of approach to the tea room design, Oribe gave a more relaxed mood in comparison to the soan tea room arrangement of Rikyu. Besides altering the size of the tea room, Oribe also paid attention to the other aesthetic details concerning the design of the tea room. More screened windows were inserted into the tea room, especially on the side wall of the tokonoma to illuminate the beauty of the ornament display. Oribe also emphasized the effectiveness of patterns into the design of the tea house garden, fully showing his creative flair to creating an aesthetically harmonious and tranquil tea house, one void of spatial tension, allowing ample freedom to unfold when hosting tea party.

Since the time of Rikyu as the grand tea master, it was customary to include a banquet before or after the chanoyu. For the purpose of the banquet, an adjoining room was created in which a kettle is suspended by chains attached to the ceiling and it was literally named the ‘chain’ room (kusari no ma), separated from the actual chanoyu room. Oribe, however, began to change the function of this chain room. According to a tea party record, Oribe hosted a tea party in 1604 where guests partook of a tea ceremony meal (kaiseki) and have tea tasting in the form of concentrate tea (koicha), after which they would move to another room into the chain room, kusari no ma, through the host’s doorway. In this kusari no ma, the chanoyu took place with the tea utensils laid out and artistically arranged, light tea (usucha) was then prepared and served by the host with leisure conversation exchanged.

As different schools of tea progressed, tea house designs also gradually expanded by combining the soan tea room and the kusari no ma. As a result, 3 differing concepts of tea – soan (truth finding), fukuro-dana (leisure) and daisu (formal) – can be conducted on any occasions. The development of the kusari no ma ironically progressed parallel along to the small soan tea room. Through the incorporation of Rikyu’s wabi tea into the ‘luxurious’ daimyo tea, Oribe began to give more varieties into the play of tea ceremony.

Unfortunately in 1615 Oribe was dragged into a political situation in which, 21

he was forced to plot against the Tokogawa military government and the Emperor of Japan in the Osaka campaign, on behalf of the defenders of Osaka, and after the campaign ended, Oribe was ordered to put an end to his life by the seppuku ritual. The death of Oribe left his legacy to be continued by another distinguished Tea master, Kobori Enshu.

Nevertheless Oribe’s contributions towards chanoyu did not end upon his death. During Oribe’s time being a grand Tea master, he had written 2 books, one entitled Oribe Hyakkajo (Oribe’s Hundred Rules) containing the rules of Tea he inherited from Rikyu, and subsequently later Furuta Oribe Densho (Writings of Furuta Oribe). During the 1630s these books were eventually published and disseminated, through the help of Rikyu’s other disciple, Hosokawa Tadaoki. Tadaoki, also know by his priest name Sansai, was another loyal disciple of Rikyu, but unlike Oribe, he was a conservative minded person and had followed the ideals of wabi Tea closely. In spite of his conservativeness, he was very aware that the way of Tea had to adapt to the needs of society, hence he too made slight changes to his chanoyu to adapt. In 1641 Tadaoki similarly contributed a publication entitled Hosokawa Chanoyu, a transcription containing the same Tea rules of Rikyu as listed by Oribe through his own ego. These publications of chanoyu provided important guidelines and influential insights for many other Tea men, but it also emphasized not to completely imitate the ceremony from the books. On the contrary, Tea men were encouraged to adapt the guidelines to suit their own style and needs, as a result encouraging creativity and originality.

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Right: Interior views of En-an teahouse.

View showing tokonoma on left, host’s entrance on right.

Orignally designed

by Furata Oribe; rebuilt about 1830 – 35; relocated in 1867.

Yabunouchi school of tea, Kyoto Below: Interior views of En-an teahouse.

View showing server’s seat and shikishi windows. Orignally designed by Furata Oribe; rebuilt about 1830 – 35; relocated in 1867.

Yabunouchi school of tea, Kyoto.

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View of En-an teahouse, showing the nijiri-guchi.

Originally designed by Furata Oribe; rebuilt ca. 1830-35; relocated in 1867.

Yabunouchi school of tea, Kyoto

Garden of En-an teahouse, designed by Furata Oribe, rebuilt about 1830 – 35; relocated in 1867.

Yabunouchi school of tea, Kyoto 24

Kirei sabi in the art of chanoyu The world of chanoyu entered another phase following the death of Oribe. Another Tea man, Kobori Enshu Masakazu, surfaced to further the development of chanoyu. Kobori Enshu, who was a disciple of Oribe, came from a family of daimyo in Iyo province (present Ehime Prefecture) and had a position of a commissioner for construction and also magistrate of Kawachi (Osaka) and Omi provinces and of Fushimi in Kyoto. Enshu took on the role as Tea master to the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu. From the time of Tea master Juko to Jo-o and Rikyu, as well as Enshu’s teacher Oribe, the concepts of Tea has been evolving; each Tea master has introduced and implemented their own school of thoughts that best suit the time of their day. While Rikyu developed the concept of wabi Tea and Oribe adapted his style of Tea based on Rikyu’s but for merchant-class society. Likewise Enshu developed his chanoyu that appealed to the daimyo class. Although adapted to the wealth and power of the daimyo, it was not a reversion to the ‘formal’ severity of the basara in shin tea. Instead he emphasized more the idea of staging the chanoyu as a performance, making the ceremony into a form of art.

There had been debates by other Tea men about the Enshu’s unique way of Tea in his time. Enshu’s way of Tea possessed neither the spiritual strength of Rikyu’s wabi tea nor the intense creative quality of Oribe’s.

However Enshu’s Tea was versatile to incorporate a broad spectrum of principles from Rikyu and Oribe to conform to the requirements of the time and place, and he constantly strived to make the most of all Tea utensils from both old and contemporary period. Perhaps the main reason for the success in Enshu’s unique way of Tea was attributed to his strong education background in Japanese Classicism and his talents in the field of arts. He was widely considered as a man who lived a true life of a sukicha (a man of artistic taste in Tea).

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He chose names from famous old verses for the chuko meibutsu tea caddies and tea ladles. (The chuko, or “rediscovered” meibutsu, it should be noted, are the tea utensils of good taste that Enshu himself selected and added to the existing meibutsu.) He adorned the tokonoma not only with calligraphic scrolls but also with utagire (fragments of scrolls inscribed with traditional Japanese poetry), waka kaishi (poetry written on special writing paper), and Kasen-e (portraits of famous poets inscribed with poetry). With these as a basis, moreover, he fashioned his new creations with an exceedingly delicate sensitivity. Nowhere did this sensitivity stand out more than in his care over the smallest details when designing teahouses and gardens, which won for his works the commendatory designation of kirei sabi, a term normally used to denote a highly sophisticated form of construction with its roots in the Heian period.” 13

Tea bowl called Roku Jizo, Formerly owned

by Kobori Enshu.

Koido ware; diameter 13.8cm.

15th or 16th century.

Tea scoop called Kusemai, with case,

by Kobori Enshu.

First half of 17th century.

In a way no other tea master could match his interest in so many cultural objects, ranging from Japanese to Chinese, Korean and the Netherlands.

His aesthetical style soon became known as kirei sabi (refined rusticity) and it was Enshu who first added a literary consciousness of beauty to the wabi tea.

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“Presupposed by kirei sabi is sabi itself – that is, elegant simplicity – which in turn presupposes wabi. Wabi is most frequently mentioned in connection with Rikyu’s soan chanoyu, but here we would rather think of it as typical of Sotan. Sabi contained elements in common with wabi. Yet, with the passing of the Momoyama period and its revival of classicism, there emerged a concept of beauty where light was concealed in the depths of wabi. This hidden light was then drawn out by polishing, resulting in a refined kirei sabi.” 14 Besides the aesthetical details that Enshu presented in his chanoyu, there was the significant revolution to the style of ceremony compared to his predecessors. Enshu transformed the chanoyu to a ritual ceremonial performance. The notion of transforming the tea server’s seat into a stage was actually first conceived by Oribe when he began inserting more paper windows (shikishi mado) to light up the tea room, thus developing the ceremony into a stage-like arrangement. Enshu took this notion further by elevating the status of the server on level with the guests, in contrast to the past that the server held a lower status in the tea room. In order to achieve that Enshu designed his tea room with an open timbered ceiling (ceiling with rafters exposed to the interior) above the server’s seat and a skylight opened in the roof, achieving an effect similar to that of floodlight on a stage. Through this roof detail, the chanoyu is now transformed into a show that staged both the display of utensils and the performance, hence achieving what was recognized as the ideal of daimyo tea.

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It can be concluded that daimyo tea of Enshu hugely contrasted to Rikyu’s when the culture of tea was at its peak, yet it was Enshu who seemed to have grasped the principles of Rikyu better than any other tea masters.

In the short period from mid 15th century to mid 17th century, Tea has progressed rapidly along with Japan’s political and social situations. Japan was about to enter a period of political peace and it was also reflected in the basis of Enshu daimyo tea. The transformation of the chanoyu into an artistic performance was perhaps an attempt by Enshu to maintain the society interest in Tea. In the opening sentence of his Private Scribblings, he reflected his belief in the feudal ethics of his time: “The way of Tea…contains nothing very new, consisting simply of loyalty and filial piety, the diligent execution of the business of each household, and above all the need to insure that old friendships do not die.” 15

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Interior view of Mittan tearoom, designed by Kobori Enshu.

(Image on left) display shelves.

Ca. 1638. Ryoko-in, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto.

Interior view of Bosen tearoom.

Designed by Kobori Enshu.

Originally built around 1644; rebuilt in 1797.

Koho-an, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto.

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Reviving the spirit of wabi Tea Concurrently during the early 17th century, Rikyu’s grandson Sen Sotan succeeded the Sen household and began his attempt to strengthen the wabi tea practice left behind by Rikyu. Fearing that the Way of tea was losing its spiritual essence to a mere form of cultural recreation based on its material, Sen Sotan reintroduced and promoted the way of Tea through the spirit of Zen. This was a proposition later to take shape in four fundamental concepts – harmony (wa 和 ), respect (kei 敬 ), purity (sei 清 ), and tranquility (jaku 寂 ). Although Sotan, in his unassertive way, advocated wabi tea, the emphasis of the four core values in wabi tea was carried out by his later successors, which eventually branched out into 3 different Tea schools. A new system of teaching Tea was consequently set up, known as the iemoto system, in which only the iemoto (grand master) has the authority to award ‘licenses’ as to whom can be a Tea master. In this system, they tried to protect the legacy of Rikyu and to prevent the decline of Tea into a mere form of entertainment.

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The way of Tea The way of Tea, since the 17th century, was split into 2 main differing schools of thought – one that focused on the “truth seeking” wabi tea founded by Sen no Rikyu, and the other “gracefulness in simplicity” kirei sabi tea founded by Kobori Enshu.

Looking back from present day perspective, in the space of just about eighty years beginning in 1573, the way of Tea had came to play a central role in Japan’s cultural history through the talents of outstanding tea men. Tea arrived from China back in the 8th century and was only seen as a beverage for social gatherings, where nobility and the aristocrats showed off their wealth and power. It was not until the late 15th century that Murata Juko began to assert fundamental Japanese values into tea ceremony. Juko had therefore started a movement that saw the tea ceremony gaining its unique Japanese identity. Japan has always had a strong culture of a tradition, which sees the master handing down the skills to his disciples and this practice is also very visible in the chanoyu. In each case of these Tea men, we saw the disciple bringing the teachings of the master to another level.

In this instance, Juko had passed on his teachings to his disciples Sochin and Sogo, who then in turn passed down Juko’s teaching to Takeno Jo-o.

Jo-o was another Tea man to make big stride in the progress of the chanoyu who continued to purify the arrangement of chanoyu. In keeping to this tradition of master-disciple came Sen no Rikyu, who took lesson of Tea from Jo-o. Rikyu has been widely acknowledged to bring the chanoyu to its peak, purifying the ceremony and the way of Tea to a phase considered truly Japanese. Rikyu then had seven outstanding disciples, one of whom Furata Oribe, continued the work of bringing the chanoyu to progress along with the time and needs of the society. Oribe was a man of intense creativity and began introducing artistic elements into the tea ceremony. Likewise in Kobori Enshu, a disciple of Oribe, we see the artistic aspects of chanoyu going on to another higher level. The stature of tea ceremony became a form of national Japanese art.

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In the works of these 5 Tea masters, we see their philosophical and aesthetical talents undoubtedly influenced the development of not just in the quality of crafts that are highly valued and sought after, but also the refinement in the culture of the Japanese society.

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Part two Understanding Chanoyu

Chanoyu – an aesthetic manifestation of Zen ritual As early as 600AD, Japan had sent many scholars into China, then considered to be at its golden age 16, to learn about the Chinese advancement in religion, philosophy, arts and culture. This knowledge was then brought back to Japan and applied onto their model. Chinese arts was then one of the important imports into Japan and seen as symbol of wealth and power. As such the nobility and courtiers frequently used them in tea party, and soon the popularity of Chinese arts grew ever more.

The ideas and techniques were subsequently distributed to the masses in Japan, ranging from craftsmen to painters, and last but not least collectors.

To such an extent is the huge number of artworks entering Japan from China, regardless of the quality of the artworks, that specialists were being appointed to appraise those artworks to raise the level of art appreciation in the people, as well as to authenticate artworks to separate the genuine from the forged ones. This influx of art imports began to create an obsession in the vast majority of people, which people procured artworks for the sake of showing off, led to a rise in a new consciousness in the search of true beauty.

A small group of people began questioning from a different perspective, one that might be of religious stance, the true value of material in life. Could one find happiness in the beauty of simplicity, purity and, or somber? Hence this led to a new consciousness into a deep search for the truth of beauty.

Tea began its evolution when Murata Juko became a Tea master of his own. Juko had moved to Kyoto primarily to practice Zen meditation with a very strict abbot in the Daitoku-ji temple. It was believed that through the meditation and guidance from the abbot, Juko understood fundamental Zen Buddhist ideals towards life and the world. Gripping on to the religious idea of the virtue of poverty, he started to subtly implement Zen Buddhism teachings into the ‘formal’ chanoyu, one that is plagued by showiness and material desires. In Juko’s Tea, as well as in Takeno Jo-o and Sen no Rikyu, they began advocating the idea of ‘poverty’ – one should be humble in their mind and to refrain from worldly desires. As Tea was a popular activity in those days, people who learned about the way of Tea and participated in its ceremony, began to be more aware in this form of beauty – one that is virtually the same of Buddhism’s ‘philosophy of emptiness’, which is 35

characterized by the sphere of nothingness in the name of ‘poverty’. On the other hand as earthly beings, one needs tools and materials to survive.

Hence Tea brought on a new level of consciousness in appreciating beauty – one that is humble in the aesthetical appearance of subdued, austere, and restrained. In addition, one should live a life of ‘poverty’ by embracing simplicity, serenity, and harmony with nature.

Zen Buddhism arrived in Japan from China during the Tang dynasty as Chán（禪）via the Zen monk Dōgen Zenji (1200 – 1253). It is derived from Mahayana Buddhism. The fundamental teaching of Zen is for one to seek a non-discriminatory wisdom towards the everyday “life-world” when associating with one’s self, people and nature. Strong emphasis is placed on Zen practitioner in mediation practice to overcome discriminatory judgments and dualistic paradigm of thinking with its accompanying psychological states and attachments. Only then can one strive to achieve a holistic perspective in cognition with a stillness of mind, a life tending toward the concrete thing-event of everyday life and nature. Meditation mainly in the form of the kōan practice or “just sitting”, coupled with breathing exercise is utilized. The kōan is formulated in the form of a riddle or puzzle, in which to solve the riddle, one, not only has to use intellectual reasoning, but also has to break through one’s ego-consciousness by driving it to its limit. Through the meditational practice, one then is able to gain insight into Buddha-nature, and in the process gain freedom in daily life enlightenment.

Murata Juko, along with other Tea masters such as Sen no Rikyu who had practiced Zen meditation, infused the ‘spiritual’ connection into chanoyu with their Zen ‘thoughts’ and ‘sights’. Zen Buddhist monks’ movements are often slow and serene when in the meditation room. Likewise one sees similarities in the way Tea masters moved when in the tea room – slow, graceful and serene movements when they entered the room and also during the conducting of the chanoyu. These Tea masters gave Tea a different dimension, as Sōetsu Yanagi wrote in his essay “The Way of Tea”,

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“Everyone looks at things, but people do not perceive in the same manner. Some are able to penetrate into the depths of things, but most see only the surface, and objects are usually categorized as right or wrong. To misapprehend is no better than not to notice.

Though everyone says he sees things, how few can see things as they are. Among these few are found the early masters of the Way of Tea. They had deep-seeing eyes. They could comprehend intuitively. And with this penetration, they saw truth.” 17 True men of Tea are also masters in the ‘power of seeing’, for it was believed that they saw the reflection of the inner nature of things, the reality of things, which the old philosophers called ‘the eternal mode’. In this ‘eternal mode’ Zen maintain a stance of “not one” and “not two”. By the mode of “not two”, a thing by itself or, otherwise the whole, is entirely different from the sum total of the parts. The whole is indivisible. To see the whole directly means to see before analyzing or discriminating. If things are looked at with our thoughts, then we see only a portion, and if intellect is applied before we see, understanding is superficial. Seeing and knowing form an exterior and an interior respectively and in understanding beauty, intuition is more of vital than intellectual perception. When seeing intuitively, the object is never objectified, and in Buddhist phraseology, it means entering the sphere of whole, the ‘Non-duality’. On this act of seeing intuitively, Yanagi gave three pieces of advice: “First, put aside the desire to judge immediately; acquire the habit of just looking. Second, do not treat the object as an object for the intellect. Third, just be ready to receive, passively, without interposing yourself. If you can void your mind of all intellectualization, like a clear mirror that simply reflects, all the better. This non-conceptualization – the Zen state of mushin (‘no mind’) – may seem to represent a negative attitude, but from it springs the true ability to contact things directly and positively”.18 There was an anecdote about a man named Kichibei, whose unfortunate wife had been bed-ridden for two years. He himself swept the house 37

everyday, cooked all the meals, and washed the clothes. When a compassionate villager remarked how tiring all this must be, Kichibei replied, “I do not know what fatigue is, because caring for my wife everyday is always both a first experience and a last experience. There is no doing it again, and so I never tire of it”. 19 The morale of this story relates living in “the right now” is the true condition of man’s being, and when one looks at objects in “the right now”, beauty will never conceal itself – for intuition means the act of “seeing right now”. A man of intuition may be defined as one who allows impressions to be forever new: from this point of view, an object of art is created by those who look at it, and a man of intuition is an able artist.

The Absolute, through the eyes of Zen, is the Relative. The Relative, which a Zen master might point out, is that Truth can only be reached through the comprehension of opposites. Zen sees the Present as a constant moving Infinity, the legitimate sphere of the Relative; a state of Impermanence. This state of Impermanence, the mode of “not one” gives an interest concept about Time and Space as an integrated space-time in the interfusion of a concrete temporalization and spatialization. This concept, a rather distinct one in Chinese and Japanese written language, is partly also describe by the character 間 (pronounce as jiān in chinese, or ma in Japanese). 間 by its own it refers to a ‘void’ but when combine with ‘時’ and ‘空’ respectively, it is means time（時間）and space（空間）.

The Japanese Zen monk Dōgen elaborated the concept as “being-time” to indicate their inseparability; being cannot be apart from time, just as time cannot be apart from being. The existence of being will always be closely in relation to spatial existence, as well as time. This concrete spatializationtemporalization, which is lived without any intellectual abstraction, reflects the Buddhist position that everything is impermanent. However Zen disregards an intellectual abstraction that merely thinks time and space. As Zen constantly emphasize one to be in the experience of ‘here and now’, one must also ride on the rhythm of living nature. 20 In living this integrated, living space-time, Zen does not see time to be a quantifiable and homogeneously punctuated unit, nor does it conceive of time as a linear progression from past to future via the present. The units in 38

time is only included insofar as they are useful for everyday life. According to Zen, the idea of time as seen in western philosophical and scientific perspectives (ie, image of eternity and clock units) is absent; time is ‘alive’ in the immediacy of “here-now”. Likewise in Zen, space is also seen as a living space. Japanese Zen monk Dōgen Zenji once used the example of “the bird flies the sky and the sky flies the bird”. It is a dynamic, inter-dependent, bilateral relationship between being and space, from which the living spacetime is the continuum of “here-now”, where each of the terms enter the relationship through the process of non-dualistic ‘coming-together’ of the two. 21 There is another anecdote that illustrated a monk who for long had been living away from society of men in a hut in remote mountains. One day a visitor who had found his way there asked him, ”How many years have you been living here?” The monk replied simply, ”There are no days on the calendar in these mountains”. 22 The search for the truth, through the engagement of meditations and the studying of kōan, however will not be possible unless the practitioner moves to the mode of “not one”, for Zen also recognizes that any stance will otherwise be one-sided and partial. The practice of Zen-seeing in the actions of everyday life requires entering the mode of “not one”. This mode of “not one” again operates in a dynamic bilateral with the mode of “not two”, best symbolizes in Zen by a circle – an image of the whole, as well as an image of perfection. When these two modes of seeing come together, they bring the Zen practitioner back to the everyday “life-world”, the reality. The world of multiplicity is ordinarily constructed with ‘either-or’, ‘ego-logically’ and dualistically. It is through these principles of Zen that cultivate one self with non-discriminatory wisdom, one thus gains ‘freedom’ and the ability to see beauty out of the ordinary.

The tea ceremony of Juko’s was the start of the journey where Zen teachings were infused. Although there was no radical change overnight in the style of Tea during Juko’s time, it began giving the chanoyu a different meaning.

A platform built for later Tea masters in their search for the truth in beauty through Zen perspectives.

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The search for wabi It was mostly agreed that Tea reached its spiritual pinnacle when Sen no Rikyu was appointed as the grand tea master to the patronage of the shogunate Toyotomi Hideyoshi and subsequently introduced the concept of ‘wabi’. In this wabi tea, Rikyu attempted to create a deeper meaning to tea party by infusing the spirituality of Zen philosophy with tea into ‘one spirit’.

As a result, it means a move away from the focus of excessive collections of luxury tea utensils and wares, focusing on the humanistic aspects of tea ceremony – building harmonious relationship between people. It is therefore unsurprising that the chanoyu, since Rikyu’s time, is often conducted in a tranquil environment.

The concept of wabi (in modern day perspective) was best summarised in ‘The Wabi-Sabi house: the Japanese art of imperfect beauty’ by Robyn Griggs Lawrence: “Wabi stems from the root wa（詫）, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquillity, and balance. Generally speaking, wabi had the original meaning of sad, desolate, and lonely, but poetically it has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice, and in tune with nature.

Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. A wabi person epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; free from greed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.” 23 Beyond building harmony relationship between people, Tea also introduced many interesting concepts with regards to living and aesthetics. In wabi, the most obvious aesthetic concept was that the form and finishing of objects are left as natural as possible. This is evidently seen in the Tai-an tea house that Rikyu built. The interiors of the tea room were constructed with a sense of ‘purity’ through the usage of earthly materials to resemble a poor man’s hut, stripped off any hints of luxury and material hierarchy. Wabi is often expressed as “finding satisfaction in poverty” 24, and in this austere living one finds opportunities for spiritual richness. The lack of space in the tea room for decoration also convey a Zen concept of the dynamism in the all40

containing, whereby special art objects are only brought into and displayed on the tokonoma (the altar) to satisfy a certain aesthetic mood that best suit the occasion. This is best explained as the Zen concept of ‘being-time and space’. Most people also see wabi as a worship of the ‘imperfection’ in objects. However it should not be mistaken as making objects without skills and care. In another words, the worship of imperfection is based on the observation in nature and the impact of natural elements, rather than the results of unskilled work. In the idea of ‘imperfection’, one finds Zen’s perfection in accordance to the dynamic nature of Zen philosophy teachings. One puts more emphasis upon the process of perfection than upon perfection itself. Until one who is able to mentally complete the incomplete; true beauty does not reveal.

Rikyu’s aesthetical ideas were, through Tea, spread on different levels. To the craftspeople who were producing tea utensils, functional wares and textiles, new ideas and techniques were imparted to them, as Rikyu preferred to source for locally produced wares for his tea utensils and decorative objects. One of the most prominent style of tea bowls symbolic of Rikyu’s tea is the Raku ware.

Rikyu would commission the potter Tanaka Chojiro to make the Raku ware for his chanoyu. Later in Rikyu’s Tea, his disciple would also championed the concept that “any utensils may be used for the tea ceremony as long as their shape is good” 25, hinting that ‘beauty reveals a form’.

On a wider level, the people in the society also benefitted from Rikyu’s Tea in the way they learn to appreciate and execute beauty in their daily lives.

People during that time were very much intrigued and eager to know about Tea, as it was a way to come into contact with the nobility and handling precious beautiful objects (meibusu). In order to do so, one had to learn 41

the manners and etiquette of Tea. Out of this curiosity for Tea, people also began taking up ideas when building their living quarters - the transition of interior of rooms to exterior of garden, the design and the usage of materials, and as well as the way in how they decorated their rooms; The idea of the dynamical “all-containing” was widely taken up as people become more aware of what they displayed in their house. In addition to concepts in spatial design, Tea also began to influence the Japanese culinary – in the form of Kaiseki cuisine. Kaiseki cuisine, usually served in tea party, like tea ceremony, is something that one might associate with the fine dining experience. In Kaiseki, the food served is an extension of wabi. The style is minimalist to bring out the ‘purity’ in the food too. A big emphasis is also laid upon the dining wares and vessels used in the presentation of the meal to complete the whole experience.

Beauty is a kind of mystery that intuition is more essential than intellectual perception, in order to recognize and appreciate it. We perhaps see both in Rikyu. Through Rikyu’s eyes, he saw the true beauty in one’s nature, as in the Zen Buddhism phrase kenshō (seeing into one’s nature). Rikyu, having an education background in Zen Buddhism, possesses the intuition to understand true beauty and was able to reveal this beauty with freedom.

Purity and the truth of nature, being including, is reflected in this beauty, and this perhaps summarize the essence of wabi – the Harmony, Respect, Purity and Tranquility in the beauty of nature.

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In Praise of Sabi Whenever the word wabi is mentioned, sabi will inevitably be linked to it.

While wabi focuses on the inner, sabi deals with the outer. Wabi is about a way of life, sabi, on the other hand, is about the material objects, art and literature. The notion of sabi（寂）, although now commonly applied to the aesthetic value of material objects, was initially introduced through classical Japanese poetry written as early as 347AD. In particularly the ‘Manyōshū’ (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) – one of the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry complied around the time of 795AD, sabi has a connotation of desolateness (sabireru (寂れる) means “to become desolate”). The connotation of sabi gradually began to change, through the interpretation of Tea master Juko, who began to apply sabi into the field of art to describe something that has aged beautifully in the process of time; taking pleasure in things that were old and faded.

“Time is kind to things, but unkind to man.” 26 In the way of Tea sabi is mostly applied to renowned tea objects (meibutsu), in which Tea masters like Juko, Jo-o, Rikyu, Oribe and Enshu would go through numerous wares to pick out the selection. Out of the five great Tea masters mentioned above, the appreciation for sabi can perhaps be most associated with Kobori Enshu. Sabi was given the best interpretation through the eyes of Enshu. He was very talented in Japanese classical poetry and could grasped the original notion of sabi to the fullest, subsequently applying to his creations in the aesthetical details of teahouses and gardens design, and the selection of his tea utensils in Tea ceremony. Eventually these characteristics in his works became known as kirei-sabi, which also implies gracefulness and simplicity. Enshu had the talent to reveal a concept of beauty where it was concealed in the depths of wabi.

The idea of sabi or kirei sabi can perhaps be derived from the time that Japan, since 15th century, was receiving a lot of foreign influx in ideology and technology and hence many, in nostalgic of Japan Classicism, began to reject foreign influences in favour of Japanese traditional values. This nostalgia can be best seen in the work of Tanizaki’s ‘In Praise of Shadows’, 43

in which he frequently celebrates sabi, especially in a peculiar mention about the Japanese holistic sensibility in the creation of the traditional Japanese toilet: “… the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden… Wood finished in glistening black lacquer is the very best, but even unfinished wood, as it darkens and the grain grows more subtle with the years, acquires an inexplicable power to calm and soothe. The ultimate, of course, is a wooden “morning glory” urinal filled with boughs of cedar: this is a delight to look at and allows not the slightest sound.” 27 In the time of modernization we constantly sought for the latest and newest, but it is a stark contrast in the notion of sabi. True sabi cannot be acquired; it is a gift of time. A man of sabi romanticises on nature, and the beautiful impact time has on the nature of the material objects. In true master of Tea they learn to see and discover sabi in natural simple objects, and hence reveal its elegance for all to see, just like in the chanoyu, they revealed the beauty in the natural simplicity of tea utensils.

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Wabi-sabi – The Occidental persepective to ‘Shibusa’ When Tea was infused with Zen Buddhism teachings in the 15th century, it also taught people to appreciate and respect the beauty in utilitarian objects. Objects showing a high level of flashiness, showy of man’s ego are rejected for the contrasting beauty in subdued, simple, austere objects showing the purity of true beauty. At the beginning of early 1950s Sōetsu Yanagi wrote a few essays about the Japanese insight into beauty, translated into English through Bernard Leach and with help of some other Japanese scholars, brought forth a Japanese term ‘shibusa’. Shibusa (渋さ), noun to the adjective shibui (渋い), is a formulated criterion when describing a certain depth of beauty in any given object, art or fashion. This term covers a wide spectrum of refined elements such as simplicity, implicity, modesty, subdued, naturalness, and imperfection. Shibusa, in its definition, often carries a blurred line with the wabi or sabi in Tea. Shibusa can perhaps be best associated to just aesthetics, refined elegant taste in life; it has no association to Tea. Outside of Japan, shibusa can be best identified with what is commonly known as ‘wabi-sabi’.

It is not known exactly when the notion of wabi-sabi was introduced to the Occidental part of the world but it has brought on a new aesthetical concept outside of Japan. It has been mentioned frequently that most Japanese will find it difficult to explain the concept of wabi-sabi when asked, and it is perhaps understandable since in Japan, these two words, although each finding meaning in one another, is hardly used together. It was noted by author of ‘The wabi-sabi House’, Robyn Griggs Lawrence, that as catchy as the two words ‘wabi’ and ‘sabi’ sound when put together, many Tea teachers in Japan feels that the marriage of the two words have diluted their individual notion, and should best be apart. 28 Through Leonard Koren’s interpretation in his book ‘Wabi-sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers’ (1994), wabi-sabi represents a unique aesthetical sensibility, one that is of big contrast to modernism, especially in the field of design. Koren gave readers an introduction about the aesthetics of wabi-sabi in 3 main categories:

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1. Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

2. Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things modest and humble.

3. Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things unconventional. 29 Koren tried to relate the notion of wabi-sabi to what is happening in this age of materialism and technology, where the modern capitalist society cultivate an ‘aimless’ luxury buying mentality in many people’s mindset.

More importantly it points out to a fact that there is no such thing as ‘perfect’, an ideal that is pursued in the Modernism philosophy. After reading Koren’s book, I got the feeling that he tried to be as secular as possible in his explanation, focusing mainly on the application of the universal laws on material and aesthetical qualities, urging people to see intuitively the imperfection as a beauty rather than rejection. To a certain extent, one has to accept and embrace results deriving from the law of the Universe. However, in my opinion, Koren’s interpretation can be rather misleading. For a start, it encourages people to see objects deliberately made to “imperfection” as a novelty and creating a trend of poorly made deforming objects, causing people lose further sight of the ‘purity’ in the beauty of objects. In spite of great appreciation and respect being given to the beauty of ‘imperfect’ objects, high level of skills must still be emphasised to craftsmen when making ‘shibui’ objects. In the aesthetical imperfection frequently implied to as ‘wabi-sabi’ objects are actually describing the ‘damages’ caused through the inevitable impact of any possible natural elements and not deliberate deformity of human egos. It is the beauty created by incompleteness, the inevitable slight scars or irregularities of form through the act of nature. Nevertheless credit must be given to Koren for he has perhaps inspired many other western writers to take up this oriental notion in their research for a more comprehensive interpretation to the Occidental mindset.

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Rediscovering Wabi, Sabi and Shibusa My investigations into the way of Tea and all the notions associated with the Tea ceremony and a bowl of green tea has been very enlightening for me. Reflecting on some of the ideals from the Way of Tea, I gradually find more comfort in my identity as an Oriental person and begin to develop a better understanding with how I ‘see’. Coming from a design education background, I cannot believe how foolish I was in believing the beauty of machines and the introduction of computer-aid manufacturing can help solve the problems in people’s lives. The precision, which a machine can produce, is by no means remarkable, yet the results have no humanistic values. In my opinion, this situation of machine manufacturing has worsened as it gave an illusion that everyone can be a creator. On the subject of the rise in the trend of 3-D printing, every designer wants to use the technology to make ‘the next news worthy’ object, without thinking deeper about the proper ‘humanistic values’. In a way these objects were not made with humanistic emotions, but can be considered cold and calculative.

Have these qualities now become a reflection of society? False happiness is introduced to consumers market and they surround consumers with ever increasing “wants” than “needs”. We continually accumulate in our space unnecessary objects, thinking that we need them in our lives. A good example would be fitness gadgets people use these days to calculate calories.

Back in the days before these fitness gadgets were introduced, exercising was a good way to maintain our fitness and to relieve stress. When we decide to go for a run, all we need was a set of exercise clothing and a pair of running shoes. These days running have become a very complex routine.

Besides putting on the basic running outfit, one has to equip with wearable technology, i.e. fitness tracker to monitor heartbeats, calories, and distance covered, portable music player to motivate the runner, etc. In a way, we are enslaved by the complexity of these gadgets and gradually becoming a robotic entity – a cyborg.

Yet coming back to reality, I sometimes find my actions contradicting with the ideals of wabi. Being in a situation where one has to sustain a living in a society, I have to make ceramics and any kind of objects in order to pay for the bills. I frequently contemplate if I fall into the category of those 47

designers. Although the objects that I made are mostly handmade, I often ask myself what is my responsibility as a craftsman, why am I making another plate in a world filled with billions of plates and how many plates does one actually need?

In 1952 Sōetsu Yanagi had written a treatise on ‘Responsibility’ (of a maker) and while Yanagi’s treatise was written in the mid-twentieth century, I can sense that what he wrote has already served us a warning of the decline in the quality of the arts and crafts world. In contemporary time where machines are part and parcel of our ‘easier’ lives, it is very difficult to imagine what life will be without machines. Handmade products can no longer meet the demands in our ever-increasing population, and on top of that, the competitive ‘capitalist module’ economy has further endangered the works of craftsmen. The advantage of mass produced machine-made products has no doubt allow majority of the population affordable comfort, however it does not necessarily mean quality, especially in aesthetics. One can, of course, argued that in uncertain economical times, who needs the comfort of beauty? But then again, does not beauty make life more bearable in perilous times? This is when Yanagi believe the role of a designer comes to the forefront to work with the craftsman. The role of this designer is to bridge the relationship between craftsman and the industrial companies.

A few companies come into my mind whenever I think of good designs with affordable prices – Ikea (Sweden), Muji (Japan) and HEMA (Netherlands).

The creeds of these companies evolved around the habits of people’s lifestyles. Like many other companies that claims to be the same, what make these companies stand out among the rest is that they call for designers to think of solutions that combines quality in the design and aesthetics, but also simplicity, ease in usage with the most appropriate material while keeping production cost as low as possible. That is a lot to ask for from the designers and I think they also deserve our respect and every credit, which their employers and companies receive.

What then is my interpretation to responsibility of an artist-craftsman? I find myself scratching my head asking what fundamental ideal should my work be based upon. Besides ‘Responsibility’, Yanagi also wrote another 48

interesting treatise about ‘Craftsmanship’ in the form of questions and answers format. When asked about the value of artist-craftsman, Yanagi emphasized the importance of the artist-craftsman setting the standards of art and playing the role to spread the beauty in arts to the people. In this argument, he took the example of an artist-potter, particularly in the Ming dynasty of China, who makes a pot and puts on it a drawing of a landscape.

This pot is then copied in thousands by other artisans. 30 In a way, it shows how as an artist can influence a person in seeing things, and vice verse, the environment can also influence the artist’s perspective.

There are many artists, in the field of ceramics, that one can find references to traditional crafts and contemporary arts. When I look at the works from the traditional crafts, especially those with minimal, simple pattern decorations, there is usually a sense of beauty, no matter from which period of time they come. This everlasting beauty is even more evident when one looks at the functional wares from Orient, some dated as early as fifteenth century. On the other hand with contemporary arts, the works of Edmund de Waal resonate deeply in me. De Waal started his career as an artist-craftsman, taking inspirations from the works of Bernard Leach – a renowned English artist-craftsman whose work had heavy influence from Japanese arts. De Waal’s works, however, did not stop at functional ceramics pottery; he began his artistic research into the relationship of object and spatialisation. The outcome was that he began making porcelain cylindrical vessels and arranging them in site-specific context. In his profile statement, Edmund de Waal wrote: “Much of Edmund’s recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections; how objects are kept together, lost, stolen or dispersed. His work comes out of a dialogue between minimalism, architecture and music, and is informed by his passion for literature.” 31 What captivated me deeply about de Waal’s works was the beauty in his minimalist, yet playful arrangements. The simplicity and the ‘imperfection’ of his white porcelain vessels invoked a sense of imagination for the spectator to complete and the rhythm in his arrangement provided a beauty 49

of poetry; one instantly became immersed in this tranquil beauty that his works reveal – a sense of wabi.

(image top and left) In praise of shadow, 2012 77 thrown porcelain dishes in black glazes and gilding, on 12 black aluminium shelves.

Each shelf 8 x 30 x 12 cm, overall height 140 cm Edmund de Waal

The nothing that is, 2015 12 porcelain vessels with gilding on 7 aluminium shelves.

15.5 x 80 x 8 cm Edmund de Waal 50

The worship of nature derived from Tea made me realise how insignificant a human is when confronted by nature. Whenever I think of contemporary artists working with the subject of showing nature, Herman de Vries will inevitably come to forefront. There was a rather interesting statement made by de Vries in 1995 entitled ‘physics and metaphysics are one’ that ‘everything we know is in the world, is the world’. 32 De Vries, as a visual artist, conceives his works of art by showing the beauty of nature as ‘itself’ to the audience, in which he aims to raise the consciousness of the spectators. De Vries asserts ‘the spectator completes the work by absorbing its information. The social function is thus the participation in a consciousness-raising process.’ 33 I began to understand de Vries’s concepts and works, through the help of Tea, in a better light. “art is the product less of human creativity and the striving for expression than of the objectivation of observing and perceiving.” 34 De Vries’s works can be percieved appropriation of objects, like Duchamp and other appropriation artists. However the objects that he appropriated are of nature; he brings to our attention ‘objects’ of nature by framing and arranging them in a cultured context, i.e. a gallery.

a journal of venice, 2014, herman de vries 51

Recently I have also come across a group of Japanese artists involved in an informal art movement, Mono-ha (literally translated as School of Things).

This movement was initiated by Japanese artist Sekine Nobuo around 1968, with the first major work entitled “Phase – Mother Earth” presented in Suma-Rikyu Park Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition in Kobe. In “Phase – Mother Earth” Nobuo dug a huge hole into the ground, approximately 2.7m deep and 2.2m in diameter, and with this earth he constructed a massive cylindrical earth sculpture next to the hole. Through this work, Nobuo sparked the movement of artists bringing natural or man-made materials, in whenever possible unaltered, in an arrangement so that the juxtaposed materials speak for themselves. 35 In this Mono-ha movement, I felt many traces from their ideology in relation to the ideals from the way Tea masters presented their art in the chanoyu.

Phase – Mother Earth Sekine Nobuo, 1968 1st Kobe Suma Rikyu Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition

Phase of Nothingness – Cloth and Stone Sekine Nobuo, 1970/1994 The Rachofsky Collection 52

In an environment like the ceramics department where making things are part of the process, it can be rather challenging to create works ‘void of any input of self-ego’. There was a short experimentation period when I tried making works with as little input of my ego. Although the works were not successful at all, it had helped me in understanding my way of making.

It took me a while to come to terms with the idea of ‘imperfection’ and staying in a mode of ‘non-dualistic’ during making. Making ‘imperfection’ does not mean to be careless and ‘messy’ but on the contrary, to maintain a high level of skill yet not to be overly obsesses with total perfection. It is about knowing when to stop in the process of making. In this Yanagi tried to emphasize in his essay Irregularity that True beauty will surface when one does not consciously aim at either perfection or imperfection. For in a realm where such distinctions ceased to exist, there will always have a little something left unaccounted for in a work 36 for the spectator to imagine and thus complete the work.

A year ago, I started a research project into a particular type of glaze which forms a crystals pattern after firing. The beauty of the glaze was very mesmerising although I could not identify exactly why. Crystal glaze, in a way tries to mimic the natural formation of willemite (zinc-silicate) crystals, through a special formulated glaze recipe and the help of modern technology. 37 Like every other type of glazes, one can have a control in the colour of the glaze, and the firing schedule to determine the end result.

The results of crystal glaze, however, are very unpredictable no matter how systematic the glaze is prepared. The formation of the crystal patterns is totally left to the unknown factor, and no two results are the same even if they are from the same prepared mixture. To add to the fascination of the mysterious beauty, every time the same glaze is re-fired, the formation of the crystals will be different; the crystal glaze shows the characteristic of dynamism. For me, this crystal glaze presents no state of the ‘ideal’ result and one always has to accept the ‘inevitable’. It also highlights the unique relationship between man-made and nature-made. Nevertheless, I believe True beauty does surface from this glaze of imperfection.

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Crystal glaze research, 2015 Tan Wei Keong

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As I now prepare a cup of tea, I look back to a fundamental idea from the chanoyu – to develop a harmonious relationship between one and another.

In a harmonious relationship, one has to cultivate respect and appreciation towards the relationship, not just between people, but also towards objects and Nature. Tea, through the influence of Zen, also highlights the importance of reality through living in the ‘present’ moment. One should prioritise awareness to the present moment, cultivating the ability to tune into sights, sounds, physical sensations, thoughts and emotions that are occurring in the present moment. Just like in the appreciation of a work of art, one should tune into the senses that it is resonating, in order to see its beauty. What I notice about our society in this contemporary era is that people seems to be less and less aware about the ‘presence’ of their surrounding. Modern technology, especially “smart technology”, has brought about the decline in sense of social etiquette and respect of many people towards one another. “with the machine the distance between man and vegetation is different: I think the relation has been dramatically depleted” – de vries commenting on the relationship between man and nature in an interview with Jean-Hubert Martin. 38 Has the machine really desensitised our humanistic awareness? In an era where machines are everywhere and essential to our daily lives, how does it affect the relationship between man-made and nature-made?

Tea, along with Zen Buddhism teachings, attempt to cultivate simplicity in living, and mindfulness and concentration in actions. Through these processes, one tries to find the ‘freedom’, a new awakening towards our surrounding – one with mutual respect and harmony. It might be a naïve thought, but will the world not be a more peaceful place if everyone practise a little of chanoyu, the ceremony of humanity. The art of Life.

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Notes 1. “The mist in Spring; A cuckoo half-hidden by greenish leaves in Summer; A lonely looking sunset in Autumn; A snowy dawn in Winter” – in each of these, a feeling of the chanoyu.

Kobori Enshu quoted this Japanese classical poem in his private journal.

- T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 90.

The origin of this Japanese classical poem can be traced back as far as in the 1247 when the Japanese Zen Buddhist monk Dōgen Zenji, in his meeting with the newly installed shōgun’s regent, Hōjō Tokiyori.

Dōgen gave this poem as a reply to Tokiyori when asked “How can true Buddhism be found, sitting around doing nothing?”

2. My Father is the Grand Master, 91minutes. Directed by Hiroki Takano 高野裕規 . Flim Voice Inc, Japan, 2014.

For more information http://chichihaiemoto.com 3. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea: The Cup of Humanity. Penguin Classics, Penguin Group, 2010, page 9 4. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea: The Cup of Humanity. Penguin Classics, Penguin Group, 2010, page 9 5. “The chanoyu consists merely of heating water, serving a cup of tea.”

Rikyu was reminding people that tea gathering was originally a form of entertainment despite its evolution supported by the spirit of Zen, and forming social relationship is still its most basic idea.

- T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 164.

6. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea: Taoism & Zennism. Penguin Classics, Penguin Group, 2010, page 33

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7. T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 11.

8. “I have no taste for the full moon” – a statement by Noh playwright and actor Komparu Zempo (1454-c. 1520) attributed to Juko, suggests that Juko was more moved by a moon half hidden in the clouds than one viewed in all its roundness. This statement is thought to contain a veiled criticism of the model of ideal tea centered on Chinese objects.

- T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 27.

9. The dimension of 1 tatami mat is approximately 0.96m by 1.91m (Kyoto standard). Hence the area size for 4.5 tatami mat room is approximately 7.45m2 (2.73m by 2.73m 10. “the basis of the chanoyu is the daisu, but if we look for the heart of chanoyu we will find it nowhere other than in the small ‘informal’ room.” In this Rikyu claimed that the essence of chanoyu has become ‘Japanese’. T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 27.

11. Daime refers the the space taken up by the daisu (1 foot and 4 inches) plus one additional inch for the low screen surrounding the daisu.

Hence the dimension of a daime is approximately 0.96m by 1.48m, 1.42m2. In 2 plus a daime mat room, the area will be approximately 5.08m2.

12. See note 11. In a 3 plus a daime mat room, the area will be approximately 6.92m2.

13. T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 90.

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14. T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 90.

15. T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 91.

16. The golden age of Chinese civilization was during the Tang dynasty (AD618 – 907). However one should also consider the previous dynasty , Sui dynasty (AD589 – 618), playing an important role laying the foundation for success in the Tang dynasty.

17. Sōetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty – The Way of Tea; translated and adapted from Japanese by Bernard Leach and M. Okamura. Kodansha USA, 2013, page 177 18. Sōetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty – Seeing and Knowing; translated and adapted from Japanese

by Bernard Leach and M. Okamura. Kodansha USA, 2013, page 112 19. Sōetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty – The Buddhist Idea of Beauty; translated and adapted from Japanese by Bernard Leach and M. Okamura. Kodansha USA, 2013, page 155 20. For more comprehensive reading about Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy, see: Nagatomo, Shigenori, Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy – 7.3. An Integrated Time and Space. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ japanese-zen/ 21. Ibid.

22. Sōetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty – The Buddhist Idea of Beauty; translated and adapted from Japanese by Bernard Leach and M. Okamura. Kodansha USA, 2013, page 153

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23. Robyn Griggs Lawrence, The Wabi-Sabi House, The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty. Clarkson Potter, New York, 2004. This text is extracted from the website “What is Wabi-Sabi?” http://nobleharbor. com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm For further reading, see Robyn Griggs Lawrence http://www. robyngriggslawrence.com 24. T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 38.

25. Rikyu’s disciple, Yamanoue Soji, wrote his observation in his journal Chaki Meibutsu Shu (Collection of Renowned Tea Utensils), 1588 – “any utensils may be used for the tea ceremony as long as their shape is good” .

T. Hayashiya, M. Nakamu and S. Hayashiya, The Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art: Japanese Arts and the Tea Ceremony; translated from Japanese and adapted by J.P. Macadam. Weatherhill, New York, 1974, page 82.

To read more about Raku ware, see http://raku-yaki.or.jp/e/index.html 26. Robyn Griggs Lawrence, The Wabi-Sabi House, The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty. Clarkson Potter, New York, 2004. This text is extracted from the website “What is Wabi-Sabi?” http://nobleharbor. com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm For further reading, see Robyn Griggs Lawrence http://www. robyngriggslawrence.com 27. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, In Praise of Shadows; translated and adapted by Thomas J.Harper and Edward G.Seidensticker. Leete’s Island Books, 1977, page 3, 6.

28. Robyn Griggs Lawrence, The Wabi-Sabi House, The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty. Clarkson Potter, New York, 2004. This text is extracted from the website “What is Wabi-Sabi?” http://nobleharbor. com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm For further reading, see Robyn Griggs Lawrence http://www. robyngriggslawrence.com

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29. Leonard Koren, Wabi-sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers – Wabi-Sabi Spiritual Values. Imperfect Publishing, 2008, page 46, 49.

30. Sōetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty – The Way of Craftsmanship; translated and adapted from Japanese by Bernard Leach and M. Okamura. Kodansha USA, 2013, page 202 31. Edmund de Waal profile. See http://www.edmunddewaal.com/about/ profile/ 32. Mel Gooding, herman de vries: chance and change – the poet in his poetry. Thames & Hudson, 2006, page 12 33. Mel Gooding, herman de vries: chance and change – the eschenau journal and other real works nature and art. Thames & Hudson, 2006, page 65 34. Jean-Hubert Martin, herman de vries, Colin Huizing and Cees de Boer and Birgit Donker, herman de vries: to be all ways to be. Valiz/ Mondriaan Fund Publication, 2015, page 15 35. For more Mono-ha works, see An Introduction to ‘Mono-ha’ written by Ashley Rawlings for TABlog - http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/ entries.en/2007/09/an-introduction-to-mono-ha.html For further readings, see works from Sekine Nobuo, Lee Ufan, Suga Kishio, Koshimizu Susumu and also a group show in Blum & Poe entitled Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha.

36. Sōetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty – The Beauty of Irregularity; translated and adapted from Japanese by Bernard Leach and M. Okamura. Kodansha USA, 2013, page 120-121 37. Peter Ilsley, Macro-Crystalline Glazes: The Challenge of Crystals.

Crowwood Press, 1999, page 8.

38. Jean-Hubert Martin, herman de vries, Colin Huizing and Cees de Boer and Birgit Donker, herman de vries: to be all ways to be. Valiz/ Mondriaan Fund Publication, 2015, page 71

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Acknowledgements Bert Taken for his ideas and guidance Ralph McDonald for his mental support and proof reading