Preparation for field trip to Japanese Tea Ceremony at Wesleyan University

In preparation for our field trip to Wesleyan University Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies on Monday October 13th, 2008, I would like to share some links that I found helpful to understand what is involved in a Japanese Tea Ceremony.

In 2001, at the international center at Stanford University, I attended a chaji (literally “tea function”) or traditional ritual demonstrated by a Japanese Chado Tea Ceremony Master. This native Japanese woman wore a beautiful kimono and followed every detail of the ritual. She first explained what she was going to do, and what the attendees were supposed to do, and then proceeded with the ritual without uttering a single word for about one hour! The ceremony lasted about 2.5 hours in total.

It was an experience I will never forget, all my senses were involved in this ritualized sequence of movements, a formal dance of significant gestures, the stirring sounds, the scent of the hot tea brewing, the bitter flavor, and the touch of the smooth cold teaware.

“The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice . . . yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible.”— Lafcadio Hearn

Among the Japanese meditative arts, none is more highly esteemed or inclusive of different artistic media than chado, or “way of the tea.”

About the tea ceremony, Gerald Yoshitomi says, “the art of the tea has been characterized as the very essence of Japanese culture, embodying as it does the various artistic disciplines of ceramics, architecture, visual art, literature, and calligraphy, not to mention the mental discipline which goes into the formation of one’s character.”

Chado is a complex series of hundreds of steps designed around the act of serving tea and requires a connoisseurship of all the necessary physical accoutrements as well as acute sensitivity in the disciplined interaction among its participants. When properly practiced, the natural setting, the delicately wrought tea utensils, the simple elegance of the decorations, and the smooth, regulated movements of the participants combine to remove the host and guests from the pressures of the outside world and place them in an atmosphere where each finds inner peace and tranquility. Historically, chado has left its mark on many other art forms. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, tea masters influenced the shaping of some of the most beautiful of ceramic tea ware, always preferring the simple, rustic, and spare over the highly finished and refined. {1}

I tried to find a video showing a traditional ceremony in the way I witnessed with the Chado master. The closest I found is this Living Asia Channel - Window Program video.

The main component of this trip to Wesleyan –which I really enjoy!– is the opportunity to visit a Japanese-style room and garden, an architectural ensemble consisting of Shôyôan, a room in the style of Japanese domestic architecture, and its adjoining Japanese-style garden, Shôyôan Teien (Shôyôan Garden). The Freeman family garden Shôyôan Teien was designed and built in 1995 by Stephen Morrell, a landscape architect specializing in Japanese-style gardens. Stephen Morrell has learned the art of Chado in Japan and will be demonstrating the Tea Ceremony.

I cannot promise my students that this Japanese Tea demonstration at Wesleyan will make such a remarkable impression in them (as the one I had in 2001), but at least I would hope that they gain a better understanding of a different culture and how the Tea Ceremony –which has been forgotten in China, the land of its origin– lives in Japanese culture as an exercise in courtesy and an art. But also as a journey, a spiritual refreshment, when one learns to spend precious moments in the small things, appreciating the beauty of life, of something as simple as making and serving a cup of tea.

For the students who have kindly volunteered to carpool to Wesleyan, these Googlemap directions will help you become familiar with the drive prior to the trip (I'll print them up).