The World of Caffeine

by Weinberg, Bennett Alan, Bealer, Bonnie K.

  In Rikyu’s day, three groups shared leadership of the nation: the emperor and aristocrats, the warlords, and the merchants. The emperor on his imperial throne had become little more than a ceremonial prop, in this respect comparable in status to Hirohito during World War II or Queen Elizabeth today. The once-feared shogun, who carried what had degenerated into an hereditary title, had suffered the same fate. The actual leaders of the country were a new breed of military dictators who arose from the ranks of the feudal warlords and conspired with the wealthy merchants to increase and solidify their control of the nation.

  Although the warlords wielded military power and the merchants amassed large fortunes, the social heirarchy, in which aristocrats and priests enjoyed the highest status, remained anachronistic. It was nearly impossible for anyone outside of their closed circles to attain the respect and honor, the desire for which, shared even by the wise, has been called by Aristotle “the last infirmity of the noble mind.” In the throes of this infirmity, the warlords and merchants tried to establish their legitimacy by patronizing art and culture. They joined in promoting Zen Buddhism and the Ming Chinese culture in opposition to the native styles cultivated by the aristocracy. Encouraged by these military rulers, monk-artists shuttled between China and Japan, established flourishing ateliers, and, for the first time, through these studios, commoners enjoyed the possibility of advancement based on talent and achievement. The tea ceremony became a central device for laying siege to the aristocratic social edifice. In this era of gekokuje, that is, a topsy-turvy world in which the formerly humble ruled the formerly great, the incongruous sight of an illiterate peasant samurai pausing to indulge in the refinement of the tea ritual became increasingly common.

  The last Ashikaga shogun was succeeded by Oda Nubunaga (1534–82), strongest of the feudal lords who fought for ascendancy after the shogun’s death. Nubunaga had nearly succeeded in unifying the country when he died in a fire that started while he was brewing tea. After his death, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98), a peasant who had risen to the rank of Nobunaga’s first lieutenant and who is sometimes called, on account of his military and political acumen, “the Napoleon of Japan,” took over his power and completed the work of unifying the country that Nubunaga had begun. Mindful of his low birth and eager to assure the respect of the increasingly important merchant class, Hideyoshi, like Nobunaga before him, was a generous patron of chanoyu. In order to effect a tranquil transition of power and in recognition of Rikyu’s fame as a tea master, Hideyoshi reconfirmed Rikyu’s position as curator of the palace tea ceremony and equipage. As fate would have it, this favor was the beginning of Rikyu’s undoing.

  Hideyoshi was an avid tea lover and was among the growing number of samurai, or professional soldiers, who, somewhat incongrously, liked to “seclude themselves in the tearoom and meditatively sipping a cup of tea, breathe the air of quietism and transcendentalism.”6 Hideyoshi went further, however, in his vanity, nourishing the conceit that he was a great tea master himself. During each of Hideyoshi’s military engagements, his attendants would erect a portable teahouse on the battlefield. Hideyoshi would then calmly practice the tea ceremony in view of both his own troops and his enemies, inspiring confidence in the first and fear in the second. Hideyoshi, rembering his humble origins, resented that Rikyu, although nominally his servant, was the more honored because of his family’s wealthy merchant connections and his own celebrated status as the leading tea master. Because the dictator imagined himself Rikyu’s competitor in the practice of chanoyu, a strange rivalry gradually developed between them.

  Over the years, Hideyoshi’s envy blossomed into paranoia, a transformation nourished by Rikyu’s deep involvement in the complex social and political intrigues of the day, perilous pursuits for a man with no real power of his own. Finally, giving in to a grudge over a real or imagined conspiracy against him or, some say, out of envy over a statue erected in Rikyu’s honor, Hideyoshi determined to execute his friend, though, in the spirit of good fellowship, he granted him the honorable option of suicide, a privilege ordinarily reserved for his samurai brothers.

  The story of Rikyu’s death bears an unsettling similarity to the story of the death of Socrates as told in the Phaedo. Each was honored for his simplicity, austerity, honesty, integrity, and wisdom, and each, having come into conflict with a despotic civil authority and condemned unjustly for subverting the state, was directed to commit suicide, and each, forgoing the opportunity of fleeing to escape his end, did so peacefully, surrounded by disciples. Just before plunging the dagger into his heart, Rikyu addressed it in brief lines imbued with the mind-bending antinomy so dear to the practitioners of Zen:

  Welcome to you,

  O sword of eternity!

  Through Buddha

  And through Daruma alike

  You have cleft your way.7

  Rikyu helped to shape and define every aspect of teaism, the teahouse, the tea garden, and the tea ceremony. Among his important innovations was replacing the character “kin” or “reverence,” in the famous traditional hortatory mnemonic Kin Kei Sei Jaku, or “reverence, respect, purity, and tranquillity,” with “wa,” or “harmony.” This change signaled a shift from an emphasis on service to one’s superiors to the more Confucian ideal of harmony and mutual obligation. In Rikyu’s chanoyu “harmony” referenced the harmony between the participants and the implements of tea preparation; “respect” referenced the respect shown by the participants to each other and the implements; “cleanliness,” a Shinto inheritance, referenced the symbolic handwashing and mouth rinsing practiced before entering the teahouse; and “tranquillity,” which is imbued throughout every aspect of the tea ceremony, referenced the deliberate and attentive exercise of each of its components. Rikyu is also credited with the introduction to the laity of passing the commensural bowl of tea, which Chinese Zen monks had centuries before shared among themselves in their ceremonies and which, before his time, was practiced in Japan only among the priesthood. Some people advance the notion that the rituals of the Roman Catholic Mass may have influenced the development of chanoyu, because the tea ceremony became important in lay Japanese life shortly after the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries began proselytizing. According to this view, the increased use of the commensural bowl, for example, is the result of Christian influence.

  In a parallel development, tea competitions, which had been widely popular in China during the Sung dynasty (960–1289), became the rage in Japan between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In their new home, these contests were blended with a prior native tradition of monoawase, social competitions involving rival presentations of “poems, flowers, insects, herbs, shellfish”8 and other items. To play the new tea game, guests assembled in a tea pavilion, where they were offered four kinds of tea and challenged to determine by taste and scent which were honcha, grown at Toganoo or Uji, and which were hicha, tea grown elsewhere.9 These tea competitions, although not direct ancestors of the Japanese tea ceremony, presaged many of the elements of what were soon to become the defining rituals of chanoyu.

  Caffeine and Culture: Teaism, Teahouse, Tea Gardens, and the Manners, Art, and Architecture of Japan

  The sense of an infinitely expanded present is nowhere stronger than in cha-no-yu, the art of tea. Strictly, the term means something like, “Tea with hot water,” and through this one art Zen has exercised an incalculable influence on Japanese life, since the chajin, or “man of tea,” is an arbiter of taste in the many subsidiary arts which cha-no-yu involves—architecture, gardening, ceramics, metalwork, lacquer, and the arrangement of flowers (ikebana).

  —Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (1957)10

  In the Chinese tea ceremony, which arose from the intermingling of Buddhist and Taoist traditions, the mundane was ennobled by the otherworldly loftiness of aesthetic ideals, and the quest for salvation was brought down to earth by contemplation of the commonplace. Its practitioners had discovered an austere beauty and a code of conduct conducive to peace
and joy and, ultimately, satori, or enlightenment. In Japan, the spirit and practice of chanoyu maintained this spiritual identity, and, in consequence of the ceremony’s popularity, Japanese art, architecture, and social mores were imbued with the flavor of Zen.

  Zen traditions shone through chanoyu in the secular spirituality of the tea ceremony itself, which entirely lacked the liturgical character of a service in a church, synagogue, or mosque. However, politics, business, and money were not discussed at the ceremony. Sometimes a friendly exchange about a philosophical topic was acceptable, but the preferred subjects of conversation were nature and art. Discretion was the guiding principle for the participants. As the host brought the tea utensils, offered the guests sweets, and whipped each serving of powdered tea within its cup, ideal conversation consisted of praising the beauty and inquiring after the provenance of the serving implements.

  In Japanese tradition, following a Way leads to makoto, or ultimate truth. There is a Way of Flowers, a Way of Painting, a Way of Poetry, and many others. However, of all the innumerable Ways, it is the Way of Tea that has affected Japanese culture the most deeply. Over the centuries in Japan, architects, painters, gardeners, and craftsmen have worked under the stylistic guidance of the tea masters in creating the houses, gardens, and utensils of the tea ceremony. As a result of this tutelage, Japanese artists and artisans could not help but impart the flavor of Zen tastes to the surroundings and objects of everyday use, including such ordinary items as kitchen implements, teapots, cups, and floor mats, fabric design, and bottles and jars.

  A type of pottery originally devised for the tea ceremony as codified by Rikyu became the source of some of Japan’s most revered art objects. It received its name after Hideyoshi, who, as we have seen, was a great patron of tea-related culture, rewarded an artisan with a gold seal engraved with the word “raku” or “felicity.” Because Rikyu’s ceremony was characterized by “wabi,” which means “simplicity” or “tranquillity,” this raku ware was made in a simple style: Wide, straight-side bowls placed on a narrow base, originally with a dark brown glaze. Raku wares were molded by hand, not modeled on a wheel, so that each piece is more elaborately differentiated than is typical for ceramic work. As time went on, the choice of glazes expanded to include light orange-red, straw color, green, and cream. The glazed ware was placed in a hot kiln for about one hour then removed and cooled rapidly, as opposed to the usual process of warming the pottery slowly in a cold kiln. This rapid cooling and, an additional special process unique to the production of raku ware, reduction firing, multiplied dramatic, random surface variations in the glaze.

  In Hideyoshi’s day, the tea master Hon’ami Koetsu (1558–1637) established a colony of Nichiren Buddhist artists and craftsman northwest of Kyoto dedicated to expressing the philosophy of teaism. It had a major influence on the development of Japanese art and style. Koetsu himself, a man of many parts, connoisseur of swords, landscape gardener, as well as artisan of lacquerwork and pottery, calligrapher, and poet, is sometimes called “the Leonardo of Japan.” He created what is often regarded as the finest raku Japanese tea bowl ever made, today esteemed a national treasure. In the words of art critic Joan Stanley-Baker in Japanese Art, “Its taut, straight lines taper slightly towards the bottom, the reddish body is covered entirely in a blackish matt slip with opaque white glaze over the upper half, leaving the darker glaze for the bottom: the effect produced by firing is that of gently falling snow. The vigour and grandeur of Mount Fuji are suggested…. The impression is of monumentality.” Today this bowl is part of the Sakai Tadamasa Collection in Tokyo.

  From Koetsu’s artist’s colony arose a major school of decorative painting, dedicated to expressing the philosophy of teaism. It later became known as the Korin school, after Ogata Korin (1658–1716), a relative of Koetsu and descendant of the Ashikaga family, who was one of its most illustrious practitioners. Korin is especially esteemed for his screen paintings and lacquerwork executed in an abstract, asymmetrical style and based on the close observation of nature.

  No stylistic traditions better illustrate the minimalist motto “Less is more” than the Zen temples and the tea gardens that surround them. In kare-sansui, or “dry landscape” gardens, a few stones and sand are all that remain to conjure the sense of the traditional ornaments of ponds, waterfalls, and flowering plants. Zen monks were primarily interested in the balance of form and were therefore, like the Chinese Sung painters, sparing in their use of color. Therefore, unlike English gardens, tea gardens are not primarily designed around masses of color. Despite their simplicity, celebrated sand gardens, each with its own aesthetic character, present changing faces to visitors coming at different times, as they are meant to be experienced successively in rain, sun, moonlight, and covered in snow, and are designed to present themselves differently with alterations in light and shadow.

  The most famous sand gardens are in Kyoto, the finest example of which may be Ryonan-ji’s garden, comprising five groups of rocks laid out on a rectangular plot of raked sand, surrounded by a low stone wall and trees. In Alan Watts’ words:

  It suggests a wild beach, or perhaps a seascape with rocky islands, but its unbelievable simplicity evokes a serenity and clarity of feeling so powerful that it can be caught even from a photograph. The major art which contributes to such gardens is bonseki, which may well be called the “growing” of rocks.11

  Among the simplest of these sand gardens is the tea garden, the roji, or “dewy path,” the functional garden path that leads to the teahouse. As with much else in the tea ceremony, Rikyu’s designs set the standard for future excellence. A roji comprises the soto roji, the outer part near the garden entrance, and the uchi roji, or the inner part, near the teahouse. The intention of the Zen designers is not to create the illusion of a landscape, but to pursue a more abstract ambition: to evoke its general atmosphere in a confined space.

  The teahouse, the cha-shitsu, is a small, one-room hut with a thatched roof, set apart from the main dwelling, featuring a charcoal pit covered with straw mats and paper walls supported by wooden rods. On one side is a tiny alcove, or tokonoma, in which is hung a single painted or calligraphed scroll below which is placed a rock, bouquet of flowers, or other simple decorative object. Much care is devoted by the tea master to choosing the object to place in the tokonoma, as the contents of this niche are intended to set the mood for the ceremony to follow.

  Although the Zen masters lavish great care and hard work on designing, building, and maintaining these houses and gardens, as with everything pertaining to Zen, they are ambivalent about acknowledging their individual intellectual and artistic contributions. Their goal is to execute designs with such a light touch that they appear to have been merely helped, rather than governed, by human agency. With this in mind the Zen architect or gardener attempts to follow the “intentionless intention” of the natural forms themselves, achieving his results in a way that could be called “accidentally on purpose.”

  Teaism Today and the Traditions of Japan

  Restoring the Traditions: The Okakuran Campaign

  Kakuzo Okakura (1862–1913), curator of Chinese and Japanese art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, undertook a lifelong mission to preserve, purify, and introduce the West to Japanese art, ethics, and social customs. He brought to this work an integrated, original vision of entire artistic movements in China and Japan, and it is said that under his direction “the study of Oriental art attained its first maturity.”12 The Boston Museum’s collections became world-famous, attracting a small community of Japanese artisans who settled in the area to perform restorations. Today Okakura is most famous for his Book of Tea (1906), a turn-of-the-century apology to the West for Japanese tea tradition as exemplified in the cult or philosophy of teaism. Written in English, it was read by hundreds of thousands of Americans as their introduction to Japanese culture. In adducing the pervasive importance of tea, Okakura mentions a locution that has entered general use:

  In our common parla
nce we speak of the man “with no tea” in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama. Again we stigmatize the untamed aesthete who, regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of emancipated emotions, as one “with too much tea” in him.13

  There is no question about the identity of Okakura’s favorite among the leading beverages:

  There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealization…. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.14

  Okakura explains the great influence the tea masters have had on the customs and conduct of Japanese life. Preparing and serving delicate dishes, as well as dressing and decorating in muted colors, have encouraged what he believes is the nation’s natural aspiration for simplicity and humility. Okakura states that despite the Western disdain for most Eastern customs, the West has fallen under the spell of chado and chanoyu. The English ceremony of afternoon tea is no more than a Western imitation of the great tea ceremony of Japan:

  Strangely enough, humanity has so far met in the tea-cup. It is the only Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal esteem. The white man has scoffed at our religion and our morals, but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single instance the Oriental spirit reigns supreme.15