Thammasat University students interested in Asian culture, Japan, cultural history, sociology, food, agriculture, and related subjects may find a new book useful.
Japanese Tea Culture: The Heart and Form of Chanoyu is an Open Access book available for free download at this link.
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63301
The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Japanese tea.
The author is Dr. Isao Kumakura, president of the Shizuoka University of Art and Culture and an authority on Japanese cultural history.
The publisher’s description notes:
Chanoyu, the art of preparing tea, developed against a backdrop of social turmoil in late medieval Japan. Through the singular figure of Sen no Rikyū, it found expression as wabi-cha, or wabi tea, the foundation of Japanese tea culture today. Here, scholar and curator Kumakura Isao investigates the unique cultural value of tea. He examines its rituals and behaviors, elaborates its structure, spaces, and style, and delves into the history of everything from the tea whisk to the tea room itself. Drawing on folklore studies and performing-arts history, Kumakura develops a new perspective on Japan’s culture of tea.
Here are some excerpts from the book:
Idiosyncratic Culture
Solitary Chanoyu
The chajin, or tea devotee, is a solitary figure. Of course, tea gatherings (chakai) are always a great success, and if a special event is held by a particular tea organization or lineage then attendance can rival that at gatherings held by new religious sects. And yet, in the end, the chajin, one versed in the art of chanoyu and a true follower of the way of tea, is solitary. Chanoyu itself occupies a solitary place within Japanese culture. What I mean by “solitary” relates first to the question of how many people actually talk about chanoyu. For example, it is unlikely that it would feature in a discussion among businessmen about shared pastimes. So is it perhaps a topic discussed by young female office workers? Again, this is unlikely to be the case. Even if there are many people who have taken tea-ceremony lessons or attended a tea gathering once or twice, there are really only few who would claim chanoyu as a pastime of theirs. Let me make a brief comment about pastimes here. Some may frown on pastimes as being play without purpose. However, this is absolutely not the case. I hardly need to cite Homo Ludens (The Person Who Plays), that 1938 book about the importance of play in culture by the famous European historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945), to make the case that a culture that loses the element of play is a culture that is spent. People play. And indeed, the spirit of play is at the basis of all that enriches human culture. Pastimes are, in a sense, the straightest expression of that spirit of play. Pastimes transcend questions of personal advantage; they make life worth living. Therefore, a person whose pastime is chanoyu is someone who finds chanoyu to be a reason for living. But there are probably fewer people than we might imagine who truly spend their days with chanoyu as their raison d’être. Those for whom chanoyu is a reason for living will find true companions among others who similarly live in chanoyu. It may well be that the act of exchanging conversation about the joy and wonder of chanoyu can only occur between those who are trying to live in the spirit of chanoyu. Such people are a minority within society as a whole. The pursuit of tea is a solitary endeavor.
The Singularity of Japanese Culture
The culture of Japan itself is solitary. When we think about Japan, we see the mixing of the culture of the broadleaf evergreen forest region and the maritime cultures of the Pacific Rim, with a later layering from China, Korea, and Europe and America, all contributing to what we now call Japanese culture. Few cultures are made from such a complex admixture of so many diverse sources. While one might suppose that this would result in something with a global or universal quality, that is not necessarily the case. Rather, it resulted in an extremely singular culture. There exists some sort of Japan-style mold, and no matter what type of culture flows in from other countries, it is pressed into the mold and emerges as something very compatible with the existing culture. I have a sense that such a mechanism exists within the structure of Japanese culture, allowing it to voraciously consume all kinds of other cultures; once absorbed, they become intensely Japanized and practically impossible to export elsewhere. Historically speaking, no other country has assimilated imported cultures as effectively as Japan. At the same time, very little culture is exported from Japan to other countries in pure form. Even though other countries value Japanese culture, they find it hard to engage in dialogue. In that sense, too, it is solitary. Of course, I am fully aware that there is, counter to this theory of the singularity of Japanese culture, the idea that it has a universal quality. Anime and sushi, for example, have certainly taken the world by storm. And yet this is surely the result of globalization’s rapid advance, and so there is at work here something other than a true understanding of Japanese culture. Basically, a culture with a universal character acceptable anywhere in the world enters Japan and undergoes an extremely singular refining process, only to become something hard for the rest of the world to accept. Tea is a typical example of this.
Japan and Korea
The drinking of tea is entirely commonplace. Undoubtedly, in an age when tea was yet unknown, water, flavored hot water, or alcohol were about all there was to drink. Even today, there are any number of cultures unfamiliar with tea. Nonetheless, the fact is that the culture of a very confined geographical region spanning southern China to Southeast Asia, where a beverage was made by processing the leaves of an indigenous tree, has today spread across the globe. Throughout the world, tea is referred to by a word derived from either chá or té, both words of Chinese origin; they are essentially global words. Despite the universal adoption of this beverage, it is curious that only Japan has created a distinctive culture like chanoyu.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)