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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura
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+The Book of Tea
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+by Kakuzo Okakura
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+January, 1997  [Etext #769]
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura
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+The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
+
+
+
+
+i. The Cup of Humanity
+
+
+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.
+
+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 
+hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows
+comfort in simplicity rather than in the 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.
+
+The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive
+to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of
+Teaism.  Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain,
+lacquer, painting--our very literature--all have been subject to its
+influence.  No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its
+presence.  It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and
+entered the abode of the humble.  Our peasants have learned
+to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his
+salutation to the rocks and waters.  In our common parlance
+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 stigmatise 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.
+
+The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado
+about nothing.  What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say.
+But when we consider how small after all the cup of human
+enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily
+drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we
+shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.
+Mankind has done worse.  In the worship of Bacchus, we 
+have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured
+the gory image of Mars.  Why not consecrate ourselves to
+the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream 
+of sympathy that flows from her altar?  In the liquid amber
+within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet
+reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the 
+ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.
+
+Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in 
+themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things
+in others.  The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency,
+will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the 
+thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness 
+and childishness of the East to him.  He was wont to regard
+Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of 
+peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit 
+wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.  Much
+comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
+--the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self-
+sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to
+Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.  
+Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation
+were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.  Fain
+would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to
+our art and ideals.
+
+When will the West understand, or try to understand, the
+East?  We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web
+of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us.
+We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not
+on mice and cockroaches.  It is either impotent fanaticism or
+else abject voluptuousness.  Indian spirituality has been
+derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese
+patriotism as the result of fatalism.  It has been said that we
+are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the 
+callousness of our nervous organisation!
+
+Why not amuse yourselves at our expense?  Asia returns the
+compliment.  There would be further food for merriment if
+you were to know all that we have imagined and written 
+about you.  All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the
+unconscious homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of 
+the new and undefined.  You have been loaded with virtues
+too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too 
+picturesque to be condemned.  Our writers in the past--the
+wise men who knew--informed us that you had bushy tails
+somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a
+fricassee of newborn babes!  Nay, we had something worse
+against you: we used to think you the most impracticable
+people on the earth, for you were said to preach what you
+never practiced.
+
+Such misconceptions are fast vanishing amongst us.  
+Commerce has forced the European tongues on many an
+Eastern port.  Asiatic youths are flocking to Western colleges 
+for the equipment of modern education.  Our insight does not
+penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we are willing to
+learn.  Some of my compatriots have adopted too much of 
+your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion
+that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised
+the attainment of your civilisation.  Pathetic and deplorable as
+such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach
+the West on our knees.  Unfortunately the Western attitude is
+unfavourable to the understanding of the East.  The Christian
+missionary goes to impart, but not to receive.  Your information
+is based on the meagre translations of our immense literature, 
+if not on the unreliable anecdotes of passing travellers.  It is
+rarely that the chivalrous pen of a Lafcadio Hearn or that of
+the author of "The Web of Indian Life" enlivens the Oriental
+darkness with the torch of our own sentiments.
+
+Perhaps I betray my own ignorance of the Tea Cult by being
+so outspoken.  Its very spirit of politeness exacts that you say
+what you are expected to say, and no more.  But I am not to
+be a polite Teaist.  So much harm has been done already by
+the mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old,
+that one need not apologise for contributing his tithe to the
+furtherance of a better understanding.  The beginning of the
+twentieth century would have been spared the spectacle of
+sanguinary warfare if Russia had condescended to know
+Japan better.  What dire consequences to humanity lie in the
+contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems!  European
+imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of
+the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that Asia may also awaken
+to the cruel sense of the White Disaster.  You may laugh at
+us for having "too much tea," but may we not suspect that
+you of the West have "no tea" in your constitution?
+
+Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each 
+other, and be sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain of half a
+hemisphere.  We have developed along different lines, but 
+there is no reason why one should not supplement the other.
+You have gained expansion at the cost of restlessness; we
+have created a harmony which is weak against aggression.
+Will you believe it?--the East is better off in some respects
+than the West!
+
+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.
+
+The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be
+found in the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the
+year 879 the main sources of revenue in Canton were the
+duties on salt and tea.  Marco Polo records the deposition of
+a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 for his arbitrary 
+augmentation of the tea-taxes.  It was at the period of the
+great discoveries that the European people began to know
+more about the extreme Orient.  At the end of the sixteenth
+century the Hollanders brought the news that a pleasant
+drink was made in the East from the leaves of a bush.  The
+travellers Giovanni Batista Ramusio (1559), L. Almeida
+(1576), Maffeno (1588), Tareira (1610), also mentioned
+tea.  In the last-named year ships of the Dutch East India
+Company brought the first tea into Europe.  It was known 
+in France in 1636, and reached Russia in 1638.  England 
+welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That excellent and
+by all physicians approved China drink, called by the 
+Chineans Tcha, and by other nations Tay, alias Tee."
+
+Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of Tea
+met with opposition.  Heretics like Henry Saville (1678)
+denounced drinking it as a filthy custom.  Jonas Hanway
+(Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to lose their
+stature and comeliness, women their beauty through the 
+use of tea.  Its cost at the start (about fifteen or sixteen
+shillings a pound) forbade popular consumption, and made
+it "regalia for high treatments and entertainments, presents
+being made thereof to princes and grandees."  Yet in spite
+of such drawbacks tea-drinking spread with marvellous
+rapidity.  The coffee-houses of London in the early half of
+the eighteenth century became, in fact, tea-houses, the
+resort of wits like Addison and Steele, who beguiled 
+themselves over their "dish of tea."  The beverage soon
+became a necessity of life--a taxable matter.  We are 
+reminded in this connection what an important part it plays
+in modern history.  Colonial America resigned herself to
+oppression until human endurance gave way before the
+heavy duties laid on Tea.  American independence dates
+from the throwing of tea-chests into Boston harbour.
+
+There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it
+irresistible and capable of idealisation.  Western humourists
+were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with 
+its aroma.  It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-
+consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of
+cocoa.  Already in 1711, says the Spectator:  "I would therefore
+in a particular manner recommend these my speculations to
+all well-regulated families that set apart an hour every morning
+for tea, bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for 
+their good to order this paper to be punctually served up and 
+to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage."  Samuel 
+Johnson draws his own portrait as "a hardened and shameless
+tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only
+the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the
+evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed 
+the morning."
+
+Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism 
+when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a 
+good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.  For
+Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it,
+of suggesting what you dare not reveal.  It is the noble secret of
+laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour
+itself,--the smile of philosophy.  All genuine humourists may in
+this sense be called tea-philosophers,--Thackeray, for instance,
+and of course, Shakespeare.  The poets of the Decadence
+(when was not the world in decadence?), in their protests against
+materialism, have, to a certain extent, also opened the way
+to Teaism.  Perhaps nowadays it is our demure contemplation
+of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in
+mutual consolation.
+
+The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning,
+Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat.  At last the Yellow
+Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the
+demon of darkness and earth.  The Titan, in his death agony,
+struck his head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome
+of jade into fragments.  The stars lost their nests, the moon
+wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night.  In
+despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer
+of the Heavens.  He had not to search in vain.  Out of the 
+Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and 
+dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armor of fire.  She welded the
+five-coloured rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the
+Chinese sky.  But it is told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny 
+crevices in the blue firmament.  Thus began the dualism of
+love--two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they
+join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build
+anew his sky of hope and peace.
+
+The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the
+Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power.  The world is
+groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity.  Knowledge is
+bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for
+the sake of utility.  The East and the West, like two dragons
+tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain strive to regain the jewel of
+life.  We need a Niuka again to repair the grand devastation;
+we await the great Avatar.  Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea.
+The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains
+are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in
+our kettle.  Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the
+beautiful foolishness of things.
+
+
+
+II. The Schools of Tea.
+
+
+Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its
+noblest qualities.  We have good and bad tea, as we have good
+and bad paintings--generally the latter.  There is no single
+recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for
+producing a Titian or a Sesson.  Each preparation of the leaves
+has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat,
+its own method of telling a story.  The truly beautiful must
+always be in it.  How much do we not suffer through the constant
+failure of society to recognise this simple and fundamental
+law of art and life; Lichilai, a Sung poet, has sadly remarked
+that there were three most deplorable things in the world: the
+spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation
+of fine art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of
+fine tea through incompetent manipulation.
+
+Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools.  Its evolution
+may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea,
+the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea.  We moderns belong
+to the last school.  These several methods of appreciating
+the beverage are indicative of the spirit of the age in which
+they prevailed.  For life is an expression, our unconscious
+actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought.
+Confucius said that "man hideth not." Perhaps we reveal ourselves
+too much in small things because we have so little of the great
+to conceal.  The tiny incidents of daily routine are as much a
+commentary of racial ideals as the highest flight of philosophy
+or poetry.  Even as the difference in favorite vintage marks
+the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods and nationalities
+of Europe, so the Tea-ideals characterise the various moods
+of Oriental culture.  The Cake-tea which was boiled, the
+Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was 
+steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang, 
+the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China.  If we were 
+inclined to borrow the much-abused terminology of
+art-classification, we might designate them respectively, the
+Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.
+
+The tea-plant, a native of southern China, was known from very
+early times to Chinese botany and medicine.  It is alluded to in
+the classics under the various names of Tou, Tseh, Chung,
+Kha, and Ming, and was highly prized for possessing the 
+virtues of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening
+the will, and repairing the eyesight. It was not only
+administered as an internal dose, but often applied externally
+in form of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains.  The Taoists
+claimed it as an important ingredient of the elixir of
+immortality.  The Buddhists used it extensively to prevent
+drowsiness during their long hours of meditation.
+
+By the fourth and fifth centuries Tea became a favourite
+beverage among the inhabitants of the Yangtse-Kiang valley.
+It was about this time that modern ideograph Cha was
+coined, evidently a corruption of the classic Tou.
+The poets of the southern dynasties have left some fragments
+of their fervent adoration of the "froth of the liquid jade."
+Then emperors used to bestow some rare preparation of the
+leaves on their high ministers as a reward for eminent services.
+Yet the method of drinking tea at this stage was primitive
+in the extreme.  The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar,
+made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt,
+orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions!
+The custom obtains at the present day among the Thibetans
+and various Mongolian tribes, who make a curious syrup
+of these ingredients.  The use of lemon slices by the Russians,
+who learned to take tea from the Chinese caravansaries,
+points to the survival of the ancient method.
+
+It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea
+from its crude state and lead to its final idealization.  With
+Luwuh in the middle of the eighth century we have our first
+apostle of tea. He was born in an age when Buddhism,
+Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking mutual synthesis.
+The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to
+mirror the Universal in the Particular.  Luwuh, a poet, saw in
+the Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned
+through all things.  In his celebrated work, the "Chaking"
+(The Holy Scripture of Tea) he formulated the Code of Tea.
+He has since been worshipped as the tutelary god of the
+Chinese tea merchants.
+
+The "Chaking" consists of three volumes and ten chapters.
+In the first chapter Luwuh treats of the nature of the tea-plant,
+in the second of the implements for gathering the leaves, in the
+third of the selection of the leaves.  According to him the best
+quality of the leaves must have "creases like the leathern boot of
+Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold
+like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by
+a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain."
+
+The fourth chapter is devoted to the enumeration and description
+of the twenty-four members of the tea-equipage, beginning
+with the tripod brazier and ending with the bamboo cabinet for
+containing all these utensils.  Here we notice Luwuh's
+predilection for Taoist symbolism. Also it is interesting to
+observe in this connection the influence of tea on Chinese
+ceramics.  The Celestial porcelain, as is well known, had its
+origin in an attempt to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade,
+resulting, in the Tang dynasty, in the blue glaze of the south,
+and the white glaze of the north.  Luwuh considered the blue
+as the ideal colour for the tea-cup, as it lent additional greenness
+to the beverage, whereas the white made it look pinkish and
+distasteful.  It was because he used cake-tea.  Later on, when 
+the tea masters of Sung took to the powdered tea, they preferred
+heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown.  The Mings, with 
+their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white porcelain.
+
+In the fifth chapter Luwuh describes the method of making tea.
+He eliminates all ingredients except salt.  He dwells also on the
+much-discussed question of the choice of water and the degree
+of boiling it.  According to him, the mountain spring is the best,
+the river water and the spring water come next in the order of
+excellence.  There are three stages of boiling: the first boil is 
+when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface;
+the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling
+in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in
+the kettle.  The Cake-tea is roasted before the fire until it becomes
+soft like a baby's arm and is shredded into powder between pieces
+of fine paper.  Salt is put in the first boil, the tea in the second.
+At the third boil, a dipperful of cold water is poured into the
+kettle to settle the tea and revive the "youth of the water."  Then
+the beverage was poured into cups and drunk.  O nectar!  The
+filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like
+waterlilies on emerald streams.  It was of such a beverage that 
+Lotung, a Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and
+throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup 
+searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand
+volumes of odd ideographs.  The fourth cup raises a slight
+perspiration,--all the wrong of life passes away through my
+pores.  At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me
+to the realms of the immortals.  The seventh cup--ah, but I
+could take no more!  I only feel the breath of cool wind that
+rises in my sleeves.  Where is Horaisan?  Let me ride on this
+sweet breeze and waft away thither."
+
+The remaining chapters of the "Chaking" treat of the vulgarity
+of the ordinary methods of tea-drinking, a historical summary
+of illustrious tea-drinkers, the famous tea plantations of 
+China, the possible variations of the tea-service and illustrations
+of the tea-utensils.  The last is unfortunately lost.
+
+The appearance of the "Chaking" must have created 
+considerable sensation at the time.  Luwuh was befriended
+by the Emperor Taisung (763-779), and his fame attracted 
+many followers.  Some exquisites were said to have been able
+to detect the tea made by Luwuh from that of his disciples.
+One mandarin has his name immortalised by his failure to
+appreciate the tea of this great master.
+
+In the Sung dynasty the whipped tea came into fashion and
+created the second school of Tea.  The leaves were ground
+to fine powder in a small stone mill, and the preparation was
+whipped in hot water by a delicate whisk made of split bamboo.
+The new process led to some change in the tea-equippage of
+Luwuh, as well as in the choice of leaves.  Salt was discarded
+forever.  The enthusiasm of the Sung people for tea knew no
+bounds.  Epicures vied with each other in discovering new
+varieties, and regular tournaments were held to decide their
+superiority.  The Emperor Kiasung (1101-1124), who was too
+great an artist to be a well-behaved monarch, lavished his 
+treasures on the attainment of rare species.  He himself wrote
+a dissertation on the twenty kinds of tea, among which he prizes
+the "white tea" as of the rarest and finest quality.
+
+The tea-ideal of the Sungs differed from the Tangs even as their
+notion of life differed.  They sought to actualize what their
+predecessors tried to symbolise.  To the Neo-Confucian mind
+the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world,
+but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself.  Aeons 
+were but moments--Nirvana always within grasp.  The Taoist
+conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated
+all their modes of thought.  It was the process, not the deed, which
+was interesting.  It was the completing, not the completion,
+which was really vital.  Man came thus at once face to face
+with nature.  A new meaning grew into the art of life.  The
+tea began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods
+of self-realisation.  Wangyucheng eulogised tea as "flooding
+his soul like a direct appeal, that its delicate bitterness reminded
+him of the aftertaste of a good counsel."  Sotumpa wrote of 
+the strength of the immaculate purity in tea which defied 
+corruption as a truly virtuous man.  Among the Buddhists,
+the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of
+Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea.  The
+monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and drank
+tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a 
+holy sacrament.  It was this Zen ritual which finally developed 
+into the Tea-ceremony of Japan in the fifteenth century.
+
+Unfortunately the sudden outburst of the Mongol tribes in the
+thirteenth century which resulted in the devastation and conquest 
+of China under the barbaric rule of the Yuen Emperors, 
+destroyed all the fruits of Sung culture.  The native dynasty of 
+the Mings which attempted re-nationalisation in the middle 
+of the fifteenth century was harassed by internal troubles, and
+China again fell under the alien rule of the Manchus in the
+seventeenth century.  Manners and customs changed to
+leave no vestige of the former times.  The powdered tea is 
+entirely forgotten.  We find a Ming commentator at loss to
+recall the shape of the tea whisk mentioned in one of the
+Sung classics.  Tea is now taken by steeping the leaves in
+hot water in a bowl or cup.  The reason why the Western
+world is innocent of the older method of drinking tea is
+explained by the fact that Europe knew it only at the close
+of the Ming dynasty.
+
+To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but
+not an ideal.  The long woes of his country have robbed
+him of the zest for the meaning of life.  He has become
+modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted.  He has lost
+that sublime faith in illusions which constitutes the eternal
+youth and vigour of the poets and ancients.  He is an
+eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of the universe.
+He toys with Nature, but does not condescend to conquer
+or worship her.  His Leaf-tea is often wonderful with its
+flower-like aroma, but the romance of the Tang and Sung
+ceremonials are not to be found in his cup.
+
+Japan, which followed closely on the footsteps of Chinese
+civilisation, has known the tea in all its three stages.  As
+early as the year 729 we read of the Emperor Shomu giving 
+tea to one hundred monks at his palace in Nara.  The leaves 
+were probably imported by our ambassadors to the Tang Court
+and prepared in the way then in fashion.  In 801 the monk 
+Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in Yeisan.  
+Many tea-gardens are heard of in succeeding centuries, as 
+well as the delight of the aristocracy and priesthood in the 
+beverage.  The Sung tea reached us in 1191 with the return
+of Yeisai-zenji, who went there to study the southern Zen
+school.  The new seeds which he carried home were successfully
+planted in three places, one of which, the Uji district near
+Kioto, bears still the name of producing the best tea in the
+world.  The southern Zen spread with marvellous rapidity, and
+with it the tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the Sung.  By the
+fifteenth century, under the patronage of the Shogun, 
+Ashikaga-Voshinasa, the tea ceremony is fully constituted
+and made into an independent and secular performance.
+Since then Teaism is fully established in Japan.  The use
+of the steeped tea of the later China is comparatively
+recent among us, being only known since the middle of the 
+seventeenth century.  It has replaced the powdered tea in
+ordinary consumption, though the latter still continues to
+hold its place as the tea of teas.
+
+It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination
+of tea-ideals.  Our successful resistance of the Mongol
+invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement
+so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic
+inroad.  Tea with us became more than an idealisation of
+the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life.  The
+beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity
+and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and
+guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost
+beatitude of the mundane.  The tea-room was an oasis
+in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers
+could meet to drink from the common spring of art-
+appreciation.  The ceremony was an improvised drama
+whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and
+the paintings.  Not a colour to disturb the tone of the
+room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a 
+gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break 
+the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed
+simply and naturally--such were the aims of the tea-
+ceremony.  And strangely enough it was often successful.
+A subtle philosophy lay behind it all.  Teaism was Taoism
+in disguise.
+
+
+
+
+III.  Taoism and Zennism
+
+
+The connection of Zennism with tea is proverbial.  We 
+have already remarked that the tea-ceremony was a
+development of the Zen ritual.  The name of Laotse, the
+founder of Taoism, is also intimately associated with the
+history of tea.  It is written in the Chinese school manual
+concerning the origin of habits and customs that the 
+ceremony of offering tea to a guest began with Kwanyin,
+a well-known disciple of Laotse, who first at the gate of 
+the Han Pass presented to the "Old Philosopher" a cup 
+of the golden elixir.  We shall not stop to discuss the 
+authenticity of such tales, which are valuable, however, 
+as confirming the early use of the beverage by the Taoists.
+Our interest in Taoism and Zennism here lies mainly in
+those ideas regarding life and art which are so embodied
+in what we call Teaism.
+
+It is to be regretted that as yet there appears to be no
+adequate presentation of the Taoists and Zen doctrines
+in any foreign language, though we have had several
+laudable attempts.
+
+Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author
+observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a 
+brocade,--all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of 
+colour or design.  But, after all, what great doctrine is
+there which is easy to expound?  The ancient sages never
+put their teachings in systematic form.  They spoke in
+paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths.  
+They began by talking like fools and ended by making
+their hearers wise.  Laotse himself, with his quaint humour,
+says, "If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they
+laugh immensely.  It would not be the Tao unless they laughed
+at it."
+
+The Tao literally means a Path.  It has been severally translated 
+as the Way, the Absolute, the Law, Nature, Supreme Reason,
+the Mode.  These renderings are not incorrect, for the use of
+the term by the Taoists differs according to the subject-matter
+of the inquiry.  Laotse himself spoke of it thus: "There is a thing
+which is all-containing, which was born before the existence
+of Heaven and Earth.  How silent!  How solitary!  It stands alone
+and changes not.  It revolves without danger to itself and is the 
+mother of the universe.  I do not know its name and so call it
+the Path.  With reluctance I call it the Infinite.  Infinity is the
+Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanishing, the Vanishing is the
+Reverting."  The Tao is in the Passage rather than the Path.  It
+is the spirit of Cosmic Change,--the eternal growth which returns
+upon itself to produce new forms.  It recoils upon itself like
+the dragon, the beloved symbol of the Taoists.  It folds and
+unfolds as do the clouds.  The Tao might be spoken of as the
+Great Transition.  Subjectively it is the Mood of the Universe.
+Its Absolute is the Relative.
+
+It should be remembered in the first place that Taoism, like its
+legitimate successor Zennism, represents the individualistic
+trend of the Southern Chinese mind in contra-distinction to the
+communism of Northern China which expressed itself in
+Confucianism.  The Middle Kingdom is as vast as Europe and
+has a differentiation of idiosyncrasies marked by the two great
+river systems which traverse it.  The Yangste-Kiang and Hoang-
+Ho are respectively the Mediterranean and the Baltic.  Even
+to-day, in spite of centuries of unification, the Southern
+Celestial differs in his thoughts and beliefs from his Northern
+brother as a member of the Latin race differs from the Teuton.
+In ancient days, when communication was even more difficult 
+than at present, and especially during the feudal period, this
+difference in thought was most pronounced.  The art and poetry
+of the one breathes an atmosphere entirely distinct from that of
+the other.  In Laotse and his followers and in Kutsugen, the 
+forerunner of the Yangtse-Kiang nature-poets, we find an 
+idealism quite inconsistent with the prosaic ethical notions of
+their contemporary northern writers.  Laotse lived five centuries
+before the Christian Era.
+
+The germ of Taoist speculation may be found long before the 
+advent of Laotse, surnamed the Long-Eared.  The archaic
+records of China, especially the Book of Changes, foreshadow
+his thought.  But the great respect paid to the laws and customs
+of that classic period of Chinese civilisation which culminated
+with the establishment of the Chow dynasty in the sixteenth
+century B.C., kept the development of individualism in check
+for a long while, so that it was not until after the disintegration
+of the Chow dynasty and the establishment of innumerable
+independent kingdoms that it was able to blossom forth in the
+luxuriance of free-thought.  Laotse and Soshi (Chuangtse) were
+both Southerners and the greatest exponents of the New School.
+On the other hand, Confucius with his numerous disciples aimed
+at retaining ancestral conventions.  Taoism cannot be understood
+without some knowledge of Confucianism and vice versa.
+
+We have said that the Taoist Absolute was the Relative.  
+In ethics the Taoist railed at the laws and the moral codes
+of society, for to them right and wrong were but relative 
+terms.  Definition is always limitation--the "fixed" and 
+"unchangeless" are but terms expressive of a stoppage of 
+growth.  Said Kuzugen,--"The Sages move the world."
+Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of
+society, but is society to remain always the same? The observance
+of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the 
+individual to the state.  Education, in order to keep up the
+mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance.  People
+are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly.
+We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious.
+We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth
+to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell
+the truth to ourselves.  How can one be serious with the world
+when the world itself is so ridiculous!  The spirit of barter is 
+everywhere.  Honour and Chastity!  Behold the complacent
+salesman retailing the Good and True.  One can even buy a
+so-called Religion, which is really but common morality
+sanctified with flowers and music.  Rob the Church of her
+accessories and what remains behind?  Yet the trusts thrive
+marvelously, for the prices are absurdly cheap, --a prayer for
+a ticket to heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship.
+Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real
+usefulness were known to the world you would soon be
+knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer.
+Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much?
+Is it not but an instinct derived from the days of slavery?
+
+The virility of the idea lies not less in its power of breaking
+through contemporary thought than in its capacity for dominating
+subsequent movements.  Taoism was an active power during  the
+Shin dynasty, that epoch of Chinese unification from which we
+derive the name China.  It would be interesting had we time to note
+its influence on contemporary thinkers, the mathemeticians,
+writers on law and war, the mystics and alchemists and the later
+nature-poets of the Yangste-Kiang.  We should not even ignore
+those speculators on Reality who doubted whether a white
+horse was real because he was white, or because he was solid,
+nor the Conversationalists of the Six dynasties who, like the Zen
+philosophers, revelled in discussions concerning the Pure and
+the Abstract.  Above all we should pay homage to Taoism for
+what it has done toward the formation of the Celestial character,
+giving to it a certain capacity for reserve and refinement as
+"warm as jade."  Chinese history is full of instances in which the
+votaries of Taoism, princes and hermits alike, followed with
+varied and interesting results the teachings of their creed.
+The tale will not be without its quota of instruction and amusement.
+It will be rich in anecdotes, allegories, and aphorisms.  We would
+fain be on speaking terms with the delightful emperor who never
+died because he had never lived.  We may ride the wind with
+Liehtse and find it absolutely quiet because we ourselves are
+the wind, or dwell in mid-air with the Aged one of the Hoang-Ho,
+who lived betwixt Heaven and Earth because he was subject
+to neither the one nor the other.  Even in that grotesque apology
+for Taoism which we find in China at the present day, we can revel
+in a wealth of imagery impossible to find in any other cult.
+
+But the chief contribution of Taoism to Asiatic life has been in the
+realm of aesthetics. Chinese historians have always spoken of
+Taoism as the "art of being in the world," for it deals with the
+present--ourselves.  It is in us that God meets with Nature, and
+yesterday parts from to-morrow.  The Present is the moving
+Infinity, the legitimate sphere of the Relative.  Relativity seeks 
+Adjustment; Adjustment is Art.  The art of life lies in a constant
+readjustment to our surroundings.  Taoism accepts the mundane
+as it is and, unlike the Confucians or the Buddhists, tries to find
+beauty in our world of woe and worry.  The Sung allegory of the
+Three Vinegar Tasters explains admirably the trend of the three
+doctrines.  Sakyamuni, Confucius, and Laotse once stood before
+a jar of vinegar--the emblem of life--and each dipped in his finger
+to taste the brew.  The matter-of-fact Confucius found it sour,
+the Buddha called it bitter, and Laotse pronounced it sweet.
+
+The Taoists claimed that the comedy of life could be made more 
+interesting if everyone would preserve the unities.  To keep the
+proportion of things and give place to others without losing
+one's own position was the secret of success in the mundane
+drama.  We must know the whole play in order to properly act 
+our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of
+the individual.  This Laotse illustrates by his favourite metaphor
+of the Vacuum.  He claimed that only in vacuum lay the truly
+essential.  The reality of a room, for instance, was to be found
+in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and the walls, not in the
+roof and walls themselves.  The usefulness of a water pitcher
+dwelt in the emptiness where water might be put, not in the
+form of the pitcher or the material of which it was made.  
+Vacuum is all potent because all containing.  In vacuum alone
+motion becomes possible.  One who could make of himself a
+vacuum into which others might freely enter would become
+master of all situations.  The whole can always dominate
+the part.
+
+These Taoists' ideas have greatly influenced all our theories
+of action, even to those of fencing and wrestling.  Jiu-jitsu,
+the Japanese art of self-defence, owes its name to a passage
+in the Tao-teking.  In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and
+exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum,
+while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final
+struggle.  In art the importance of the same principle is 
+illustrated by the value of suggestion.  In leaving something
+unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea
+and thus a great masterpiece irresistably rivets your attention
+until you seem to become actually a part of it.  A vacuum
+is there for you to enter and fill up the full measure of your
+aesthetic emotion.
+
+He whohad made himself master of the art of living was the
+Real man of the Taoist.  At birth he enters the realm of dreams
+only to awaken to reality at death.  He tempers his own 
+brightness in order to merge himself into the obscurity of
+others.  He is "reluctant, as one who crosses a stream in
+winter; hesitating as one who fears the neighbourhood;
+respectful, like a guest; trembling, like ice that is about to melt;
+unassuming, like a piece of wood not yet carved; vacant,
+like a valley; formless, like troubled waters."  To him the three
+jewls of life were Pity, Economy, and Modesty.
+
+If now we turn our attention to Zennism we shall find that
+it emphasises the teachings of Taoism.  Zen is a name
+derived from the Sanscrit word Dhyana, which signifies
+meditation.  It claims that through consecrated meditation
+may be attained supreme self-realisation.  Meditation is one
+of the six ways through which Buddhahood may be reached,
+and the Zen sectarians affirm that Sakyamuni laid special stress
+on this method in his later teachings, handing down the rules to
+his chief disciple Kashiapa.  According to their tradition Kashiapa,
+the first Zen patriarch, imparted the secret to Ananda, who in
+turn passed it on to successive patriarchs until it reached
+Bodhi-Dharma, the twenty-eighth.  Bodhi-Dharma came to
+Northern China in the early half of the sixth century and was the
+first patriarch of Chinese Zen.  There is much uncertainty about 
+the history of these patriarchs and their doctrines.  In its
+philosophical aspect early Zennism seems to have affinity on
+one hand to the Indian Negativism of Nagarjuna and on the
+other to the Gnan philosophy formulated by Sancharacharya.
+The first teaching of Zen as we know it at the present day must be
+attributed to the sixth Chinese patriarch Yeno(637-713), founder
+of Southern Zen, so-called from the fact of its predominance
+in Southern China.  He is closely followed by the great
+Baso(died 788) who made of Zen a living influence in Celestial
+life.  Hiakujo(719-814) the pupil of Baso, first instituted the Zen
+monastery and established a ritual and regulations for its
+government.  In the discussions of the Zen school after the
+time of Baso we find the play of the Yangtse-Kiang mind
+causing an accession of native modes of thought in contrast
+to the former Indian idealism.  Whatever sectarian pride may
+assert to the contrary one cannot help being impressed by the
+similarity of Southern Zen to the teachings of Laotse and the
+Taoist Conversationalists.  In the Tao-teking we already find
+allusions to the importance of self-concentration and the 
+need of properly regulating the breath--essential points in the
+practice of Zen meditation.  Some of the best commentaries
+on the Book of Laotse have been written by Zen scholars.
+
+Zennism, like Taoism, is the worship of Relativity.  One
+master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the
+southern sky.  Truth can be reached only through the
+comprehension of opposites.  Again, Zennism, like Taoism,
+is a strong advocate of individualism.  Nothing is real except
+that which concerns the working of our own minds.  Yeno,
+the sixth patriarch, once saw two monks watching the flag
+of a pagoda fluttering in the wind.  One said "It is the wind
+that moves," the other said "It is the flag that moves"; but
+Yeno explained to them that the real movement was neither
+of the wind nor the flag, but of something within their own
+minds.  Hiakujo was walking in the forest with a disciple when 
+a hare scurried off at their approach.  "Why does the hare fly
+from you?" asked Hiakujo.  "Because he is afraid of me," was
+the answer.  "No," said the master, "it is because you have
+murderous instinct."  The dialogue recalls that of Soshi (Chauntse),
+the Taoist.  One day Soshi was walking on the bank of a river 
+with a friend.  "How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves
+in the water!" exclaimed Soshi.  His friend spake to him thus:
+"You are not a fish; how do you know that the fishes are enjoying
+themselves?"  "You are not myself," returned Soshi; "how do you
+know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?"
+
+Zen was often opposed to the precepts of orthodox Buddhism
+even as Taoism was opposed to Confucianism.  To the
+transcendental insight of the Zen, words were but an 
+incumberance to thought; the whole sway of Buddhist scriptures
+only commentaries on personal speculation.  The followers of
+Zen aimed at direct communion with the inner nature of things,
+regarding their outward accessories only as impediments to a
+clear perception of Truth.  It was this love of the Abstract that
+led the Zen to prefer black and white sketches to the elaborately
+coloured paintings of the classic Buddhist School.  Some of the
+Zen even became iconoclastic as a result of their endeavor to
+recognise the Buddha in themselves rather than through images
+and symbolism.  We find Tankawosho breaking up a wooden
+statue of Buddha on a wintry day to make a fire.  "What
+sacrilege!" said the horror-stricken bystander.  "I wish to
+get the Shali out of the ashes," camply rejoined the Zen.
+"But you certainly will not get Shali from this image!" was the
+angry retort, to which Tanka replied, "If I do not, this is
+certainly not a Buddha and I am committing no sacrilege."
+Then he turned to warm himself over the kindling fire.
+
+A special contribution of Zen to Easthern thought was its
+recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the 
+spiritual.  It held that in the great relation of things there was
+no distinction of small and great, an atom posessing equal
+possibilites with the universe.  The seeker for perfection must 
+discover in his own life  the reflection of the inner light.  The
+organisation of the Zen monastery was very significant of this
+point of view.  To every member, except the abbot, was assigned
+some special work in the caretaking of the monastery, and
+curiously enough, to the novices was committed the lighter
+duties, while to the most respected and advanced monks were
+given the more irksome and menial tasks.  Such services formed
+a part of the Zen discipline and every least action must be done
+absolutely perfectly.  Thus many a weighty discussion ensued
+while weeding the garden, paring a turnip, or serving tea. 
+The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of
+greatness in the smallest incidents of life.  Taoism furnished the
+basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical.
+
+
+
+IV. The Tea-Room
+
+
+To European architects brought up on the traditions of stone and
+brick construction, our Japanese method of building with wood 
+and bamboo seems scarcely worthy to be ranked as architecture.
+It is but quite recently that a competent student of Western
+architecture has recognised and paid tribute to the remarkable
+perfection of our great temples.  Such being the case as regards 
+our classic architecture, we could hardly expect the outsider to
+appreciate the subtle beauty of the tea-room, its principles of 
+construction and decoration being entirely different from those
+of the West.
+
+The tea-room (the Sukiya) does not pretend to be other than a 
+mere cottage--a straw hut, as we call it.  The original ideographs
+for Sukiya mean the Abode of Fancy.  Latterly the various
+tea-masters substituted various Chinese characters according to
+their conception of the tea-room, and the term Sukiya may
+signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical.
+It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure
+built to house a poetic impulse.  It is an Abode of Vacancy 
+inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may 
+be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment.
+It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated
+to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some thing 
+unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete.  The 
+ideals of Teaism have since the sixteenth century influenced our
+architecture to such degree that the ordinary Japanese interior of
+the present day, on account of the extreme simplicity and 
+chasteness of its scheme of decoration, appears to foreigners 
+almost barren.
+
+The first independent tea-room was the creation of Senno-Soyeki,
+commonly known by his later name of Rikiu, the greatest of all
+tea-masters, who, in the sixteenth century, under the patronage
+of Taiko-Hideyoshi, instituted and brought to a high state of
+perfection the formalities of the Tea-ceremony.  The proportions
+of the tea-room had been previously determined by Jowo--a
+famous tea-master of the fifteenth century.  The early tea-room
+consisted merely of a portion of the ordinary drawing-room
+partitioned off by screens for the purpose of the tea-gathering.
+The portion partitioned off was called the Kakoi (enclosure), a
+name still applied to those tea-rooms which are built into a house
+and are not independent constructions.  The Sukiya consists of the
+tea-room proper, designed to accomodate not more than five 
+persons, a number suggestive of the saying "more than the Graces
+and less than the Muses," an anteroom (midsuya) where the tea
+utensils are washed and arranged before being brought in, a 
+portico (machiai) in which the guests wait until they receive the 
+summons to enter the tea-room, and a garden path (the roji) which 
+connects the machiai with the tea-room.  The tea-room is
+unimpressive in appearance.  It is smaller than the smallest
+of Japanese houses, while the materials used in its construction
+are intended to give the suggestion of refined poverty.  Yet we
+must remember that all this is the result of profound artistic 
+forethought, and that the details have been worked out with care
+perhaps even greater than that expended on the building of the
+richest palaces and temples.  A good tea-room is more costly than
+an ordinary mansion, for the selection of its materials, as well as its
+workmanship, requires immense care and precision.  Indeed, the
+carpenters employed by the tea-masters form a distinct and
+highly honoured class among artisans, their work being no
+less delicate than that of the makers of lacquer cabinets.
+
+The tea-room is not only different from any production of
+Western architecture, but also contrasts strongly with the
+classical architecture of Japan itself.  Our ancient noble
+edifices, whether secular or ecclesiastical, were not to be 
+despised even as regards their mere size.  The few that have
+been spared in the disastrous conflagrations of centuries
+are still capable of aweing us by the grandeur and richness 
+of their decoration.  Huge pillars of wood from two to three 
+feet in diameter and from thirty to forty feet high, supported,
+by a complicated network of brackets, the enormous beams
+which groaned under the weight of the tile-covered roofs.
+The material and mode of construction, though weak against
+fire, proved itself strong against earthquakes, and was well
+suited to the climatic conditions of the country.  In the Golden
+Hall of Horiuji and the Pagoda of Yakushiji, we have noteworthy
+examples of the durability of our wooden architecture.  These
+buildings have practically stood intact for nearly twelve
+centuries.  The interior of the old temples and palaces was 
+profusely decorated.  In the Hoodo temple at Uji, dating from
+the tenth century, we can still see the elaborate canopy and 
+gilded baldachinos, many-coloured and inlaid with mirrors and
+mother-of-pearl, as well as remains of the paintings and 
+sculpture which formerly covered the walls.  Later, at Nikko
+and in the Nijo castle in Kyoto, we see structural beauty sacrificed
+to a wealth of ornamentation which in colour and exquisite detail
+equals the utmost gorgeousness of Arabian or Moorish effort.
+
+The simplicity and purism of the tea-room resulted from
+emulation of the Zen monastery.  A Zen monastery differs from
+those of other Buddhist sects inasmuch as it is meant only to be a
+dwelling place for the monks.  Its chapel is not a place of worship
+or pilgrimage, but a college room where the students congregate
+for discussion and the practice of meditation.  The room is bare
+except for a central alcove in which, behind the altar, is a statue
+of Bodhi Dharma, the founder of the sect, or of Sakyamuni
+attended by Kaphiapa and Ananda, the two earliest Zen patriarchs.
+On the altar, flowers and incense are offered up in the memory of
+the great contributions which these sages made to Zen.  We have
+already said that it was the ritual instituted by the Zen monks of
+successively drinking tea out of a bowl before the image of
+Bodhi Dharma, which laid the foundations of the tea-ceremony.
+We might add here that the altar of the Zen chapel was the
+prototype of the Tokonoma,--the place of honour in a Japanese
+room where paintings and flowers are placed for the edification
+of the guests.
+
+All our great tea-masters were students of Zen and attempted
+to introduce the spirit of Zennism into the actualities of life.
+Thus the room, like the other equipments of the tea-ceremony,
+reflects many of the Zen doctrines.  The size of the orthodox
+tea-room, which is four mats and a half, or ten feet square,
+is determined by a passage in the Sutra of Vikramadytia.
+In that interesting work, Vikramadytia welcomes the Saint
+Manjushiri and eighty-four thousand disciples of Buddha in
+a room of this size,--an allegory based on the theory of the
+non-existence of space to the truly enlightened.  Again the
+roji, the garden path which leads from the machiai to the
+tea-room, signified the first stage of meditation,--the passage
+into self-illumination.  The roji was intended to break
+connection with the outside world, and produce a fresh
+sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in
+the tea-room itself.  One who has trodden this garden path
+cannot fail to remember how his spirit, as he walked in the
+twilight of evergreens over the regular irregularities of the
+stepping stones, beneath which lay dried pine needles, and passed
+beside the moss-covered granite lanterns, became uplifted above
+ordinary thoughts.  One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel
+as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of
+civilisation.  Great was the ingenuity displayed by the tea-masters
+in producing these effects of serenity and purity.  The nature of
+the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed
+with different tea-masters.  Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter
+loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained
+in the ancient ditty:
+"I look beyond;/Flowers are not,/Nor tinted leaves./On the sea beach/
+A solitary cottage stands/In the waning light/Of an autumn eve."
+
+Others, like Kobori-Enshiu, sought for a different effect.
+Enshiu said the idea of the garden path was to be found in the
+following verses:
+"A cluster of summer trees,/A bit of the sea,/A pale evening moon."
+It is not difficult to gather his meaning.  He wished to create the
+attitude of a newly awakened soul still lingering amid shadowy
+dreams of the past, yet bathing in the sweet unconsciousness of
+a mellow spiritual light, and yearning for the freedom that lay
+in the expanse beyond.
+
+Thus prepared the guest will silently approach the sanctuary,
+and, if a samurai, will leave his sword on the rack beneath
+the eaves, the tea-room being preeminently the house of peace.
+Then he will bend low and creep into the room through a
+small door not more than three feet in height.  This proceeding
+was incumbent on all guests,--high and low alike,--and was
+intended to inculcate humility.  The order of precedence
+having been mutually agreed upon while resting in the machiai,
+the guests one by one will enter noiselessly and take their seats,
+first making obeisance to the picture or flower arrangement on
+the tokonoma.  The host will not enter the room until all the
+guests have seated themselves and quiet reigns with nothing
+to break the silence save the note of the boiling water in the
+iron kettle.  The kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so
+arranged in the bottom as to produce a peculiar melody in
+which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by clouds,
+of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping
+through a bamboo forest, or of the soughing of pines on some
+faraway hill.
+
+Even in the daytime the light in the room is subdued, for the low
+eaves of the slanting roof admit but few of the sun's rays.
+Everything is sober in tint from the ceiling to the floor; the guests
+themselves have carefully chosen garments of unobtrusive colors.
+The mellowness of age is over all, everything suggestive of
+recent acquirement being tabooed save only the one note of
+contrast furnished by the bamboo dipper and the linen napkin,
+both immaculately white and new.  However faded the tea-room
+and the tea-equipage may seem, everything is absolutely clean.
+Not a particle of dust will be found in the darkest corner, for if
+any exists the host is not a tea-master.  One of the first requisites
+of a tea-master is the knowledge of how to sweep, clean, and 
+wash, for there is an art in cleaning and dusting.  A piece of
+antique metal work must not be attacked with the unscrupulous
+zeal of the Dutch housewife.  Dripping water from a flower
+vase need not be wiped away, for it may be suggestive of dew
+and coolness.
+
+In this connection there is a story of Rikiu which well illustrates
+the ideas of cleanliness entertained by the tea-masters. Rikiu was
+watching his son Shoan as he swept and watered the garden path.
+"Not clean enough," said Rikiu, when Shoan had finished his task,
+and bade him try again.  After a weary hour the son turned to
+Rikiu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done.  The steps have
+been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are
+well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh
+verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground."  "Young
+fool," chided the tea-master, "that is not the way a garden path
+should be swept."  Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden,
+shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves,
+scraps of the brocade of autumn!  What Rikiu demanded was not
+cleanliness alone, but the beautiful and the natural also.
+
+The name, Abode of Fancy, implies a structure created to meet
+some individual artistic requirement.  The tea-room is made for
+the tea master, not the tea-master for the tea-room. It is not
+intended for posterity and is therefore ephemeral.  The idea that
+everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient
+custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that
+every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief
+occupant.  Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary
+reason for this practice.  Another early custom was that a newly
+built house should be provided for each couple that married.
+It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals
+so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days.
+The rebuilding, every twenty years, of Ise Temple, the supreme 
+shrine of the Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient
+rites which still obtain at the present day.  The observance of
+these customs was only possible with some form of construction
+as that furnished by our system of wooden architecture, easily
+pulled down, easily built up.  A more lasting style, employing
+brick and stone, would have rendered migrations impracticable,
+as indeed they became when the more stable and massive wooden
+construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.
+
+With the predominance of Zen individualism in the fifteenth
+century, however, the old idea became imbued with a deeper
+significance as conceived in connection with the tea-room.
+Zennism, with the Buddhist theory of evanescence and its 
+demands for the mastery of spirit over matter, recognized the
+house only as a temporary refuge for the body.  The body
+itself was but as a hut in the wilderness, a flimsy shelter made
+by tying together the grasses that grew around,--when these
+ceased to be bound together they again became resolved into
+the original waste.  In the tea-room fugitiveness is suggested
+in the thatched roof, frailty in the slender pillars, lightness in
+the bamboo support, apparent carelessness in the use of 
+commonplace materials.  The eternal is to be found only in the
+spirit which, embodied in these simple surroundings, beautifies
+them with the subtle light of its refinement.
+
+That the tea-room should be built to suit some individual taste
+is an enforcement of the principle of vitality in art.  Art, to be
+fully appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life.  It is
+not that we should ignore the claims of posterity, but that we
+should seek to enjoy the present more.  It is not that we should
+disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to
+assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to
+traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality
+in architecture.  We can but weep over the senseless imitations
+of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan.
+We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations,
+architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with
+repetitions of obsolete styles.  Perhaps we are passing through an
+age of democritisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some
+princely master who shall establish a new dynasty.  Would that we
+loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that 
+the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.
+
+The term, Abode of Vacancy, besides conveying the Taoist theory
+of the all-containing, involves the conception of a continued need
+of change in decorative motives.  The tea-room is absolutely empty,
+except for what may be placed there temporarily to satisfy some
+aesthetic mood.  Some special art object is brought in for the 
+occasion, and everything else is selected and arranged to enhance
+the beauty of the principal theme.  One cannot listen to different
+pieces of music at the same time, a real comprehension of the 
+beautiful being possible only through concentration upon some
+central motive.  Thus it will be seen that the system of decoration
+in our tea-rooms is opposed to that which obtains in the West,
+where the interior of a house is often converted into a museum.
+To a Japanese, accustomed to simplicity of ornamentation and
+frequent change of decorative method, a Western interior
+permanently filled with a vast array of pictures, statuary, and 
+bric-a-brac gives the impression of mere vulgar display of riches.
+It calls for a mighty wealth of appreciation to enjoy the constant
+sight of even a masterpiece, and limitless indeed must be the
+capacity for artistic feeling in those who can exist day after day
+in the midst of such confusion of color and form as is to be
+often seen in the homes of Europe and America.
+
+The "Abode of the Unsymmetrical" suggests another phase of
+our decorative scheme.  The absence of symmetry in Japanese
+art objects has been often commented on by Western critics.
+This, also, is a result of a working out through Zennism of
+Taoist ideals.  Confucianism, with its deep-seated idea of dualism,
+and Northern Buddhism with its worship of a trinity, were in no
+way opposed to the expression of symmetry.  As a matter of fact,
+if we study the ancient bronzes of China or the religious arts of
+the Tang dynasty and the Nara period, we shall recognize a 
+constant striving after symmetry.  The decoration of our classical
+interiors was decidedly regular in its arrangement.  The Taoist and
+Zen conception of perfection, however, was different.  The dynamic
+nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through
+which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself.  True
+beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed
+the incomplete.  The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities
+for growth.  In the tea-room it is left for each guest in imagination
+to complete the total effect in relation to himself.  Since Zennism
+has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the extreme
+Orient has purposefully avoided the symmetrical as expressing not
+only completion, but repetition.  Uniformity of design was considered
+fatal to the freshness of imagination.  Thus, landscapes, birds, and
+flowers became the favorite subjects for depiction rather than the 
+human figure, the latter being present in the person of the beholder
+himself.  We are often too much in evidence as it is, and in spite
+of our vanity even self-regard is apt to become monotonous.
+
+In the tea-room the fear of repetition is a constant presence.
+The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so
+selected that no colour or design shall be repeated.  If you have
+a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowable. If you
+are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular.
+A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy
+of black laquer.  In placing a vase of an incense burner on the
+tokonoma, care should be taken not to put it in the exact centre,
+lest it divide the space into equal halves.  The pillar of the tokonoma
+should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order
+to break any suggestion of monotony in the room.
+
+Here again the Japanese method of interior decoration differs from
+that of the Occident, where we see objects arrayed symmetrically
+on mantelpieces and elsewhere.  In Western houses we are often
+confronted with what appears to us useless reiteration.  We find
+it trying to talk to a man while his full-length portrait stares at us
+from behind his back.  We wonder which is real, he of the picture
+or he who talks, and feel a curious conviction that one of them must
+be fraud.  Many a time have we sat at a festive board contemplating,
+with a secret shock to our digestion, the representation of abundance
+on the dining-room walls.  Why these pictured victims of chase and
+sport, the elaborate carvings of fishes and fruit?  Why the display
+of family plates, reminding us of those who have dined and are dead?
+
+The simplicity of the tea-room and its freedom from vulgarity
+make it truly a sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world.
+There and there alone one can consecrate himself to undisturbed 
+adoration of the beautiful.  In the sixteenth century the tea-room 
+afforded a welcome respite from labour to the fierce warriors and 
+statesmen engaged in the unification and reconstruction of Japan.
+In the seventeenth century, after the strict formalism of the 
+Tokugawa rule had been developed, it offered the only opportunity
+possible for the free communion of artistic spirits.  Before a great 
+work of art there was no distinction between daimyo, samurai, and 
+commoner. Nowadays industrialism is making true refinement more 
+and more difficult all the world over. Do we not need the tea-room 
+more than ever?
+
+
+
+V. Art Appreciation
+
+
+Have you heard the Taoist tale of the Taming of the Harp?
+
+Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lungmen stood a 
+Kiri tree, a veritable king of the forest.  It reared its head to
+talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth,
+mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver 
+dragon that slept beneath.  And it came to pass that a 
+mighty wizard made of this tree a wondrous harp, whose
+stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of
+musicians.  For long the instrument was treasured by the
+Emperor of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those
+who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings.  In
+response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp
+but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they
+fain would sing.  The harp refused to recognise a master.
+
+At last came Peiwoh, the prince of harpists.  With tender
+hand he caressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an
+unruly horse, and softly touched the chords.  He sang of
+nature and the seasons, of high mountains and flowing waters,
+and all the memories of the tree awoke!  Once more the sweet
+breath of spring played amidst its branches.  The young
+cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the 
+budding flowers.  Anon were heard the dreamy voices of
+summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain,
+the wail of the cuckoo.  Hark! a tiger roars,--the valley
+answers again.  It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like 
+a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass.  Now 
+winter reigns, and through the snow-filled air swirl flocks 
+of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with
+fierce delight.
+
+Then Peiwoh changed the key and sang of love.  The forest 
+swayed like an ardent swain deep lost in thought.  On high,
+like a haughty maiden, swept a cloud bright and fair; but 
+passing, trailed long shadows on the ground, black like
+despair.  Again the mode was changed; Peiwoh sang of 
+war, of clashing steel and trampling steeds.  And in the 
+harp arose the tempest of Lungmen, the dragon rode the
+lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through the
+hills.  In ecstasy the Celestial monarch asked Peiwoh wherein
+lay the secret of his victory.  "Sire," he replied, "others have
+failed because they sang but of themselves.  I left the harp to
+choose its theme, and knew not truly whether the harp had 
+been Peiwoh or Peiwoh were the harp."
+
+This story well illustrates the mystery of art appreciation.
+The masterpiece is a symphony played upon our finest
+feelings.  True art is Peiwoh, and we the harp of Lungmen.
+At the magic touch of the beautiful the secret chords of
+our being are awakened, we vibrate and thrill in response
+to its call.  Mind speaks to mind.  We listen to the unspoken,
+we gaze upon the unseen.  The master calls forth notes we
+know not of.  Memories long forgotten all come back to us
+with a new significance.  Hopes stifled by fear, yearnings
+that we dare not recognise, stand forth in new glory.  Our
+mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their
+pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy,
+the shadow of sadness.  The masterpiece is of ourselves, as 
+we are of the masterpiece.
+
+The sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art
+appreciation must be based on mutual concession.  The 
+spectator must cultivate the proper attitude for receiving
+the message, as the artist must know how to impart it.  The
+tea-master, Kobori-Enshiu, himself a daimyo, has left to us 
+these memorable words: "Approach a great painting as thou
+wouldst approach a great prince."  In order to understand a
+masterpiece, you must lay yourself low before it and await
+with bated breath its least utterance.  An eminent Sung critic
+once made a charming confession.  Said he: "In my young 
+days I praised the master whose pictures I liked, but as my
+judgement matured I praised myself for liking what the masters
+had chosen to have me like."  It is to be deplored that so few of
+us really take pains to study the moods of the masters.  In our
+stubborn ignorance we refuse to render them this simple
+courtesy, and thus often miss the rich repast of beauty spread
+before our very eyes.  A master has always something to offer,
+while we go hungry solely because of our own lack of
+appreciation.
+
+To the sympathetic a masterpiece becomes a living reality
+towards which we feel drawn in bonds of comradeship.  The
+masters are immortal, for their loves and fears live in us over 
+and over again.  It is rather the soul than the hand, the man than
+the technique, which appeals to us,--the more human the call
+the deeper is our response.  It is because of this secret
+understanding between the master and ourselves that in poetry
+or romance we suffer and rejoice with the hero and heroine.
+Chikamatsu, our Japanese Shakespeare, has laid down as one of
+the first principles of dramatic composition the importance
+of taking the audience into the confidence of the author.
+Several of his pupils submitted plays for his approval, but
+only one of the pieces appealed to him.  It was a play
+somewhat resembling the Comedy of Errors, in which
+twin brethren suffer through mistaken identity.  "This," said
+Chikamatsu, "has the proper spirit of the drama, for it 
+takes the audience into consideration.  The public is permitted
+to know more than the actors.  It knows where the mistake
+lies, and pities the poor figures on the board who innocently
+rush to their fate."
+
+The great masters both of the East and the West never forgot 
+the value of suggestion as a means for taking the spectator into
+their confidence.  Who can contemplate a masterpiece without
+being awed by the immense vista of thought presented to our
+consideration?  How familiar and sympathetic are they all;
+how cold in contrast the modern commonplaces!  In the former
+we feel the warm outpouring of a man's heart; in the latter
+only a formal salute.  Engrossed in his technique, the
+modern rarely rises above himself.  Like the musicians who
+vainly invoked the Lungmen harp, he sings only of himself.
+His works may be nearer science, but are further from 
+humanity.  We have an old saying in Japan that a woman
+cannot love a man who is truly vain, for their is no crevice
+in his heart for love to enter and fill up.  In art vanity is equally
+fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist
+or the public.
+
+Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in
+art.  At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself.
+At once he is and is not.  He catches a glimpse of Infinity, but
+words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has no tongue.  
+Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm
+of things.  It is thus that art becomes akin to religion and
+ennobles mankind.  It is this which makes a masterpiece
+something sacred.  In the old days the veneration in which the
+Japanese held the work of the great artist was intense.  The
+tea-masters guarded their treasures with religious secrecy,
+and it was often necessary to open a whole series of boxes,
+one within another, before reaching the shrine itself--the silken
+wrapping within whose soft folds lay the holy of holies.  Rarely
+was the object exposed to view, and then only to the initiated.
+
+At the time when Teaism was in the ascendency the Taiko's 
+generals would be better satisfied with the present of a
+rare work of art than a large grant of territory as a reward
+of victory.  Many of our favourite dramas are based on the 
+loss and recovery of a noted masterpiece.  For instance, 
+in one play the palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which was
+preserved the celebrated painting of Dharuma by Sesson,
+suddenly takes fire through the negligence of the samurai
+in charge.  Resolved at all hazards to rescue the precious
+painting, he rushes into the burning building and seizes the
+kakemono, only to find all means of exit cut off by the flames.
+Thinking only of the picture, he slashes open his body with
+his sword, wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson and 
+plunges it into the gaping wound.  The fire is at last 
+extinguished.  Among the smoking embers is found a half-
+consumed corps, within which reposes the treasure uninjured
+by the fire.  Horrible as such tales are, they illustrate the great
+value that we set upon a masterpiece, as well as the devotion
+of a trusted samurai.
+
+We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the
+extent that it speaks to us.  It might be a universal language
+if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.  Our 
+finite nature, the power of tradition and conventionality, as
+well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our 
+capacity for artistic enjoyment.  Our very individuality
+establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our 
+aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities in the creations of
+the past.  It is true that with cultivation our sense of art
+appreciation broadens, and we become able to enjoy many
+hitherto unrecognised expressions of beauty.  But, after all, we 
+see only our own image in the universe,--our particular
+idiosyncracies dictate the mode of our perceptions.  The tea-
+masters collected only objects which fell strictly within the 
+measure of their individual appreciation.
+
+One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning
+Kobori-Enshiu.  Enshiu was complimented by his disciples
+on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his
+collection.  Said they, "Each piece is such that no one could
+help admiring.  It shows that you had better taste than had
+Rikiu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one
+beholder in a thousand."  Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This
+only proves how commonplace I am.  The great Rikiu dared
+to love only those objects which personally appealed to him,
+whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority.
+Verily, Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea-masters."
+
+It is much to be regretted that so much of the apparent 
+enthusiasm for art at the present day has no foundation in
+real feeling.  In this democratic age of ours men clamour 
+for what is popularly considered the best, regardless of their 
+feelings.  They want the costly, not the refined; the fashionable,
+not the beautiful.  To the masses, contemplation of illustrated
+periodicals, the worthy product of their own industrialism,
+would give more digestible food for artistic enjoyment than
+the early Italians or the Ashikaga masters, whom they pretend
+to admire.  The name of the artist is more important to them
+than the quality of the work.  As a Chinese critic complained
+many centuries ago, "People criticise a picture by their ear."
+It is this lack of genuine appreciation that is responsible for
+the pseudo-classic horrors that to-day greet us wherever we
+turn.
+
+Another common mistake is that of confusing art with 
+archaeology.  The veneration born of antiquity is one of the
+best traits in the human character, and fain would we have
+it cultivated to a greater extent.  The old masters are rightly
+to be honoured for opening the path to future enlightenment. 
+The mere fact that they have passed unscathed through
+centuries of criticism and come down to us still covered 
+with glory commands our respect.  But we should be foolish
+indeed if we valued their achievement simply on the score of
+age.  Yet we allow our historical sympathy to override our
+aesthetic discrimination.  We offer flowers of approbation when
+the artist is safely laid in his grave.  The nineteenth century,
+pregnant with the theory of evolution, has moreover created
+in us the habit of losing sight of the individual in the species.
+A collector is anxious to acquire specimens to illustrate a period
+or a school, and forgets that a single masterpiece can teach us
+more than any number of the mediocre products of a given
+period or school.  We classify too much and enjoy too little.
+The sacrifice of the aesthetic to the so-called scientific method
+of exhibition has been the bane of many museums.
+
+The claims of contemporary art cannot be ignored in any
+vital scheme of life.  The art of to-day is that which really
+belongs to us: it is our own reflection.  In condemning it we
+but condemn ourselves.  We say that the present age possesses
+no art:--who is responsible for this?  It is indeed a shame that
+despite all our rhapsodies about the ancients we pay so little 
+attention to our own possibilities.  Struggling artists, weary
+souls lingering in the shadow of cold disdain!  In our self-
+centered century, what inspiration do we offer them?  The
+past may well look with pity at the poverty of our civilisation;
+the future will laugh at the barrenness of our art.  We are
+destroying the beautiful in life.  Would that some great wizard
+might from the stem of society shape a mighty harp whose 
+strings would resound to the touch of genius.
+
+
+
+
+VI. Flowers
+
+In the trembling grey of a spring dawn, when the birds were
+whispering in mysterious cadence among the trees, have you
+not felt that they were talking to their mates about the flowers?
+Surely with mankind the appreciation of flowers must have
+been coeval with the poetry of love.  Where better than in a
+flower, sweet in its unconsciousness, fragrant because of its
+silence, can we image the unfolding of a virgin soul?  The primeval
+man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended
+the brute.  He became human in thus rising above the crude
+necessities of nature.  He entered the realm of art when he
+perceived the subtle use of the useless.
+
+In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.  We eat, drink,
+sing, dance, and flirt with them.  We wed and christen with flowers.
+We dare not die without them.  We have worshipped with the lily,
+we have meditated with the lotus, we have charged in battle array
+with the rose and the chrysanthemum.  We have even attempted to
+speak in the language of flowers.  How could we live without them?
+It frightens on to conceive of a world bereft of their presence.
+What solace do they not bring to the bedside of the sick, what a
+light of bliss to the darkness of weary spirits?  Their serene tenderness
+restores to us our waning confidence in the universe even as the 
+intent gaze of a beautiful child recalls our lost hopes.  When we are
+laid low in the dust it is they who linger in sorrow over our graves.
+
+Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our
+companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above
+the brute.  Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon
+show his teeth.  It has been said that a man at ten is an animal,
+at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty
+a criminal.  Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never
+ceased to be an animal.  Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing
+sacred except our own desires.  Shrine after shrine has crumbled
+before our eyes; but one altar is forever preserved, that whereon
+we burn incense to the supreme idol,--ourselves.  Our god is
+great, and money is his Prophet!  We devastate nature in order to
+make sacrifice to him.  We boast that we have conquered Matter 
+and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us.  What atrocities 
+do we not perpetrate in the name of culture and refinement!
+
+Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the
+garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews
+and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that
+awaits you?  Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the
+gentle breezes of summer.  To-morrow a ruthless hand will close 
+around your throats.  You will be wrenched, torn asunder limb 
+by limb, and borne away from your quiet homes.  The wretch,
+she may be passing fair.  She may say how lovely you are while
+her fingers are still moist with your blood.  Tell me, will this be
+kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of
+one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the
+buttonhole of one who would not dare to look you in the face
+were you a man.  It may even be your lot to be confined in
+some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the
+maddening thirst that warns of ebbing life.
+
+Flowers, if you were in the land of the Mikado, you might some
+time meet a dread personage armed with scissors and a tiny saw.
+He would call himself a Master of Flowers.  He would claim the
+rights of a doctor and you would instinctively hate him, for you
+know a doctor always seeks to prolong the troubles of his victims.
+He would cut, bend, and twist you into those impossible positions
+which he thinks it proper that you should assume.  He would
+contort your muscles and dislocate your bones like any osteopath.
+He would burn you with red-hot coals to stop your bleeding, and
+thrust wires into you to assist your circulation.  He would diet you
+with salt, vinegar, alum, and sometimes, vitriol.  Boiling water
+would be poured on your feet when you seemed ready to faint.
+It would be his boast that he could keep life within you for two
+or more weeks longer than would have been possible without his
+treatment.  Would you not have preferred to have been killed at once
+when you were first captured?  What were the crimes you must have
+committed during your past incarnation to warrant such punishment
+in this?
+
+The wanton waste of flowers among Western communities is even more
+appalling than the way they are treated by Eastern Flower
+Masters.  The number of flowers cut daily to adorn the 
+ballrooms and banquet-tables of Europe and America, to be
+thrown away on the morrow, must be something enormous;
+if strung together they might garland a continent.  Beside this
+utter carelessness of life, the guilt of the Flower-Master becomes
+insignificant.  He, at least, respects the economy of nature, 
+selects his victims with careful foresight, and after death does
+honour to their remains.  In the West the display of flowers seems
+to be a part of the pageantry of wealth,--the fancy of a moment.
+Whither do they all go, these flowers, when the revelry is over?
+Nothing is more pitiful than to see a faded flower remorselessly 
+flung upon a dung heap.
+
+Why were the flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless? 
+Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when
+brought to bay.  The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some
+bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you
+covet for your own may hide at your approach.  Alas!  The only 
+flower known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand 
+helpless before the destroyer.  If they shriek in their death agony 
+their cry never reaches our hardened ears.  We are ever brutal to 
+those who love and serve us in silence, but the time may come when,
+for our cruelty, we shall be deserted by these best friends of ours.
+Have you not noticed that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer 
+every year?  It may be that their wise men have told them to 
+depart till man becomes more human.  Perhaps they have migrated
+to heaven.
+
+Much may be said in favor of him who cultivates plants.  The man
+of the pot is far more humane than he of the scissors.  We watch
+with delight his concern about water and sunshine, his feuds with
+parasites, his horror of frosts, his anxiety when the buds come
+slowly, his rapture when the leaves attain their lustre.  In the East
+the art of floriculture is a very ancient one, and the loves of a poet
+and his favorite plant have often been recorded in story and song. 
+With the development of ceramics during the Tang and Sung
+dynasties we hear of wonderful receptacles made to hold plants,
+not pots, but jewelled palaces.  A special attendant was detailed
+to wait upon each flower and to wash its leaves with soft brushes
+made of rabbit hair. It has been written ["Pingtse", by Yuenchunlang]
+that the peony should be bathed by a handsome maiden in full
+costume, that a winter-plum should be watered by a pale, slender
+monk.  In Japan, one of the most popular of the No-dances, the
+Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period, is based upon
+the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night,
+in lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to 
+entertain a wandering friar.  The friar is in reality no other than
+Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the
+sacrifice is not without its reward.  This opera never fails to
+draw tears from a Tokio audience even to-day.
+
+Great precautions were taken for the preservation of delicate
+blossoms.  Emperor Huensung, of the Tang Dynasty, hung
+tiny golden bells on the branches in his garden to keep off
+the birds.  He it was who went off in the springtime with his
+court musicians to gladden the flowers with soft music.
+A quaint tablet, which tradition ascribes to Yoshitsune,
+the hero of our Arthurian legends, is still extant in one of
+the Japanese monasteries [Sumadera, near Kobe]. It
+is a notice put up for the protection of a certain wonderful
+plum-tree, and appeals to us with the grim humour of
+a warlike age.  After referring to the beauty of the blossoms,
+the inscription says: "Whoever cuts a single branch of
+this tree shall forfeit a finger therefor."  Would that such
+laws could be enforced nowadays against those who 
+wantonly destroy flowers and mutilate objects of art!
+
+Yet even in the case of pot flowers we are inclined to suspect
+the selfishness of man.  Why take the plants from their homes
+and ask them to bloom mid strange surroundings?  Is it not
+like asking the birds to sing and mate cooped up in cages?
+Who knows but that the orchids feel stifled by the artificial
+heat in your conservatories and hopelessly long for a glimpse
+of their own Southern skies?
+
+The ideal lover of flowers is he who visits them in their native
+haunts, like Taoyuenming [all celebrated Chinese poets and
+philosophers], who sat before a broken bamboo fence in
+converse with the wild chrysanthemum, or Linwosing, losing
+himself amid mysterious fragrance as he wandered in the
+twilight among the plum-blossoms of the Western Lake.
+'Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams
+might mingle with those of the lotus.  It was the same spirit
+which moved the Empress Komio, one of our most renowned
+Nara sovereigns, as she sang: "If I pluck thee, my hand will
+defile thee, O flower! Standing in the meadows as thou art,
+I offer thee to the Buddhas of the past, of the present, of
+the future."
+
+However, let us not be too sentimental.  Let us be less luxurious
+but more magnificent.  Said Laotse: "Heaven and earth are
+pitiless."  Said Kobodaishi: "Flow, flow, flow, flow, the current
+of life is ever onward.  Die, die, die, die, death comes to all."
+Destruction faces us wherever we turn.  Destruction below and
+above, destruction behind and before.  Change is the only
+Eternal,--why not as welcome Death as Life?  They are but
+counterparts one of the other,--The Night and Day of Brahma.
+Through the disintegration of the old, re-creation becomes
+possible.  We have worshipped Death, the relentless goddess
+of mercy, under many different names.  It was the shadow of
+the All-devouring that the Gheburs greeted in the fire.  It is the
+icy purism of the sword-soul before which Shinto-Japan prostrates
+herself even to-day.  The mystic fire consumes our weakness, the
+sacred sword cleaves the bondage of desire.  From our ashes
+springs the phoenix of celestial hope, out of the freedom comes a
+higher realisation of manhood.
+
+Why not destroy flowers if thereby we can evolve new forms
+ennobling the world idea?  We only ask them to join in our 
+sacrifice to the beautiful.  We shall atone for the deed by 
+consecrating ourselves to Purity and Simplicity.  Thus reasoned
+the tea-masters when they established the Cult of Flowers.
+
+Anyone acquainted with the ways of our tea- and flower-masters
+must have noticed the religious veneration with which they
+regard flowers.  They do not cull at random, but carefully select
+each branch or spray with an eye to the artistic composition
+they have in mind.  They would be ashamed should they chance
+to cut more than were absolutely necessary.  It may be remarked
+in this connection that they always associate the leaves, if there
+be any, with the flower, for the object is to present the whole
+beauty of plant life.  In this respect, as in many others, their
+method differs from that pursued in Western countries. Here we
+are apt to see only the flower stems, heads as it were, without
+body, stuck promiscuously into a vase.
+
+When a tea-master has arranged a flower to his satisfaction he
+will place it on the tokonoma, the place of honour in a Japanese
+room.  Nothing else will be placed near it which might interfere
+with its effect, not even a painting, unless there be some special
+aesthetic reason for the combination.  It rests there like an
+enthroned prince, and the guests or disciples on entering the
+room will salute it with a profound bow before making their
+addresses to the host.  Drawings from masterpieces are made
+and published for the edification of amateurs.  The amount of
+literature on the subject is quite voluminous.  When the flower
+fades, the master tenderly consigns it to the river or carefully
+buries it in the ground.  Monuments are sometimes erected
+to their memory.
+
+The birth of the Art of Flower Arrangement seems to be 
+simultaneous with that of Teaism in the fifteenth century.
+Our legends ascribe the first flower arrangement to those
+early Buddhist saints who gathered the flowers strewn by
+the storm and, in their infinite solicitude for all living things,
+placed them in vessels of water.  It is said that Soami, the
+great painter and connoisseur of the court of Ashikaga-
+Yoshimasa, was one of the earliest adepts at it.  Juko, the
+tea-master, was one of his pupils, as was also Senno, the
+founder of the house of Ikenobo, a family as illustrious in
+the annals of flowers as was that of the Kanos in painting.
+With the perfecting of the tea-ritual under Rikiu, in the latter
+part of the sixteenth century, flower arrangement also attains
+its full growth.  Rikiu and his successors, the celebrated Ota-
+wuraka, Furuka-Oribe, Koyetsu, Kobori-Enshiu, Katagiri-
+Sekishiu, vied with each other in forming new combinations.
+We must remember, however, that the flower-worship of the
+tea-masters formed only a part of their aesthetic ritual, and
+was not a distinct religion by itself.  A flower arrangement,
+like the other works of art in the tea-room, was subordinated
+to the total scheme of decoration.  Thus Sekishiu ordained
+that white plum blossoms should not be made use of when
+snow lay in the garden.  "Noisy" flowers were relentlessly
+banished from the tea-room.  A flower arrangement by a
+tea-master loses its significance if removed from the place for 
+which it was originally intended, for its lines and proportions
+have been specially worked out with a view to its surroundings.
+
+The adoration of the flower for its own sake begins with the
+rise of "Flower-Masters," toward the middle of the seventeenth
+century.  It now becomes independent of the tea-room and
+knows no law save that the vase imposes on it.  New conceptions
+and methods of execution now become possible, and many were
+the principles and schools resulting therefrom.  A writer in the
+middle of the last century said he could count over one hundred
+different schools of flower arrangement.  Broadly speaking,
+these divide themselves into two main branches, the Formalistic
+and the Naturalesque.  The Formalistic schools, led by the
+Ikenobos, aimed at a classic idealism corresponding to that of the
+Kano-academicians.  We possess records of arrangements by the
+early masters of the school which almost reproduce the flower
+paintings of Sansetsu and Tsunenobu.  The Naturalesque school,
+on the other hand, accepted nature as its model, only imposing
+such modifications of form as conduced to the expression of
+artistic unity.  Thus we recognise in its works the same impulses
+which formed the Ukiyoe and Shijo schools of painting.
+
+It would be interesting, had we time, to enter more fully than it
+is now possible into the laws of composition and detail formulated
+by the various flower-masters of this period, showing, as they would,
+the fundamental theories which governed Tokugawa decoration.
+We find them referring to the Leading Principle (Heaven), the 
+Subordinate Principle (Earth), the Reconciling Principle (Man), 
+and any flower arrangement which did not embody these principles 
+was considered barren and dead. They also dwelt much on the 
+importance of treating a flower in its three different aspects, 
+the Formal, the Semi-Formal, and the Informal.  The first might be 
+said to represent flowers in the stately costume of the ballroom, 
+the second in the easy elegance of afternoon dress, the third in the 
+charming deshabille of the boudoir.
+
+Our personal sympathies are with the flower-arrangements of the
+tea-master rather than with those of the flower-master.  The former
+is art in its proper setting and appeals to us on account of its true
+intimacy with life.  We should like to call this school the Natural
+in contradistinction to the Naturalesque and Formalistic schools.
+The tea-master deems his duty ended with the selection of the
+flowers, and leaves them to tell their own story.  Entering a tea-room
+in late winter, you may see a slender spray of wild cherries in
+combination with a budding camellia; it is an echo of departing
+winter coupled with the prophecy of spring.  Again, if you go into
+a noon-tea on some irritatingly hot summer day, you may discover
+in the darkened coolness of the tokonoma a single lily in a hanging
+vase; dripping with dew, it seems to smile at the foolishness of life.
+
+A solo of flowers is interesting, but in a concerto with painting and
+sculpture the combination becomes entrancing.  Sekishiu once
+placed some water-plants in a flat receptacle to suggest the
+vegetation of lakes and marshes, and on the wall above he hung
+a painting by Soami of wild ducks flying in the air.  Shoha, another
+tea-master, combined a poem on the Beauty of Solitude by the Sea
+with a bronze incense burner in the form of a fisherman's hut and
+some wild flowers of the beach.  One of the guests has recorded that
+he felt in the whole composition the breath of waning autumn.
+
+Flower stories are endless.  We shall recount but one more.
+In the sixteenth century the morning-glory was as yet a rare
+plant with us.  Rikiu had an entire garden planted with it, which
+he cultivated with assiduous care.  The fame of his convulvuli
+reached the ear of the Taiko, and he expressed a desire to see 
+them, in consequence of which Rikiu invited him to a morning
+tea at his house. On the appointed day Taiko walked through the 
+garden, but nowhere could he see any vestige of the convulvus.
+The ground had been leveled and strewn with fine pebbles and sand.
+With sullen anger the despot entered the tea-room, but a sight
+waited him there which completely restored his humour.  On the
+tokonoma, in a rare bronze of Sung workmanship, lay a single
+morning-glory--the queen of the whole garden!
+
+In such instances we see the full significance of the Flower Sacrifice.
+Perhaps the flowers appreciate the full significance of it.  They are
+not cowards, like men.  Some flowers glory in death--certainly the
+Japanese cherry blossoms do, as they freely surrender themselves
+to the winds.  Anyone who has stood before the fragrant avalanche
+at Yoshino or Arashiyama must have realized this.  For a moment
+they hover like bejewelled clouds and dance above the crystal streams;
+then, as they sail away on the laughing waters, they seem to say:
+"Farewell, O Spring! We are on to eternity."
+
+
+
+VII. Tea-Masters
+
+
+In religion the Future is behind us.  In art the present is the eternal.
+The tea-masters held that real appreciation of art is only possible
+to those who make of it a living influence.  Thus they sought to
+regulate their daily life by the high standard of refinement which
+obtained in the tea-room.  In all circumstances serenity of mind
+should be maintained, and conversation should be conducted as
+never to mar the harmony of the surroundings.  The cut and
+color of the dress, the poise of the body, and the manner of
+walking could all be made expressions of artistic personality.
+These were matters not to be lightly ignored, for until one has
+made himself beautiful he has no right to approach beauty.
+Thus the tea-master strove to be something more than the 
+artist,--art itself.  It was the Zen of aestheticism.  Perfection is
+everywhere if we only choose to recognise it.  Rikiu loved to
+quote an old poem which says: "To those who long only for
+flowers, fain would I show the full-blown spring which abides
+in the toiling buds of snow-covered hills."
+
+Manifold indeed have been the contributions of the tea-masters
+to art.  They completely revolutionised the classical architecture
+and interior decorations, and established the new style which we
+have described in the chapter of the tea-room, a style to whose
+influence even the palaces and monasteries built after the sixteenth
+century have all been subject.  The many-sided Kobori-Enshiu has
+left notable examples of his genius in the Imperial villa of Katsura,
+the castles of Najoya and Nijo, and the monastery of Kohoan.
+All the celebrated gardens of Japan were laid out by the tea-masters.
+Our pottery would probably never have attained its high quality
+of excellence if the tea-masters had not lent it to their inspiration,
+the manufacture of the utensils used in the tea-ceremony 
+calling forth the utmost expenditure of ingenuity on the parts of 
+our ceramists.  The Seven Kilns of Enshiu are well known to all 
+students of Japanese pottery. many of our textile fabrics bear the 
+names of tea-masters who conceived their color or design. It is 
+impossible, indeed, to find any department of art in which the 
+tea-masters have not left marks of their genius.  In painting and 
+lacquer it seems almost superfluous to mention the immense 
+services they have rendered.  One of the greatest schools of painting 
+owes its origin to the tea-master Honnami-Koyetsu, famed also as 
+a lacquer artist and potter.  Beside his works, the splendid creation
+of his grandson, Koho, and of his grand-nephews, Korin and Kenzan,
+almost fall into the shade.  The whole Korin school, as it is generally
+designated, is an expression of Teaism.  In the broad lines of this
+school we seem to find the vitality of nature herself.
+
+Great as has been the influence of the tea-masters in the field of art,
+it is as nothing compared to that which they have exerted on the
+conduct of life.  Not only in the usages of polite society, but also
+in the arrangement of all our domestic details, do we feel the
+presence of the tea-masters.  Many of our delicate dishes, as well
+as our way of serving food, are their inventions.  They have 
+taught us to dress only in garments of sober colors.  They have
+instructed us in the proper spirit in which to approach flowers.
+They have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and 
+shown us the beauty of humility.  In fact, through their teachings
+tea has entered the life of the people.
+
+Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our
+own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which
+we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying
+to appear happy and contented.  We stagger in the attempt to 
+keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest
+in every cloud that floats on the horizon.  Yet there is joy and
+beauty in the roll of billows as they sweep outward toward
+eternity.  Why not enter into their spirit, or, like Liehtse, ride
+upon the hurricane itself?
+
+He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully.
+The last moments of the great tea-masters were as full of 
+exquisite refinement as had been their lives.  Seeking always
+to be in harmony with the great rhythm of the universe, they
+were ever prepared to enter the unknown.  The "Last Tea of 
+Rikiu" will stand forth forever as the acme of tragic grandeur.
+
+Long had been the friendship between Rikiu and the Taiko-
+Hideyoshi, and high the estimation in which the great warrior
+held the tea-master.  But the friendship of a despot is ever a
+dangerous honour.  It was an age rife with treachery, and men
+trusted not even their nearest kin.  Rikiu was no servile courtier,
+and had often dared to differ in argument with his fierce patron.
+Taking advantage of the coldness which had for some time existed 
+between the Taiko and Rikiu, the enemies of the latter accused 
+him of being implicated in a conspiracy to poison the despot.
+It was whispered to Hideyoshi that the fatal potion was to be
+administered to him with a cup of the green beverage prepared
+by the tea-master.  With Hideyoshi suspicion was sufficient ground
+for instant execution, and there was no appeal from the will of the
+angry ruler.  One privilege alone was granted to the condemned--
+the honor of dying by his own hand.
+
+On the day destined for his self-immolation, Rikiu invited his chief
+disciples to a last tea-ceremony.  Mournfully at the appointed time 
+the guests met at the portico.  As they look into the garden path the
+trees seem to shudder, and in the rustling of their leaves are heard
+the whispers of homeless ghosts.  Like solemn sentinels before  the
+gates of Hades stand the grey stone lanterns.  A wave of rare incense
+is wafted from the tea-room; it is the summons which bids the guests
+to enter.  One by one they advance and take their places.  In the
+tokonoma hangs a kakemon,--a wonderful writing by an ancient
+monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things.  The singing
+kettle, as it boils over the brazier, sounds like some cicada pouring
+forth his woes to departing summer.  Soon the host enters the room.
+Each in turn is served with tea, and each in turn silently drains his cup, 
+the host last of all.  according to established etiquette, the chief guest
+now asks permission to examine the tea-equipage.  Rikiu places the
+various articles before them, with the kakemono.  After all have
+expressed admiration of their beauty, Rikiu presents one of them
+to each of the assembled company as a souvenir.  The bowl alone
+he keeps.  "Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of
+misfortune, be used by man."  He speaks, and breaks the vessel
+into fragments.
+
+The ceremony is over; the guests with difficulty restraining their
+tears, take their last farewell and leave the room.  One only, the
+nearest and dearest, is requested to remain and witness the end.
+Rikiu then removes his tea-gown and carefully folds it upon the
+mat, thereby disclosing the immaculate white death robe  which
+it had hitherto concealed.  Tenderly he gazes on the shining blade
+of the fatal dagger, and in exquisite verse thus addresses it:
+
+"Welcome to thee,/ O sword of eternity!/ Through Buddha/
+And through Daruma alike/ Thou hast cleft thy way."
+
+With a smile upon his face Rikiu passed forth into the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Tea, by Kakuzo Okakura
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+Title: The Book of Tea
+
+Author: Kakuzo Okakura
+
+Release Date: Jan, 1997  [EBook #769]
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+[This file was first posted on August 5, 2002]
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE BOOK OF TEA ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was prepared by:
+Matthew and Gabrielle Harbowy
+harbowy@ix.netcom.com
+
+
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+
+The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
+
+
+
+
+i. The Cup of Humanity
+
+
+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.
+
+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 
+hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows
+comfort in simplicity rather than in the 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.
+
+The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive
+to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of
+Teaism.  Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain,
+lacquer, painting--our very literature--all have been subject to its
+influence.  No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its
+presence.  It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and
+entered the abode of the humble.  Our peasants have learned
+to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his
+salutation to the rocks and waters.  In our common parlance
+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 stigmatise 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.
+
+The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado
+about nothing.  What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say.
+But when we consider how small after all the cup of human
+enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily
+drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we
+shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.
+Mankind has done worse.  In the worship of Bacchus, we 
+have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured
+the gory image of Mars.  Why not consecrate ourselves to
+the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream 
+of sympathy that flows from her altar?  In the liquid amber
+within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet
+reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the 
+ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.
+
+Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in 
+themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things
+in others.  The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency,
+will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the 
+thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness 
+and childishness of the East to him.  He was wont to regard
+Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of 
+peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit 
+wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.  Much
+comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
+--the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self-
+sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to
+Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.  
+Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation
+were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.  Fain
+would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to
+our art and ideals.
+
+When will the West understand, or try to understand, the
+East?  We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web
+of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us.
+We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not
+on mice and cockroaches.  It is either impotent fanaticism or
+else abject voluptuousness.  Indian spirituality has been
+derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese
+patriotism as the result of fatalism.  It has been said that we
+are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the 
+callousness of our nervous organisation!
+
+Why not amuse yourselves at our expense?  Asia returns the
+compliment.  There would be further food for merriment if
+you were to know all that we have imagined and written 
+about you.  All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the
+unconscious homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of 
+the new and undefined.  You have been loaded with virtues
+too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too 
+picturesque to be condemned.  Our writers in the past--the
+wise men who knew--informed us that you had bushy tails
+somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a
+fricassee of newborn babes!  Nay, we had something worse
+against you: we used to think you the most impracticable
+people on the earth, for you were said to preach what you
+never practiced.
+
+Such misconceptions are fast vanishing amongst us.  
+Commerce has forced the European tongues on many an
+Eastern port.  Asiatic youths are flocking to Western colleges 
+for the equipment of modern education.  Our insight does not
+penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we are willing to
+learn.  Some of my compatriots have adopted too much of 
+your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion
+that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised
+the attainment of your civilisation.  Pathetic and deplorable as
+such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach
+the West on our knees.  Unfortunately the Western attitude is
+unfavourable to the understanding of the East.  The Christian
+missionary goes to impart, but not to receive.  Your information
+is based on the meagre translations of our immense literature, 
+if not on the unreliable anecdotes of passing travellers.  It is
+rarely that the chivalrous pen of a Lafcadio Hearn or that of
+the author of "The Web of Indian Life" enlivens the Oriental
+darkness with the torch of our own sentiments.
+
+Perhaps I betray my own ignorance of the Tea Cult by being
+so outspoken.  Its very spirit of politeness exacts that you say
+what you are expected to say, and no more.  But I am not to
+be a polite Teaist.  So much harm has been done already by
+the mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old,
+that one need not apologise for contributing his tithe to the
+furtherance of a better understanding.  The beginning of the
+twentieth century would have been spared the spectacle of
+sanguinary warfare if Russia had condescended to know
+Japan better.  What dire consequences to humanity lie in the
+contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems!  European
+imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of
+the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that Asia may also awaken
+to the cruel sense of the White Disaster.  You may laugh at
+us for having "too much tea," but may we not suspect that
+you of the West have "no tea" in your constitution?
+
+Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each 
+other, and be sadder if not wiser by the mutual gain of half a
+hemisphere.  We have developed along different lines, but 
+there is no reason why one should not supplement the other.
+You have gained expansion at the cost of restlessness; we
+have created a harmony which is weak against aggression.
+Will you believe it?--the East is better off in some respects
+than the West!
+
+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.
+
+The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be
+found in the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the
+year 879 the main sources of revenue in Canton were the
+duties on salt and tea.  Marco Polo records the deposition of
+a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 for his arbitrary 
+augmentation of the tea-taxes.  It was at the period of the
+great discoveries that the European people began to know
+more about the extreme Orient.  At the end of the sixteenth
+century the Hollanders brought the news that a pleasant
+drink was made in the East from the leaves of a bush.  The
+travellers Giovanni Batista Ramusio (1559), L. Almeida
+(1576), Maffeno (1588), Tareira (1610), also mentioned
+tea.  In the last-named year ships of the Dutch East India
+Company brought the first tea into Europe.  It was known 
+in France in 1636, and reached Russia in 1638.  England 
+welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That excellent and
+by all physicians approved China drink, called by the 
+Chineans Tcha, and by other nations Tay, alias Tee."
+
+Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of Tea
+met with opposition.  Heretics like Henry Saville (1678)
+denounced drinking it as a filthy custom.  Jonas Hanway
+(Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to lose their
+stature and comeliness, women their beauty through the 
+use of tea.  Its cost at the start (about fifteen or sixteen
+shillings a pound) forbade popular consumption, and made
+it "regalia for high treatments and entertainments, presents
+being made thereof to princes and grandees."  Yet in spite
+of such drawbacks tea-drinking spread with marvelous
+rapidity.  The coffee-houses of London in the early half of
+the eighteenth century became, in fact, tea-houses, the
+resort of wits like Addison and Steele, who beguiled 
+themselves over their "dish of tea."  The beverage soon
+became a necessity of life--a taxable matter.  We are 
+reminded in this connection what an important part it plays
+in modern history.  Colonial America resigned herself to
+oppression until human endurance gave way before the
+heavy duties laid on Tea.  American independence dates
+from the throwing of tea-chests into Boston harbour.
+
+There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it
+irresistible and capable of idealisation.  Western humourists
+were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with 
+its aroma.  It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-
+consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of
+cocoa.  Already in 1711, says the Spectator:  "I would therefore
+in a particular manner recommend these my speculations to
+all well-regulated families that set apart an hour every morning
+for tea, bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for 
+their good to order this paper to be punctually served up and 
+to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage."  Samuel 
+Johnson draws his own portrait as "a hardened and shameless
+tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only
+the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the
+evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed 
+the morning."
+
+Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism 
+when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a 
+good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.  For
+Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it,
+of suggesting what you dare not reveal.  It is the noble secret of
+laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour
+itself,--the smile of philosophy.  All genuine humourists may in
+this sense be called tea-philosophers,--Thackeray, for instance,
+and of course, Shakespeare.  The poets of the Decadence
+(when was not the world in decadence?), in their protests against
+materialism, have, to a certain extent, also opened the way
+to Teaism.  Perhaps nowadays it is our demure contemplation
+of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in
+mutual consolation.
+
+The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning,
+Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat.  At last the Yellow
+Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the
+demon of darkness and earth.  The Titan, in his death agony,
+struck his head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome
+of jade into fragments.  The stars lost their nests, the moon
+wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night.  In
+despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer
+of the Heavens.  He had not to search in vain.  Out of the 
+Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and 
+dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armor of fire.  She welded the
+five-coloured rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the
+Chinese sky.  But it is told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny 
+crevices in the blue firmament.  Thus began the dualism of
+love--two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they
+join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build
+anew his sky of hope and peace.
+
+The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the
+Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power.  The world is
+groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity.  Knowledge is
+bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for
+the sake of utility.  The East and the West, like two dragons
+tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain strive to regain the jewel of
+life.  We need a Niuka again to repair the grand devastation;
+we await the great Avatar.  Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea.
+The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains
+are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in
+our kettle.  Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the
+beautiful foolishness of things.
+
+
+
+II. The Schools of Tea.
+
+
+Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its
+noblest qualities.  We have good and bad tea, as we have good
+and bad paintings--generally the latter.  There is no single
+recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for
+producing a Titian or a Sesson.  Each preparation of the leaves
+has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat,
+its own method of telling a story.  The truly beautiful must
+always be in it.  How much do we not suffer through the constant
+failure of society to recognise this simple and fundamental
+law of art and life; Lichilai, a Sung poet, has sadly remarked
+that there were three most deplorable things in the world: the
+spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation
+of fine art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of
+fine tea through incompetent manipulation.
+
+Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools.  Its evolution
+may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea,
+the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea.  We moderns belong
+to the last school.  These several methods of appreciating
+the beverage are indicative of the spirit of the age in which
+they prevailed.  For life is an expression, our unconscious
+actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought.
+Confucius said that "man hideth not." Perhaps we reveal ourselves
+too much in small things because we have so little of the great
+to conceal.  The tiny incidents of daily routine are as much a
+commentary of racial ideals as the highest flight of philosophy
+or poetry.  Even as the difference in favorite vintage marks
+the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods and nationalities
+of Europe, so the Tea-ideals characterise the various moods
+of Oriental culture.  The Cake-tea which was boiled, the
+Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was 
+steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang, 
+the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China.  If we were 
+inclined to borrow the much-abused terminology of
+art-classification, we might designate them respectively, the
+Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.
+
+The tea-plant, a native of southern China, was known from very
+early times to Chinese botany and medicine.  It is alluded to in
+the classics under the various names of Tou, Tseh, Chung,
+Kha, and Ming, and was highly prized for possessing the 
+virtues of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening
+the will, and repairing the eyesight. It was not only
+administered as an internal dose, but often applied externally
+in form of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains.  The Taoists
+claimed it as an important ingredient of the elixir of
+immortality.  The Buddhists used it extensively to prevent
+drowsiness during their long hours of meditation.
+
+By the fourth and fifth centuries Tea became a favourite
+beverage among the inhabitants of the Yangtse-Kiang valley.
+It was about this time that modern ideograph Cha was
+coined, evidently a corruption of the classic Tou.
+The poets of the southern dynasties have left some fragments
+of their fervent adoration of the "froth of the liquid jade."
+Then emperors used to bestow some rare preparation of the
+leaves on their high ministers as a reward for eminent services.
+Yet the method of drinking tea at this stage was primitive
+in the extreme.  The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar,
+made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt,
+orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions!
+The custom obtains at the present day among the Thibetans
+and various Mongolian tribes, who make a curious syrup
+of these ingredients.  The use of lemon slices by the Russians,
+who learned to take tea from the Chinese caravansaries,
+points to the survival of the ancient method.
+
+It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea
+from its crude state and lead to its final idealization.  With
+Luwuh in the middle of the eighth century we have our first
+apostle of tea. He was born in an age when Buddhism,
+Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking mutual synthesis.
+The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to
+mirror the Universal in the Particular.  Luwuh, a poet, saw in
+the Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned
+through all things.  In his celebrated work, the "Chaking"
+(The Holy Scripture of Tea) he formulated the Code of Tea.
+He has since been worshipped as the tutelary god of the
+Chinese tea merchants.
+
+The "Chaking" consists of three volumes and ten chapters.
+In the first chapter Luwuh treats of the nature of the tea-plant,
+in the second of the implements for gathering the leaves, in the
+third of the selection of the leaves.  According to him the best
+quality of the leaves must have "creases like the leathern boot of
+Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold
+like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by
+a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain."
+
+The fourth chapter is devoted to the enumeration and description
+of the twenty-four members of the tea-equipage, beginning
+with the tripod brazier and ending with the bamboo cabinet for
+containing all these utensils.  Here we notice Luwuh's
+predilection for Taoist symbolism. Also it is interesting to
+observe in this connection the influence of tea on Chinese
+ceramics.  The Celestial porcelain, as is well known, had its
+origin in an attempt to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade,
+resulting, in the Tang dynasty, in the blue glaze of the south,
+and the white glaze of the north.  Luwuh considered the blue
+as the ideal colour for the tea-cup, as it lent additional greenness
+to the beverage, whereas the white made it look pinkish and
+distasteful.  It was because he used cake-tea.  Later on, when 
+the tea masters of Sung took to the powdered tea, they preferred
+heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown.  The Mings, with 
+their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white porcelain.
+
+In the fifth chapter Luwuh describes the method of making tea.
+He eliminates all ingredients except salt.  He dwells also on the
+much-discussed question of the choice of water and the degree
+of boiling it.  According to him, the mountain spring is the best,
+the river water and the spring water come next in the order of
+excellence.  There are three stages of boiling: the first boil is 
+when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface;
+the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling
+in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in
+the kettle.  The Cake-tea is roasted before the fire until it becomes
+soft like a baby's arm and is shredded into powder between pieces
+of fine paper.  Salt is put in the first boil, the tea in the second.
+At the third boil, a dipperful of cold water is poured into the
+kettle to settle the tea and revive the "youth of the water."  Then
+the beverage was poured into cups and drunk.  O nectar!  The
+filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like
+waterlilies on emerald streams.  It was of such a beverage that 
+Lotung, a Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and
+throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup 
+searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand
+volumes of odd ideographs.  The fourth cup raises a slight
+perspiration,--all the wrong of life passes away through my
+pores.  At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me
+to the realms of the immortals.  The seventh cup--ah, but I
+could take no more!  I only feel the breath of cool wind that
+rises in my sleeves.  Where is Horaisan?  Let me ride on this
+sweet breeze and waft away thither."
+
+The remaining chapters of the "Chaking" treat of the vulgarity
+of the ordinary methods of tea-drinking, a historical summary
+of illustrious tea-drinkers, the famous tea plantations of 
+China, the possible variations of the tea-service and illustrations
+of the tea-utensils.  The last is unfortunately lost.
+
+The appearance of the "Chaking" must have created 
+considerable sensation at the time.  Luwuh was befriended
+by the Emperor Taisung (763-779), and his fame attracted 
+many followers.  Some exquisites were said to have been able
+to detect the tea made by Luwuh from that of his disciples.
+One mandarin has his name immortalised by his failure to
+appreciate the tea of this great master.
+
+In the Sung dynasty the whipped tea came into fashion and
+created the second school of Tea.  The leaves were ground
+to fine powder in a small stone mill, and the preparation was
+whipped in hot water by a delicate whisk made of split bamboo.
+The new process led to some change in the tea-equipage of
+Luwuh, as well as in the choice of leaves.  Salt was discarded
+forever.  The enthusiasm of the Sung people for tea knew no
+bounds.  Epicures vied with each other in discovering new
+varieties, and regular tournaments were held to decide their
+superiority.  The Emperor Kiasung (1101-1124), who was too
+great an artist to be a well-behaved monarch, lavished his 
+treasures on the attainment of rare species.  He himself wrote
+a dissertation on the twenty kinds of tea, among which he prizes
+the "white tea" as of the rarest and finest quality.
+
+The tea-ideal of the Sungs differed from the Tangs even as their
+notion of life differed.  They sought to actualize what their
+predecessors tried to symbolise.  To the Neo-Confucian mind
+the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world,
+but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself.  Aeons 
+were but moments--Nirvana always within grasp.  The Taoist
+conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated
+all their modes of thought.  It was the process, not the deed, which
+was interesting.  It was the completing, not the completion,
+which was really vital.  Man came thus at once face to face
+with nature.  A new meaning grew into the art of life.  The
+tea began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods
+of self-realisation.  Wangyucheng eulogised tea as "flooding
+his soul like a direct appeal, that its delicate bitterness reminded
+him of the aftertaste of a good counsel."  Sotumpa wrote of 
+the strength of the immaculate purity in tea which defied 
+corruption as a truly virtuous man.  Among the Buddhists,
+the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of
+Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea.  The
+monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and drank
+tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a 
+holy sacrament.  It was this Zen ritual which finally developed 
+into the Tea-ceremony of Japan in the fifteenth century.
+
+Unfortunately the sudden outburst of the Mongol tribes in the
+thirteenth century which resulted in the devastation and conquest 
+of China under the barbaric rule of the Yuen Emperors, 
+destroyed all the fruits of Sung culture.  The native dynasty of 
+the Mings which attempted re-nationalisation in the middle 
+of the fifteenth century was harassed by internal troubles, and
+China again fell under the alien rule of the Manchus in the
+seventeenth century.  Manners and customs changed to
+leave no vestige of the former times.  The powdered tea is 
+entirely forgotten.  We find a Ming commentator at loss to
+recall the shape of the tea whisk mentioned in one of the
+Sung classics.  Tea is now taken by steeping the leaves in
+hot water in a bowl or cup.  The reason why the Western
+world is innocent of the older method of drinking tea is
+explained by the fact that Europe knew it only at the close
+of the Ming dynasty.
+
+To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but
+not an ideal.  The long woes of his country have robbed
+him of the zest for the meaning of life.  He has become
+modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted.  He has lost
+that sublime faith in illusions which constitutes the eternal
+youth and vigour of the poets and ancients.  He is an
+eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of the universe.
+He toys with Nature, but does not condescend to conquer
+or worship her.  His Leaf-tea is often wonderful with its
+flower-like aroma, but the romance of the Tang and Sung
+ceremonials are not to be found in his cup.
+
+Japan, which followed closely on the footsteps of Chinese
+civilisation, has known the tea in all its three stages.  As
+early as the year 729 we read of the Emperor Shomu giving 
+tea to one hundred monks at his palace in Nara.  The leaves 
+were probably imported by our ambassadors to the Tang Court
+and prepared in the way then in fashion.  In 801 the monk 
+Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in Yeisan.  
+Many tea-gardens are heard of in succeeding centuries, as 
+well as the delight of the aristocracy and priesthood in the 
+beverage.  The Sung tea reached us in 1191 with the return
+of Yeisai-zenji, who went there to study the southern Zen
+school.  The new seeds which he carried home were successfully
+planted in three places, one of which, the Uji district near
+Kioto, bears still the name of producing the best tea in the
+world.  The southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and
+with it the tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the Sung.  By the
+fifteenth century, under the patronage of the Shogun, 
+Ashikaga-Voshinasa, the tea ceremony is fully constituted
+and made into an independent and secular performance.
+Since then Teaism is fully established in Japan.  The use
+of the steeped tea of the later China is comparatively
+recent among us, being only known since the middle of the 
+seventeenth century.  It has replaced the powdered tea in
+ordinary consumption, though the latter still continues to
+hold its place as the tea of teas.
+
+It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination
+of tea-ideals.  Our successful resistance of the Mongol
+invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement
+so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic
+inroad.  Tea with us became more than an idealisation of
+the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life.  The
+beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity
+and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and
+guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost
+beatitude of the mundane.  The tea-room was an oasis
+in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers
+could meet to drink from the common spring of art-
+appreciation.  The ceremony was an improvised drama
+whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and
+the paintings.  Not a colour to disturb the tone of the
+room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a 
+gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break 
+the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed
+simply and naturally--such were the aims of the tea-
+ceremony.  And strangely enough it was often successful.
+A subtle philosophy lay behind it all.  Teaism was Taoism
+in disguise.
+
+
+
+
+III.  Taoism and Zennism
+
+
+The connection of Zennism with tea is proverbial.  We 
+have already remarked that the tea-ceremony was a
+development of the Zen ritual.  The name of Laotse, the
+founder of Taoism, is also intimately associated with the
+history of tea.  It is written in the Chinese school manual
+concerning the origin of habits and customs that the 
+ceremony of offering tea to a guest began with Kwanyin,
+a well-known disciple of Laotse, who first at the gate of 
+the Han Pass presented to the "Old Philosopher" a cup 
+of the golden elixir.  We shall not stop to discuss the 
+authenticity of such tales, which are valuable, however, 
+as confirming the early use of the beverage by the Taoists.
+Our interest in Taoism and Zennism here lies mainly in
+those ideas regarding life and art which are so embodied
+in what we call Teaism.
+
+It is to be regretted that as yet there appears to be no
+adequate presentation of the Taoists and Zen doctrines
+in any foreign language, though we have had several
+laudable attempts.
+
+Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author
+observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a 
+brocade,--all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of 
+colour or design.  But, after all, what great doctrine is
+there which is easy to expound?  The ancient sages never
+put their teachings in systematic form.  They spoke in
+paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths.  
+They began by talking like fools and ended by making
+their hearers wise.  Laotse himself, with his quaint humour,
+says, "If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they
+laugh immensely.  It would not be the Tao unless they laughed
+at it."
+
+The Tao literally means a Path.  It has been severally translated 
+as the Way, the Absolute, the Law, Nature, Supreme Reason,
+the Mode.  These renderings are not incorrect, for the use of
+the term by the Taoists differs according to the subject-matter
+of the inquiry.  Laotse himself spoke of it thus: "There is a thing
+which is all-containing, which was born before the existence
+of Heaven and Earth.  How silent!  How solitary!  It stands alone
+and changes not.  It revolves without danger to itself and is the 
+mother of the universe.  I do not know its name and so call it
+the Path.  With reluctance I call it the Infinite.  Infinity is the
+Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanishing, the Vanishing is the
+Reverting."  The Tao is in the Passage rather than the Path.  It
+is the spirit of Cosmic Change,--the eternal growth which returns
+upon itself to produce new forms.  It recoils upon itself like
+the dragon, the beloved symbol of the Taoists.  It folds and
+unfolds as do the clouds.  The Tao might be spoken of as the
+Great Transition.  Subjectively it is the Mood of the Universe.
+Its Absolute is the Relative.
+
+It should be remembered in the first place that Taoism, like its
+legitimate successor Zennism, represents the individualistic
+trend of the Southern Chinese mind in contra-distinction to the
+communism of Northern China which expressed itself in
+Confucianism.  The Middle Kingdom is as vast as Europe and
+has a differentiation of idiosyncrasies marked by the two great
+river systems which traverse it.  The Yangtse-Kiang and Hoang-
+Ho are respectively the Mediterranean and the Baltic.  Even
+to-day, in spite of centuries of unification, the Southern
+Celestial differs in his thoughts and beliefs from his Northern
+brother as a member of the Latin race differs from the Teuton.
+In ancient days, when communication was even more difficult 
+than at present, and especially during the feudal period, this
+difference in thought was most pronounced.  The art and poetry
+of the one breathes an atmosphere entirely distinct from that of
+the other.  In Laotse and his followers and in Kutsugen, the 
+forerunner of the Yangtse-Kiang nature-poets, we find an 
+idealism quite inconsistent with the prosaic ethical notions of
+their contemporary northern writers.  Laotse lived five centuries
+before the Christian Era.
+
+The germ of Taoist speculation may be found long before the 
+advent of Laotse, surnamed the Long-Eared.  The archaic
+records of China, especially the Book of Changes, foreshadow
+his thought.  But the great respect paid to the laws and customs
+of that classic period of Chinese civilisation which culminated
+with the establishment of the Chow dynasty in the sixteenth
+century B.C., kept the development of individualism in check
+for a long while, so that it was not until after the disintegration
+of the Chow dynasty and the establishment of innumerable
+independent kingdoms that it was able to blossom forth in the
+luxuriance of free-thought.  Laotse and Soshi (Chuangtse) were
+both Southerners and the greatest exponents of the New School.
+On the other hand, Confucius with his numerous disciples aimed
+at retaining ancestral conventions.  Taoism cannot be understood
+without some knowledge of Confucianism and vice versa.
+
+We have said that the Taoist Absolute was the Relative.  
+In ethics the Taoist railed at the laws and the moral codes
+of society, for to them right and wrong were but relative 
+terms.  Definition is always limitation--the "fixed" and 
+"unchangeless" are but terms expressive of a stoppage of 
+growth.  Said Kuzugen,--"The Sages move the world."
+Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of
+society, but is society to remain always the same? The observance
+of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the 
+individual to the state.  Education, in order to keep up the
+mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance.  People
+are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly.
+We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious.
+We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth
+to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell
+the truth to ourselves.  How can one be serious with the world
+when the world itself is so ridiculous!  The spirit of barter is 
+everywhere.  Honour and Chastity!  Behold the complacent
+salesman retailing the Good and True.  One can even buy a
+so-called Religion, which is really but common morality
+sanctified with flowers and music.  Rob the Church of her
+accessories and what remains behind?  Yet the trusts thrive
+marvelously, for the prices are absurdly cheap, --a prayer for
+a ticket to heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship.
+Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real
+usefulness were known to the world you would soon be
+knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer.
+Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much?
+Is it not but an instinct derived from the days of slavery?
+
+The virility of the idea lies not less in its power of breaking
+through contemporary thought than in its capacity for dominating
+subsequent movements.  Taoism was an active power during  the
+Shin dynasty, that epoch of Chinese unification from which we
+derive the name China.  It would be interesting had we time to note
+its influence on contemporary thinkers, the mathematicians,
+writers on law and war, the mystics and alchemists and the later
+nature-poets of the Yangtse-Kiang.  We should not even ignore
+those speculators on Reality who doubted whether a white
+horse was real because he was white, or because he was solid,
+nor the Conversationalists of the Six dynasties who, like the Zen
+philosophers, revelled in discussions concerning the Pure and
+the Abstract.  Above all we should pay homage to Taoism for
+what it has done toward the formation of the Celestial character,
+giving to it a certain capacity for reserve and refinement as
+"warm as jade."  Chinese history is full of instances in which the
+votaries of Taoism, princes and hermits alike, followed with
+varied and interesting results the teachings of their creed.
+The tale will not be without its quota of instruction and amusement.
+It will be rich in anecdotes, allegories, and aphorisms.  We would
+fain be on speaking terms with the delightful emperor who never
+died because he had never lived.  We may ride the wind with
+Liehtse and find it absolutely quiet because we ourselves are
+the wind, or dwell in mid-air with the Aged one of the Hoang-Ho,
+who lived betwixt Heaven and Earth because he was subject
+to neither the one nor the other.  Even in that grotesque apology
+for Taoism which we find in China at the present day, we can revel
+in a wealth of imagery impossible to find in any other cult.
+
+But the chief contribution of Taoism to Asiatic life has been in the
+realm of aesthetics. Chinese historians have always spoken of
+Taoism as the "art of being in the world," for it deals with the
+present--ourselves.  It is in us that God meets with Nature, and
+yesterday parts from to-morrow.  The Present is the moving
+Infinity, the legitimate sphere of the Relative.  Relativity seeks 
+Adjustment; Adjustment is Art.  The art of life lies in a constant
+readjustment to our surroundings.  Taoism accepts the mundane
+as it is and, unlike the Confucians or the Buddhists, tries to find
+beauty in our world of woe and worry.  The Sung allegory of the
+Three Vinegar Tasters explains admirably the trend of the three
+doctrines.  Sakyamuni, Confucius, and Laotse once stood before
+a jar of vinegar--the emblem of life--and each dipped in his finger
+to taste the brew.  The matter-of-fact Confucius found it sour,
+the Buddha called it bitter, and Laotse pronounced it sweet.
+
+The Taoists claimed that the comedy of life could be made more 
+interesting if everyone would preserve the unities.  To keep the
+proportion of things and give place to others without losing
+one's own position was the secret of success in the mundane
+drama.  We must know the whole play in order to properly act 
+our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of
+the individual.  This Laotse illustrates by his favourite metaphor
+of the Vacuum.  He claimed that only in vacuum lay the truly
+essential.  The reality of a room, for instance, was to be found
+in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and the walls, not in the
+roof and walls themselves.  The usefulness of a water pitcher
+dwelt in the emptiness where water might be put, not in the
+form of the pitcher or the material of which it was made.  
+Vacuum is all potent because all containing.  In vacuum alone
+motion becomes possible.  One who could make of himself a
+vacuum into which others might freely enter would become
+master of all situations.  The whole can always dominate
+the part.
+
+These Taoists' ideas have greatly influenced all our theories
+of action, even to those of fencing and wrestling.  Jiu-jitsu,
+the Japanese art of self-defence, owes its name to a passage
+in the Tao-teking.  In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and
+exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum,
+while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final
+struggle.  In art the importance of the same principle is 
+illustrated by the value of suggestion.  In leaving something
+unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea
+and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention
+until you seem to become actually a part of it.  A vacuum
+is there for you to enter and fill up the full measure of your
+aesthetic emotion.
+
+He who had made himself master of the art of living was the
+Real man of the Taoist.  At birth he enters the realm of dreams
+only to awaken to reality at death.  He tempers his own 
+brightness in order to merge himself into the obscurity of
+others.  He is "reluctant, as one who crosses a stream in
+winter; hesitating as one who fears the neighbourhood;
+respectful, like a guest; trembling, like ice that is about to melt;
+unassuming, like a piece of wood not yet carved; vacant,
+like a valley; formless, like troubled waters."  To him the three
+jewels of life were Pity, Economy, and Modesty.
+
+If now we turn our attention to Zennism we shall find that
+it emphasises the teachings of Taoism.  Zen is a name
+derived from the Sanscrit word Dhyana, which signifies
+meditation.  It claims that through consecrated meditation
+may be attained supreme self-realisation.  Meditation is one
+of the six ways through which Buddhahood may be reached,
+and the Zen sectarians affirm that Sakyamuni laid special stress
+on this method in his later teachings, handing down the rules to
+his chief disciple Kashiapa.  According to their tradition Kashiapa,
+the first Zen patriarch, imparted the secret to Ananda, who in
+turn passed it on to successive patriarchs until it reached
+Bodhi-Dharma, the twenty-eighth.  Bodhi-Dharma came to
+Northern China in the early half of the sixth century and was the
+first patriarch of Chinese Zen.  There is much uncertainty about 
+the history of these patriarchs and their doctrines.  In its
+philosophical aspect early Zennism seems to have affinity on
+one hand to the Indian Negativism of Nagarjuna and on the
+other to the Gnan philosophy formulated by Sancharacharya.
+The first teaching of Zen as we know it at the present day must be
+attributed to the sixth Chinese patriarch Yeno(637-713), founder
+of Southern Zen, so-called from the fact of its predominance
+in Southern China.  He is closely followed by the great
+Baso(died 788) who made of Zen a living influence in Celestial
+life.  Hiakujo(719-814) the pupil of Baso, first instituted the Zen
+monastery and established a ritual and regulations for its
+government.  In the discussions of the Zen school after the
+time of Baso we find the play of the Yangtse-Kiang mind
+causing an accession of native modes of thought in contrast
+to the former Indian idealism.  Whatever sectarian pride may
+assert to the contrary one cannot help being impressed by the
+similarity of Southern Zen to the teachings of Laotse and the
+Taoist Conversationalists.  In the Tao-teking we already find
+allusions to the importance of self-concentration and the 
+need of properly regulating the breath--essential points in the
+practice of Zen meditation.  Some of the best commentaries
+on the Book of Laotse have been written by Zen scholars.
+
+Zennism, like Taoism, is the worship of Relativity.  One
+master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the
+southern sky.  Truth can be reached only through the
+comprehension of opposites.  Again, Zennism, like Taoism,
+is a strong advocate of individualism.  Nothing is real except
+that which concerns the working of our own minds.  Yeno,
+the sixth patriarch, once saw two monks watching the flag
+of a pagoda fluttering in the wind.  One said "It is the wind
+that moves," the other said "It is the flag that moves"; but
+Yeno explained to them that the real movement was neither
+of the wind nor the flag, but of something within their own
+minds.  Hiakujo was walking in the forest with a disciple when 
+a hare scurried off at their approach.  "Why does the hare fly
+from you?" asked Hiakujo.  "Because he is afraid of me," was
+the answer.  "No," said the master, "it is because you have
+murderous instinct."  The dialogue recalls that of Soshi (Chaungtse),
+the Taoist.  One day Soshi was walking on the bank of a river 
+with a friend.  "How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves
+in the water!" exclaimed Soshi.  His friend spake to him thus:
+"You are not a fish; how do you know that the fishes are enjoying
+themselves?"  "You are not myself," returned Soshi; "how do you
+know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?"
+
+Zen was often opposed to the precepts of orthodox Buddhism
+even as Taoism was opposed to Confucianism.  To the
+transcendental insight of the Zen, words were but an 
+incumbrance to thought; the whole sway of Buddhist scriptures
+only commentaries on personal speculation.  The followers of
+Zen aimed at direct communion with the inner nature of things,
+regarding their outward accessories only as impediments to a
+clear perception of Truth.  It was this love of the Abstract that
+led the Zen to prefer black and white sketches to the elaborately
+coloured paintings of the classic Buddhist School.  Some of the
+Zen even became iconoclastic as a result of their endeavor to
+recognise the Buddha in themselves rather than through images
+and symbolism.  We find Tankawosho breaking up a wooden
+statue of Buddha on a wintry day to make a fire.  "What
+sacrilege!" said the horror-stricken bystander.  "I wish to
+get the Shali out of the ashes," calmly rejoined the Zen.
+"But you certainly will not get Shali from this image!" was the
+angry retort, to which Tanka replied, "If I do not, this is
+certainly not a Buddha and I am committing no sacrilege."
+Then he turned to warm himself over the kindling fire.
+
+A special contribution of Zen to Eastern thought was its
+recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the 
+spiritual.  It held that in the great relation of things there was
+no distinction of small and great, an atom possessing equal
+possibilities with the universe.  The seeker for perfection must 
+discover in his own life  the reflection of the inner light.  The
+organisation of the Zen monastery was very significant of this
+point of view.  To every member, except the abbot, was assigned
+some special work in the caretaking of the monastery, and
+curiously enough, to the novices was committed the lighter
+duties, while to the most respected and advanced monks were
+given the more irksome and menial tasks.  Such services formed
+a part of the Zen discipline and every least action must be done
+absolutely perfectly.  Thus many a weighty discussion ensued
+while weeding the garden, paring a turnip, or serving tea. 
+The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of
+greatness in the smallest incidents of life.  Taoism furnished the
+basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical.
+
+
+
+IV. The Tea-Room
+
+
+To European architects brought up on the traditions of stone and
+brick construction, our Japanese method of building with wood 
+and bamboo seems scarcely worthy to be ranked as architecture.
+It is but quite recently that a competent student of Western
+architecture has recognised and paid tribute to the remarkable
+perfection of our great temples.  Such being the case as regards 
+our classic architecture, we could hardly expect the outsider to
+appreciate the subtle beauty of the tea-room, its principles of 
+construction and decoration being entirely different from those
+of the West.
+
+The tea-room (the Sukiya) does not pretend to be other than a 
+mere cottage--a straw hut, as we call it.  The original ideographs
+for Sukiya mean the Abode of Fancy.  Latterly the various
+tea-masters substituted various Chinese characters according to
+their conception of the tea-room, and the term Sukiya may
+signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical.
+It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure
+built to house a poetic impulse.  It is an Abode of Vacancy 
+inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may 
+be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment.
+It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated
+to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some thing 
+unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete.  The 
+ideals of Teaism have since the sixteenth century influenced our
+architecture to such degree that the ordinary Japanese interior of
+the present day, on account of the extreme simplicity and 
+chasteness of its scheme of decoration, appears to foreigners 
+almost barren.
+
+The first independent tea-room was the creation of Senno-Soyeki,
+commonly known by his later name of Rikiu, the greatest of all
+tea-masters, who, in the sixteenth century, under the patronage
+of Taiko-Hideyoshi, instituted and brought to a high state of
+perfection the formalities of the Tea-ceremony.  The proportions
+of the tea-room had been previously determined by Jowo--a
+famous tea-master of the fifteenth century.  The early tea-room
+consisted merely of a portion of the ordinary drawing-room
+partitioned off by screens for the purpose of the tea-gathering.
+The portion partitioned off was called the Kakoi (enclosure), a
+name still applied to those tea-rooms which are built into a house
+and are not independent constructions.  The Sukiya consists of the
+tea-room proper, designed to accommodate not more than five 
+persons, a number suggestive of the saying "more than the Graces
+and less than the Muses," an anteroom (midsuya) where the tea
+utensils are washed and arranged before being brought in, a 
+portico (machiai) in which the guests wait until they receive the 
+summons to enter the tea-room, and a garden path (the roji) which 
+connects the machiai with the tea-room.  The tea-room is
+unimpressive in appearance.  It is smaller than the smallest
+of Japanese houses, while the materials used in its construction
+are intended to give the suggestion of refined poverty.  Yet we
+must remember that all this is the result of profound artistic 
+forethought, and that the details have been worked out with care
+perhaps even greater than that expended on the building of the
+richest palaces and temples.  A good tea-room is more costly than
+an ordinary mansion, for the selection of its materials, as well as its
+workmanship, requires immense care and precision.  Indeed, the
+carpenters employed by the tea-masters form a distinct and
+highly honoured class among artisans, their work being no
+less delicate than that of the makers of lacquer cabinets.
+
+The tea-room is not only different from any production of
+Western architecture, but also contrasts strongly with the
+classical architecture of Japan itself.  Our ancient noble
+edifices, whether secular or ecclesiastical, were not to be 
+despised even as regards their mere size.  The few that have
+been spared in the disastrous conflagrations of centuries
+are still capable of aweing us by the grandeur and richness 
+of their decoration.  Huge pillars of wood from two to three 
+feet in diameter and from thirty to forty feet high, supported,
+by a complicated network of brackets, the enormous beams
+which groaned under the weight of the tile-covered roofs.
+The material and mode of construction, though weak against
+fire, proved itself strong against earthquakes, and was well
+suited to the climatic conditions of the country.  In the Golden
+Hall of Horiuji and the Pagoda of Yakushiji, we have noteworthy
+examples of the durability of our wooden architecture.  These
+buildings have practically stood intact for nearly twelve
+centuries.  The interior of the old temples and palaces was 
+profusely decorated.  In the Hoodo temple at Uji, dating from
+the tenth century, we can still see the elaborate canopy and 
+gilded baldachinos, many-coloured and inlaid with mirrors and
+mother-of-pearl, as well as remains of the paintings and 
+sculpture which formerly covered the walls.  Later, at Nikko
+and in the Nijo castle in Kyoto, we see structural beauty sacrificed
+to a wealth of ornamentation which in colour and exquisite detail
+equals the utmost gorgeousness of Arabian or Moorish effort.
+
+The simplicity and purism of the tea-room resulted from
+emulation of the Zen monastery.  A Zen monastery differs from
+those of other Buddhist sects inasmuch as it is meant only to be a
+dwelling place for the monks.  Its chapel is not a place of worship
+or pilgrimage, but a college room where the students congregate
+for discussion and the practice of meditation.  The room is bare
+except for a central alcove in which, behind the altar, is a statue
+of Bodhi Dharma, the founder of the sect, or of Sakyamuni
+attended by Kashiapa and Ananda, the two earliest Zen patriarchs.
+On the altar, flowers and incense are offered up in the memory of
+the great contributions which these sages made to Zen.  We have
+already said that it was the ritual instituted by the Zen monks of
+successively drinking tea out of a bowl before the image of
+Bodhi Dharma, which laid the foundations of the tea-ceremony.
+We might add here that the altar of the Zen chapel was the
+prototype of the Tokonoma,--the place of honour in a Japanese
+room where paintings and flowers are placed for the edification
+of the guests.
+
+All our great tea-masters were students of Zen and attempted
+to introduce the spirit of Zennism into the actualities of life.
+Thus the room, like the other equipments of the tea-ceremony,
+reflects many of the Zen doctrines.  The size of the orthodox
+tea-room, which is four mats and a half, or ten feet square,
+is determined by a passage in the Sutra of Vikramadytia.
+In that interesting work, Vikramadytia welcomes the Saint
+Manjushiri and eighty-four thousand disciples of Buddha in
+a room of this size,--an allegory based on the theory of the
+non-existence of space to the truly enlightened.  Again the
+roji, the garden path which leads from the machiai to the
+tea-room, signified the first stage of meditation,--the passage
+into self-illumination.  The roji was intended to break
+connection with the outside world, and produce a fresh
+sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in
+the tea-room itself.  One who has trodden this garden path
+cannot fail to remember how his spirit, as he walked in the
+twilight of evergreens over the regular irregularities of the
+stepping stones, beneath which lay dried pine needles, and passed
+beside the moss-covered granite lanterns, became uplifted above
+ordinary thoughts.  One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel
+as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of
+civilisation.  Great was the ingenuity displayed by the tea-masters
+in producing these effects of serenity and purity.  The nature of
+the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed
+with different tea-masters.  Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter
+loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained
+in the ancient ditty:
+"I look beyond;/Flowers are not,/Nor tinted leaves./On the sea beach/
+A solitary cottage stands/In the waning light/Of an autumn eve."
+
+Others, like Kobori-Enshiu, sought for a different effect.
+Enshiu said the idea of the garden path was to be found in the
+following verses:
+"A cluster of summer trees,/A bit of the sea,/A pale evening moon."
+It is not difficult to gather his meaning.  He wished to create the
+attitude of a newly awakened soul still lingering amid shadowy
+dreams of the past, yet bathing in the sweet unconsciousness of
+a mellow spiritual light, and yearning for the freedom that lay
+in the expanse beyond.
+
+Thus prepared the guest will silently approach the sanctuary,
+and, if a samurai, will leave his sword on the rack beneath
+the eaves, the tea-room being preeminently the house of peace.
+Then he will bend low and creep into the room through a
+small door not more than three feet in height.  This proceeding
+was incumbent on all guests,--high and low alike,--and was
+intended to inculcate humility.  The order of precedence
+having been mutually agreed upon while resting in the machiai,
+the guests one by one will enter noiselessly and take their seats,
+first making obeisance to the picture or flower arrangement on
+the tokonoma.  The host will not enter the room until all the
+guests have seated themselves and quiet reigns with nothing
+to break the silence save the note of the boiling water in the
+iron kettle.  The kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so
+arranged in the bottom as to produce a peculiar melody in
+which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by clouds,
+of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping
+through a bamboo forest, or of the soughing of pines on some
+faraway hill.
+
+Even in the daytime the light in the room is subdued, for the low
+eaves of the slanting roof admit but few of the sun's rays.
+Everything is sober in tint from the ceiling to the floor; the guests
+themselves have carefully chosen garments of unobtrusive colors.
+The mellowness of age is over all, everything suggestive of
+recent acquirement being tabooed save only the one note of
+contrast furnished by the bamboo dipper and the linen napkin,
+both immaculately white and new.  However faded the tea-room
+and the tea-equipage may seem, everything is absolutely clean.
+Not a particle of dust will be found in the darkest corner, for if
+any exists the host is not a tea-master.  One of the first requisites
+of a tea-master is the knowledge of how to sweep, clean, and 
+wash, for there is an art in cleaning and dusting.  A piece of
+antique metal work must not be attacked with the unscrupulous
+zeal of the Dutch housewife.  Dripping water from a flower
+vase need not be wiped away, for it may be suggestive of dew
+and coolness.
+
+In this connection there is a story of Rikiu which well illustrates
+the ideas of cleanliness entertained by the tea-masters. Rikiu was
+watching his son Shoan as he swept and watered the garden path.
+"Not clean enough," said Rikiu, when Shoan had finished his task,
+and bade him try again.  After a weary hour the son turned to
+Rikiu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done.  The steps have
+been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are
+well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh
+verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground."  "Young
+fool," chided the tea-master, "that is not the way a garden path
+should be swept."  Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden,
+shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves,
+scraps of the brocade of autumn!  What Rikiu demanded was not
+cleanliness alone, but the beautiful and the natural also.
+
+The name, Abode of Fancy, implies a structure created to meet
+some individual artistic requirement.  The tea-room is made for
+the tea master, not the tea-master for the tea-room. It is not
+intended for posterity and is therefore ephemeral.  The idea that
+everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient
+custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that
+every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief
+occupant.  Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary
+reason for this practice.  Another early custom was that a newly
+built house should be provided for each couple that married.
+It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals
+so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days.
+The rebuilding, every twenty years, of Ise Temple, the supreme 
+shrine of the Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient
+rites which still obtain at the present day.  The observance of
+these customs was only possible with some form of construction
+as that furnished by our system of wooden architecture, easily
+pulled down, easily built up.  A more lasting style, employing
+brick and stone, would have rendered migrations impracticable,
+as indeed they became when the more stable and massive wooden
+construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.
+
+With the predominance of Zen individualism in the fifteenth
+century, however, the old idea became imbued with a deeper
+significance as conceived in connection with the tea-room.
+Zennism, with the Buddhist theory of evanescence and its 
+demands for the mastery of spirit over matter, recognized the
+house only as a temporary refuge for the body.  The body
+itself was but as a hut in the wilderness, a flimsy shelter made
+by tying together the grasses that grew around,--when these
+ceased to be bound together they again became resolved into
+the original waste.  In the tea-room fugitiveness is suggested
+in the thatched roof, frailty in the slender pillars, lightness in
+the bamboo support, apparent carelessness in the use of 
+commonplace materials.  The eternal is to be found only in the
+spirit which, embodied in these simple surroundings, beautifies
+them with the subtle light of its refinement.
+
+That the tea-room should be built to suit some individual taste
+is an enforcement of the principle of vitality in art.  Art, to be
+fully appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life.  It is
+not that we should ignore the claims of posterity, but that we
+should seek to enjoy the present more.  It is not that we should
+disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to
+assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to
+traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality
+in architecture.  We can but weep over the senseless imitations
+of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan.
+We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations,
+architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with
+repetitions of obsolete styles.  Perhaps we are passing through an
+age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some
+princely master who shall establish a new dynasty.  Would that we
+loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that 
+the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.
+
+The term, Abode of Vacancy, besides conveying the Taoist theory
+of the all-containing, involves the conception of a continued need
+of change in decorative motives.  The tea-room is absolutely empty,
+except for what may be placed there temporarily to satisfy some
+aesthetic mood.  Some special art object is brought in for the 
+occasion, and everything else is selected and arranged to enhance
+the beauty of the principal theme.  One cannot listen to different
+pieces of music at the same time, a real comprehension of the 
+beautiful being possible only through concentration upon some
+central motive.  Thus it will be seen that the system of decoration
+in our tea-rooms is opposed to that which obtains in the West,
+where the interior of a house is often converted into a museum.
+To a Japanese, accustomed to simplicity of ornamentation and
+frequent change of decorative method, a Western interior
+permanently filled with a vast array of pictures, statuary, and 
+bric-a-brac gives the impression of mere vulgar display of riches.
+It calls for a mighty wealth of appreciation to enjoy the constant
+sight of even a masterpiece, and limitless indeed must be the
+capacity for artistic feeling in those who can exist day after day
+in the midst of such confusion of color and form as is to be
+often seen in the homes of Europe and America.
+
+The "Abode of the Unsymmetrical" suggests another phase of
+our decorative scheme.  The absence of symmetry in Japanese
+art objects has been often commented on by Western critics.
+This, also, is a result of a working out through Zennism of
+Taoist ideals.  Confucianism, with its deep-seated idea of dualism,
+and Northern Buddhism with its worship of a trinity, were in no
+way opposed to the expression of symmetry.  As a matter of fact,
+if we study the ancient bronzes of China or the religious arts of
+the Tang dynasty and the Nara period, we shall recognize a 
+constant striving after symmetry.  The decoration of our classical
+interiors was decidedly regular in its arrangement.  The Taoist and
+Zen conception of perfection, however, was different.  The dynamic
+nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through
+which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself.  True
+beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed
+the incomplete.  The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities
+for growth.  In the tea-room it is left for each guest in imagination
+to complete the total effect in relation to himself.  Since Zennism
+has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the extreme
+Orient has purposefully avoided the symmetrical as expressing not
+only completion, but repetition.  Uniformity of design was considered
+fatal to the freshness of imagination.  Thus, landscapes, birds, and
+flowers became the favorite subjects for depiction rather than the 
+human figure, the latter being present in the person of the beholder
+himself.  We are often too much in evidence as it is, and in spite
+of our vanity even self-regard is apt to become monotonous.
+
+In the tea-room the fear of repetition is a constant presence.
+The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so
+selected that no colour or design shall be repeated.  If you have
+a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowable. If you
+are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular.
+A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy
+of black lacquer.  In placing a vase of an incense burner on the
+tokonoma, care should be taken not to put it in the exact centre,
+lest it divide the space into equal halves.  The pillar of the tokonoma
+should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order
+to break any suggestion of monotony in the room.
+
+Here again the Japanese method of interior decoration differs from
+that of the Occident, where we see objects arrayed symmetrically
+on mantelpieces and elsewhere.  In Western houses we are often
+confronted with what appears to us useless reiteration.  We find
+it trying to talk to a man while his full-length portrait stares at us
+from behind his back.  We wonder which is real, he of the picture
+or he who talks, and feel a curious conviction that one of them must
+be fraud.  Many a time have we sat at a festive board contemplating,
+with a secret shock to our digestion, the representation of abundance
+on the dining-room walls.  Why these pictured victims of chase and
+sport, the elaborate carvings of fishes and fruit?  Why the display
+of family plates, reminding us of those who have dined and are dead?
+
+The simplicity of the tea-room and its freedom from vulgarity
+make it truly a sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world.
+There and there alone one can consecrate himself to undisturbed 
+adoration of the beautiful.  In the sixteenth century the tea-room 
+afforded a welcome respite from labour to the fierce warriors and 
+statesmen engaged in the unification and reconstruction of Japan.
+In the seventeenth century, after the strict formalism of the 
+Tokugawa rule had been developed, it offered the only opportunity
+possible for the free communion of artistic spirits.  Before a great 
+work of art there was no distinction between daimyo, samurai, and 
+commoner. Nowadays industrialism is making true refinement more 
+and more difficult all the world over. Do we not need the tea-room 
+more than ever?
+
+
+
+V. Art Appreciation
+
+
+Have you heard the Taoist tale of the Taming of the Harp?
+
+Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lungmen stood a 
+Kiri tree, a veritable king of the forest.  It reared its head to
+talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth,
+mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver 
+dragon that slept beneath.  And it came to pass that a 
+mighty wizard made of this tree a wondrous harp, whose
+stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of
+musicians.  For long the instrument was treasured by the
+Emperor of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those
+who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings.  In
+response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp
+but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they
+fain would sing.  The harp refused to recognise a master.
+
+At last came Peiwoh, the prince of harpists.  With tender
+hand he caressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an
+unruly horse, and softly touched the chords.  He sang of
+nature and the seasons, of high mountains and flowing waters,
+and all the memories of the tree awoke!  Once more the sweet
+breath of spring played amidst its branches.  The young
+cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the 
+budding flowers.  Anon were heard the dreamy voices of
+summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain,
+the wail of the cuckoo.  Hark! a tiger roars,--the valley
+answers again.  It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like 
+a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass.  Now 
+winter reigns, and through the snow-filled air swirl flocks 
+of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with
+fierce delight.
+
+Then Peiwoh changed the key and sang of love.  The forest 
+swayed like an ardent swain deep lost in thought.  On high,
+like a haughty maiden, swept a cloud bright and fair; but 
+passing, trailed long shadows on the ground, black like
+despair.  Again the mode was changed; Peiwoh sang of 
+war, of clashing steel and trampling steeds.  And in the 
+harp arose the tempest of Lungmen, the dragon rode the
+lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through the
+hills.  In ecstasy the Celestial monarch asked Peiwoh wherein
+lay the secret of his victory.  "Sire," he replied, "others have
+failed because they sang but of themselves.  I left the harp to
+choose its theme, and knew not truly whether the harp had 
+been Peiwoh or Peiwoh were the harp."
+
+This story well illustrates the mystery of art appreciation.
+The masterpiece is a symphony played upon our finest
+feelings.  True art is Peiwoh, and we the harp of Lungmen.
+At the magic touch of the beautiful the secret chords of
+our being are awakened, we vibrate and thrill in response
+to its call.  Mind speaks to mind.  We listen to the unspoken,
+we gaze upon the unseen.  The master calls forth notes we
+know not of.  Memories long forgotten all come back to us
+with a new significance.  Hopes stifled by fear, yearnings
+that we dare not recognise, stand forth in new glory.  Our
+mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their
+pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy,
+the shadow of sadness.  The masterpiece is of ourselves, as 
+we are of the masterpiece.
+
+The sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art
+appreciation must be based on mutual concession.  The 
+spectator must cultivate the proper attitude for receiving
+the message, as the artist must know how to impart it.  The
+tea-master, Kobori-Enshiu, himself a daimyo, has left to us 
+these memorable words: "Approach a great painting as thou
+wouldst approach a great prince."  In order to understand a
+masterpiece, you must lay yourself low before it and await
+with bated breath its least utterance.  An eminent Sung critic
+once made a charming confession.  Said he: "In my young 
+days I praised the master whose pictures I liked, but as my
+judgement matured I praised myself for liking what the masters
+had chosen to have me like."  It is to be deplored that so few of
+us really take pains to study the moods of the masters.  In our
+stubborn ignorance we refuse to render them this simple
+courtesy, and thus often miss the rich repast of beauty spread
+before our very eyes.  A master has always something to offer,
+while we go hungry solely because of our own lack of
+appreciation.
+
+To the sympathetic a masterpiece becomes a living reality
+towards which we feel drawn in bonds of comradeship.  The
+masters are immortal, for their loves and fears live in us over 
+and over again.  It is rather the soul than the hand, the man than
+the technique, which appeals to us,--the more human the call
+the deeper is our response.  It is because of this secret
+understanding between the master and ourselves that in poetry
+or romance we suffer and rejoice with the hero and heroine.
+Chikamatsu, our Japanese Shakespeare, has laid down as one of
+the first principles of dramatic composition the importance
+of taking the audience into the confidence of the author.
+Several of his pupils submitted plays for his approval, but
+only one of the pieces appealed to him.  It was a play
+somewhat resembling the Comedy of Errors, in which
+twin brethren suffer through mistaken identity.  "This," said
+Chikamatsu, "has the proper spirit of the drama, for it 
+takes the audience into consideration.  The public is permitted
+to know more than the actors.  It knows where the mistake
+lies, and pities the poor figures on the board who innocently
+rush to their fate."
+
+The great masters both of the East and the West never forgot 
+the value of suggestion as a means for taking the spectator into
+their confidence.  Who can contemplate a masterpiece without
+being awed by the immense vista of thought presented to our
+consideration?  How familiar and sympathetic are they all;
+how cold in contrast the modern commonplaces!  In the former
+we feel the warm outpouring of a man's heart; in the latter
+only a formal salute.  Engrossed in his technique, the
+modern rarely rises above himself.  Like the musicians who
+vainly invoked the Lungmen harp, he sings only of himself.
+His works may be nearer science, but are further from 
+humanity.  We have an old saying in Japan that a woman
+cannot love a man who is truly vain, for their is no crevice
+in his heart for love to enter and fill up.  In art vanity is equally
+fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist
+or the public.
+
+Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in
+art.  At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself.
+At once he is and is not.  He catches a glimpse of Infinity, but
+words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has no tongue.  
+Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm
+of things.  It is thus that art becomes akin to religion and
+ennobles mankind.  It is this which makes a masterpiece
+something sacred.  In the old days the veneration in which the
+Japanese held the work of the great artist was intense.  The
+tea-masters guarded their treasures with religious secrecy,
+and it was often necessary to open a whole series of boxes,
+one within another, before reaching the shrine itself--the silken
+wrapping within whose soft folds lay the holy of holies.  Rarely
+was the object exposed to view, and then only to the initiated.
+
+At the time when Teaism was in the ascendency the Taiko's 
+generals would be better satisfied with the present of a
+rare work of art than a large grant of territory as a reward
+of victory.  Many of our favourite dramas are based on the 
+loss and recovery of a noted masterpiece.  For instance, 
+in one play the palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which was
+preserved the celebrated painting of Dharuma by Sesson,
+suddenly takes fire through the negligence of the samurai
+in charge.  Resolved at all hazards to rescue the precious
+painting, he rushes into the burning building and seizes the
+kakemono, only to find all means of exit cut off by the flames.
+Thinking only of the picture, he slashes open his body with
+his sword, wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson and 
+plunges it into the gaping wound.  The fire is at last 
+extinguished.  Among the smoking embers is found a half-
+consumed corpse, within which reposes the treasure uninjured
+by the fire.  Horrible as such tales are, they illustrate the great
+value that we set upon a masterpiece, as well as the devotion
+of a trusted samurai.
+
+We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the
+extent that it speaks to us.  It might be a universal language
+if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.  Our 
+finite nature, the power of tradition and conventionality, as
+well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our 
+capacity for artistic enjoyment.  Our very individuality
+establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our 
+aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities in the creations of
+the past.  It is true that with cultivation our sense of art
+appreciation broadens, and we become able to enjoy many
+hitherto unrecognised expressions of beauty.  But, after all, we 
+see only our own image in the universe,--our particular
+idiosyncracies dictate the mode of our perceptions.  The tea-
+masters collected only objects which fell strictly within the 
+measure of their individual appreciation.
+
+One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning
+Kobori-Enshiu.  Enshiu was complimented by his disciples
+on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his
+collection.  Said they, "Each piece is such that no one could
+help admiring.  It shows that you had better taste than had
+Rikiu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one
+beholder in a thousand."  Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This
+only proves how commonplace I am.  The great Rikiu dared
+to love only those objects which personally appealed to him,
+whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority.
+Verily, Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea-masters."
+
+It is much to be regretted that so much of the apparent 
+enthusiasm for art at the present day has no foundation in
+real feeling.  In this democratic age of ours men clamour 
+for what is popularly considered the best, regardless of their 
+feelings.  They want the costly, not the refined; the fashionable,
+not the beautiful.  To the masses, contemplation of illustrated
+periodicals, the worthy product of their own industrialism,
+would give more digestible food for artistic enjoyment than
+the early Italians or the Ashikaga masters, whom they pretend
+to admire.  The name of the artist is more important to them
+than the quality of the work.  As a Chinese critic complained
+many centuries ago, "People criticise a picture by their ear."
+It is this lack of genuine appreciation that is responsible for
+the pseudo-classic horrors that to-day greet us wherever we
+turn.
+
+Another common mistake is that of confusing art with 
+archaeology.  The veneration born of antiquity is one of the
+best traits in the human character, and fain would we have
+it cultivated to a greater extent.  The old masters are rightly
+to be honoured for opening the path to future enlightenment. 
+The mere fact that they have passed unscathed through
+centuries of criticism and come down to us still covered 
+with glory commands our respect.  But we should be foolish
+indeed if we valued their achievement simply on the score of
+age.  Yet we allow our historical sympathy to override our
+aesthetic discrimination.  We offer flowers of approbation when
+the artist is safely laid in his grave.  The nineteenth century,
+pregnant with the theory of evolution, has moreover created
+in us the habit of losing sight of the individual in the species.
+A collector is anxious to acquire specimens to illustrate a period
+or a school, and forgets that a single masterpiece can teach us
+more than any number of the mediocre products of a given
+period or school.  We classify too much and enjoy too little.
+The sacrifice of the aesthetic to the so-called scientific method
+of exhibition has been the bane of many museums.
+
+The claims of contemporary art cannot be ignored in any
+vital scheme of life.  The art of to-day is that which really
+belongs to us: it is our own reflection.  In condemning it we
+but condemn ourselves.  We say that the present age possesses
+no art:--who is responsible for this?  It is indeed a shame that
+despite all our rhapsodies about the ancients we pay so little 
+attention to our own possibilities.  Struggling artists, weary
+souls lingering in the shadow of cold disdain!  In our self-
+centered century, what inspiration do we offer them?  The
+past may well look with pity at the poverty of our civilisation;
+the future will laugh at the barrenness of our art.  We are
+destroying the beautiful in life.  Would that some great wizard
+might from the stem of society shape a mighty harp whose 
+strings would resound to the touch of genius.
+
+
+
+
+VI. Flowers
+
+In the trembling grey of a spring dawn, when the birds were
+whispering in mysterious cadence among the trees, have you
+not felt that they were talking to their mates about the flowers?
+Surely with mankind the appreciation of flowers must have
+been coeval with the poetry of love.  Where better than in a
+flower, sweet in its unconsciousness, fragrant because of its
+silence, can we image the unfolding of a virgin soul?  The primeval
+man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended
+the brute.  He became human in thus rising above the crude
+necessities of nature.  He entered the realm of art when he
+perceived the subtle use of the useless.
+
+In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.  We eat, drink,
+sing, dance, and flirt with them.  We wed and christen with flowers.
+We dare not die without them.  We have worshipped with the lily,
+we have meditated with the lotus, we have charged in battle array
+with the rose and the chrysanthemum.  We have even attempted to
+speak in the language of flowers.  How could we live without them?
+It frightens one to conceive of a world bereft of their presence.
+What solace do they not bring to the bedside of the sick, what a
+light of bliss to the darkness of weary spirits?  Their serene tenderness
+restores to us our waning confidence in the universe even as the 
+intent gaze of a beautiful child recalls our lost hopes.  When we are
+laid low in the dust it is they who linger in sorrow over our graves.
+
+Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our
+companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above
+the brute.  Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon
+show his teeth.  It has been said that a man at ten is an animal,
+at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty
+a criminal.  Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never
+ceased to be an animal.  Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing
+sacred except our own desires.  Shrine after shrine has crumbled
+before our eyes; but one altar is forever preserved, that whereon
+we burn incense to the supreme idol,--ourselves.  Our god is
+great, and money is his Prophet!  We devastate nature in order to
+make sacrifice to him.  We boast that we have conquered Matter 
+and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us.  What atrocities 
+do we not perpetrate in the name of culture and refinement!
+
+Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the
+garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews
+and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that
+awaits you?  Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the
+gentle breezes of summer.  To-morrow a ruthless hand will close 
+around your throats.  You will be wrenched, torn asunder limb 
+by limb, and borne away from your quiet homes.  The wretch,
+she may be passing fair.  She may say how lovely you are while
+her fingers are still moist with your blood.  Tell me, will this be
+kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of
+one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the
+buttonhole of one who would not dare to look you in the face
+were you a man.  It may even be your lot to be confined in
+some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the
+maddening thirst that warns of ebbing life.
+
+Flowers, if you were in the land of the Mikado, you might some
+time meet a dread personage armed with scissors and a tiny saw.
+He would call himself a Master of Flowers.  He would claim the
+rights of a doctor and you would instinctively hate him, for you
+know a doctor always seeks to prolong the troubles of his victims.
+He would cut, bend, and twist you into those impossible positions
+which he thinks it proper that you should assume.  He would
+contort your muscles and dislocate your bones like any osteopath.
+He would burn you with red-hot coals to stop your bleeding, and
+thrust wires into you to assist your circulation.  He would diet you
+with salt, vinegar, alum, and sometimes, vitriol.  Boiling water
+would be poured on your feet when you seemed ready to faint.
+It would be his boast that he could keep life within you for two
+or more weeks longer than would have been possible without his
+treatment.  Would you not have preferred to have been killed at once
+when you were first captured?  What were the crimes you must have
+committed during your past incarnation to warrant such punishment
+in this?
+
+The wanton waste of flowers among Western communities is even more
+appalling than the way they are treated by Eastern Flower
+Masters.  The number of flowers cut daily to adorn the 
+ballrooms and banquet-tables of Europe and America, to be
+thrown away on the morrow, must be something enormous;
+if strung together they might garland a continent.  Beside this
+utter carelessness of life, the guilt of the Flower-Master becomes
+insignificant.  He, at least, respects the economy of nature, 
+selects his victims with careful foresight, and after death does
+honour to their remains.  In the West the display of flowers seems
+to be a part of the pageantry of wealth,--the fancy of a moment.
+Whither do they all go, these flowers, when the revelry is over?
+Nothing is more pitiful than to see a faded flower remorselessly 
+flung upon a dung heap.
+
+Why were the flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless? 
+Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when
+brought to bay.  The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some
+bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you
+covet for your own may hide at your approach.  Alas!  The only 
+flower known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand 
+helpless before the destroyer.  If they shriek in their death agony 
+their cry never reaches our hardened ears.  We are ever brutal to 
+those who love and serve us in silence, but the time may come when,
+for our cruelty, we shall be deserted by these best friends of ours.
+Have you not noticed that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer 
+every year?  It may be that their wise men have told them to 
+depart till man becomes more human.  Perhaps they have migrated
+to heaven.
+
+Much may be said in favor of him who cultivates plants.  The man
+of the pot is far more humane than he of the scissors.  We watch
+with delight his concern about water and sunshine, his feuds with
+parasites, his horror of frosts, his anxiety when the buds come
+slowly, his rapture when the leaves attain their lustre.  In the East
+the art of floriculture is a very ancient one, and the loves of a poet
+and his favorite plant have often been recorded in story and song. 
+With the development of ceramics during the Tang and Sung
+dynasties we hear of wonderful receptacles made to hold plants,
+not pots, but jewelled palaces.  A special attendant was detailed
+to wait upon each flower and to wash its leaves with soft brushes
+made of rabbit hair. It has been written ["Pingtse", by Yuenchunlang]
+that the peony should be bathed by a handsome maiden in full
+costume, that a winter-plum should be watered by a pale, slender
+monk.  In Japan, one of the most popular of the No-dances, the
+Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period, is based upon
+the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night,
+in lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to 
+entertain a wandering friar.  The friar is in reality no other than
+Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the
+sacrifice is not without its reward.  This opera never fails to
+draw tears from a Tokio audience even to-day.
+
+Great precautions were taken for the preservation of delicate
+blossoms.  Emperor Huensung, of the Tang Dynasty, hung
+tiny golden bells on the branches in his garden to keep off
+the birds.  He it was who went off in the springtime with his
+court musicians to gladden the flowers with soft music.
+A quaint tablet, which tradition ascribes to Yoshitsune,
+the hero of our Arthurian legends, is still extant in one of
+the Japanese monasteries [Sumadera, near Kobe]. It
+is a notice put up for the protection of a certain wonderful
+plum-tree, and appeals to us with the grim humour of
+a warlike age.  After referring to the beauty of the blossoms,
+the inscription says: "Whoever cuts a single branch of
+this tree shall forfeit a finger therefor."  Would that such
+laws could be enforced nowadays against those who 
+wantonly destroy flowers and mutilate objects of art!
+
+Yet even in the case of pot flowers we are inclined to suspect
+the selfishness of man.  Why take the plants from their homes
+and ask them to bloom mid strange surroundings?  Is it not
+like asking the birds to sing and mate cooped up in cages?
+Who knows but that the orchids feel stifled by the artificial
+heat in your conservatories and hopelessly long for a glimpse
+of their own Southern skies?
+
+The ideal lover of flowers is he who visits them in their native
+haunts, like Taoyuenming [all celebrated Chinese poets and
+philosophers], who sat before a broken bamboo fence in
+converse with the wild chrysanthemum, or Linwosing, losing
+himself amid mysterious fragrance as he wandered in the
+twilight among the plum-blossoms of the Western Lake.
+'Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams
+might mingle with those of the lotus.  It was the same spirit
+which moved the Empress Komio, one of our most renowned
+Nara sovereigns, as she sang: "If I pluck thee, my hand will
+defile thee, O flower! Standing in the meadows as thou art,
+I offer thee to the Buddhas of the past, of the present, of
+the future."
+
+However, let us not be too sentimental.  Let us be less luxurious
+but more magnificent.  Said Laotse: "Heaven and earth are
+pitiless."  Said Kobodaishi: "Flow, flow, flow, flow, the current
+of life is ever onward.  Die, die, die, die, death comes to all."
+Destruction faces us wherever we turn.  Destruction below and
+above, destruction behind and before.  Change is the only
+Eternal,--why not as welcome Death as Life?  They are but
+counterparts one of the other,--The Night and Day of Brahma.
+Through the disintegration of the old, re-creation becomes
+possible.  We have worshipped Death, the relentless goddess
+of mercy, under many different names.  It was the shadow of
+the All-devouring that the Gheburs greeted in the fire.  It is the
+icy purism of the sword-soul before which Shinto-Japan prostrates
+herself even to-day.  The mystic fire consumes our weakness, the
+sacred sword cleaves the bondage of desire.  From our ashes
+springs the phoenix of celestial hope, out of the freedom comes a
+higher realisation of manhood.
+
+Why not destroy flowers if thereby we can evolve new forms
+ennobling the world idea?  We only ask them to join in our 
+sacrifice to the beautiful.  We shall atone for the deed by 
+consecrating ourselves to Purity and Simplicity.  Thus reasoned
+the tea-masters when they established the Cult of Flowers.
+
+Anyone acquainted with the ways of our tea- and flower-masters
+must have noticed the religious veneration with which they
+regard flowers.  They do not cull at random, but carefully select
+each branch or spray with an eye to the artistic composition
+they have in mind.  They would be ashamed should they chance
+to cut more than were absolutely necessary.  It may be remarked
+in this connection that they always associate the leaves, if there
+be any, with the flower, for the object is to present the whole
+beauty of plant life.  In this respect, as in many others, their
+method differs from that pursued in Western countries. Here we
+are apt to see only the flower stems, heads as it were, without
+body, stuck promiscuously into a vase.
+
+When a tea-master has arranged a flower to his satisfaction he
+will place it on the tokonoma, the place of honour in a Japanese
+room.  Nothing else will be placed near it which might interfere
+with its effect, not even a painting, unless there be some special
+aesthetic reason for the combination.  It rests there like an
+enthroned prince, and the guests or disciples on entering the
+room will salute it with a profound bow before making their
+addresses to the host.  Drawings from masterpieces are made
+and published for the edification of amateurs.  The amount of
+literature on the subject is quite voluminous.  When the flower
+fades, the master tenderly consigns it to the river or carefully
+buries it in the ground.  Monuments are sometimes erected
+to their memory.
+
+The birth of the Art of Flower Arrangement seems to be 
+simultaneous with that of Teaism in the fifteenth century.
+Our legends ascribe the first flower arrangement to those
+early Buddhist saints who gathered the flowers strewn by
+the storm and, in their infinite solicitude for all living things,
+placed them in vessels of water.  It is said that Soami, the
+great painter and connoisseur of the court of Ashikaga-
+Yoshimasa, was one of the earliest adepts at it.  Juko, the
+tea-master, was one of his pupils, as was also Senno, the
+founder of the house of Ikenobo, a family as illustrious in
+the annals of flowers as was that of the Kanos in painting.
+With the perfecting of the tea-ritual under Rikiu, in the latter
+part of the sixteenth century, flower arrangement also attains
+its full growth.  Rikiu and his successors, the celebrated Oda-
+wuraka, Furuka-Oribe, Koyetsu, Kobori-Enshiu, Katagiri-
+Sekishiu, vied with each other in forming new combinations.
+We must remember, however, that the flower-worship of the
+tea-masters formed only a part of their aesthetic ritual, and
+was not a distinct religion by itself.  A flower arrangement,
+like the other works of art in the tea-room, was subordinated
+to the total scheme of decoration.  Thus Sekishiu ordained
+that white plum blossoms should not be made use of when
+snow lay in the garden.  "Noisy" flowers were relentlessly
+banished from the tea-room.  A flower arrangement by a
+tea-master loses its significance if removed from the place for 
+which it was originally intended, for its lines and proportions
+have been specially worked out with a view to its surroundings.
+
+The adoration of the flower for its own sake begins with the
+rise of "Flower-Masters," toward the middle of the seventeenth
+century.  It now becomes independent of the tea-room and
+knows no law save that the vase imposes on it.  New conceptions
+and methods of execution now become possible, and many were
+the principles and schools resulting therefrom.  A writer in the
+middle of the last century said he could count over one hundred
+different schools of flower arrangement.  Broadly speaking,
+these divide themselves into two main branches, the Formalistic
+and the Naturalesque.  The Formalistic schools, led by the
+Ikenobos, aimed at a classic idealism corresponding to that of the
+Kano-academicians.  We possess records of arrangements by the
+early masters of the school which almost reproduce the flower
+paintings of Sansetsu and Tsunenobu.  The Naturalesque school,
+on the other hand, accepted nature as its model, only imposing
+such modifications of form as conduced to the expression of
+artistic unity.  Thus we recognise in its works the same impulses
+which formed the Ukiyoe and Shijo schools of painting.
+
+It would be interesting, had we time, to enter more fully than it
+is now possible into the laws of composition and detail formulated
+by the various flower-masters of this period, showing, as they would,
+the fundamental theories which governed Tokugawa decoration.
+We find them referring to the Leading Principle (Heaven), the 
+Subordinate Principle (Earth), the Reconciling Principle (Man), 
+and any flower arrangement which did not embody these principles 
+was considered barren and dead. They also dwelt much on the 
+importance of treating a flower in its three different aspects, 
+the Formal, the Semi-Formal, and the Informal.  The first might be 
+said to represent flowers in the stately costume of the ballroom, 
+the second in the easy elegance of afternoon dress, the third in the 
+charming deshabille of the boudoir.
+
+Our personal sympathies are with the flower-arrangements of the
+tea-master rather than with those of the flower-master.  The former
+is art in its proper setting and appeals to us on account of its true
+intimacy with life.  We should like to call this school the Natural
+in contradistinction to the Naturalesque and Formalistic schools.
+The tea-master deems his duty ended with the selection of the
+flowers, and leaves them to tell their own story.  Entering a tea-room
+in late winter, you may see a slender spray of wild cherries in
+combination with a budding camellia; it is an echo of departing
+winter coupled with the prophecy of spring.  Again, if you go into
+a noon-tea on some irritatingly hot summer day, you may discover
+in the darkened coolness of the tokonoma a single lily in a hanging
+vase; dripping with dew, it seems to smile at the foolishness of life.
+
+A solo of flowers is interesting, but in a concerto with painting and
+sculpture the combination becomes entrancing.  Sekishiu once
+placed some water-plants in a flat receptacle to suggest the
+vegetation of lakes and marshes, and on the wall above he hung
+a painting by Soami of wild ducks flying in the air.  Shoha, another
+tea-master, combined a poem on the Beauty of Solitude by the Sea
+with a bronze incense burner in the form of a fisherman's hut and
+some wild flowers of the beach.  One of the guests has recorded that
+he felt in the whole composition the breath of waning autumn.
+
+Flower stories are endless.  We shall recount but one more.
+In the sixteenth century the morning-glory was as yet a rare
+plant with us.  Rikiu had an entire garden planted with it, which
+he cultivated with assiduous care.  The fame of his convulvuli
+reached the ear of the Taiko, and he expressed a desire to see 
+them, in consequence of which Rikiu invited him to a morning
+tea at his house. On the appointed day Taiko walked through the 
+garden, but nowhere could he see any vestige of the convulvus.
+The ground had been leveled and strewn with fine pebbles and sand.
+With sullen anger the despot entered the tea-room, but a sight
+waited him there which completely restored his humour.  On the
+tokonoma, in a rare bronze of Sung workmanship, lay a single
+morning-glory--the queen of the whole garden!
+
+In such instances we see the full significance of the Flower Sacrifice.
+Perhaps the flowers appreciate the full significance of it.  They are
+not cowards, like men.  Some flowers glory in death--certainly the
+Japanese cherry blossoms do, as they freely surrender themselves
+to the winds.  Anyone who has stood before the fragrant avalanche
+at Yoshino or Arashiyama must have realized this.  For a moment
+they hover like bejewelled clouds and dance above the crystal streams;
+then, as they sail away on the laughing waters, they seem to say:
+"Farewell, O Spring! We are on to eternity."
+
+
+
+VII. Tea-Masters
+
+
+In religion the Future is behind us.  In art the present is the eternal.
+The tea-masters held that real appreciation of art is only possible
+to those who make of it a living influence.  Thus they sought to
+regulate their daily life by the high standard of refinement which
+obtained in the tea-room.  In all circumstances serenity of mind
+should be maintained, and conversation should be conducted as
+never to mar the harmony of the surroundings.  The cut and
+color of the dress, the poise of the body, and the manner of
+walking could all be made expressions of artistic personality.
+These were matters not to be lightly ignored, for until one has
+made himself beautiful he has no right to approach beauty.
+Thus the tea-master strove to be something more than the 
+artist,--art itself.  It was the Zen of aestheticism.  Perfection is
+everywhere if we only choose to recognise it.  Rikiu loved to
+quote an old poem which says: "To those who long only for
+flowers, fain would I show the full-blown spring which abides
+in the toiling buds of snow-covered hills."
+
+Manifold indeed have been the contributions of the tea-masters
+to art.  They completely revolutionised the classical architecture
+and interior decorations, and established the new style which we
+have described in the chapter of the tea-room, a style to whose
+influence even the palaces and monasteries built after the sixteenth
+century have all been subject.  The many-sided Kobori-Enshiu has
+left notable examples of his genius in the Imperial villa of Katsura,
+the castles of Nagoya and Nijo, and the monastery of Kohoan.
+All the celebrated gardens of Japan were laid out by the tea-masters.
+Our pottery would probably never have attained its high quality
+of excellence if the tea-masters had not lent it to their inspiration,
+the manufacture of the utensils used in the tea-ceremony 
+calling forth the utmost expenditure of ingenuity on the parts of 
+our ceramists.  The Seven Kilns of Enshiu are well known to all 
+students of Japanese pottery. many of our textile fabrics bear the 
+names of tea-masters who conceived their color or design. It is 
+impossible, indeed, to find any department of art in which the 
+tea-masters have not left marks of their genius.  In painting and 
+lacquer it seems almost superfluous to mention the immense 
+services they have rendered.  One of the greatest schools of painting 
+owes its origin to the tea-master Honnami-Koyetsu, famed also as 
+a lacquer artist and potter.  Beside his works, the splendid creation
+of his grandson, Koho, and of his grand-nephews, Korin and Kenzan,
+almost fall into the shade.  The whole Korin school, as it is generally
+designated, is an expression of Teaism.  In the broad lines of this
+school we seem to find the vitality of nature herself.
+
+Great as has been the influence of the tea-masters in the field of art,
+it is as nothing compared to that which they have exerted on the
+conduct of life.  Not only in the usages of polite society, but also
+in the arrangement of all our domestic details, do we feel the
+presence of the tea-masters.  Many of our delicate dishes, as well
+as our way of serving food, are their inventions.  They have 
+taught us to dress only in garments of sober colors.  They have
+instructed us in the proper spirit in which to approach flowers.
+They have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and 
+shown us the beauty of humility.  In fact, through their teachings
+tea has entered the life of the people.
+
+Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our
+own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which
+we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying
+to appear happy and contented.  We stagger in the attempt to 
+keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest
+in every cloud that floats on the horizon.  Yet there is joy and
+beauty in the roll of billows as they sweep outward toward
+eternity.  Why not enter into their spirit, or, like Liehtse, ride
+upon the hurricane itself?
+
+He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully.
+The last moments of the great tea-masters were as full of 
+exquisite refinement as had been their lives.  Seeking always
+to be in harmony with the great rhythm of the universe, they
+were ever prepared to enter the unknown.  The "Last Tea of 
+Rikiu" will stand forth forever as the acme of tragic grandeur.
+
+Long had been the friendship between Rikiu and the Taiko-
+Hideyoshi, and high the estimation in which the great warrior
+held the tea-master.  But the friendship of a despot is ever a
+dangerous honour.  It was an age rife with treachery, and men
+trusted not even their nearest kin.  Rikiu was no servile courtier,
+and had often dared to differ in argument with his fierce patron.
+Taking advantage of the coldness which had for some time existed 
+between the Taiko and Rikiu, the enemies of the latter accused 
+him of being implicated in a conspiracy to poison the despot.
+It was whispered to Hideyoshi that the fatal potion was to be
+administered to him with a cup of the green beverage prepared
+by the tea-master.  With Hideyoshi suspicion was sufficient ground
+for instant execution, and there was no appeal from the will of the
+angry ruler.  One privilege alone was granted to the condemned--
+the honor of dying by his own hand.
+
+On the day destined for his self-immolation, Rikiu invited his chief
+disciples to a last tea-ceremony.  Mournfully at the appointed time 
+the guests met at the portico.  As they look into the garden path the
+trees seem to shudder, and in the rustling of their leaves are heard
+the whispers of homeless ghosts.  Like solemn sentinels before  the
+gates of Hades stand the grey stone lanterns.  A wave of rare incense
+is wafted from the tea-room; it is the summons which bids the guests
+to enter.  One by one they advance and take their places.  In the
+tokonoma hangs a kakemon,--a wonderful writing by an ancient
+monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things.  The singing
+kettle, as it boils over the brazier, sounds like some cicada pouring
+forth his woes to departing summer.  Soon the host enters the room.
+Each in turn is served with tea, and each in turn silently drains his cup, 
+the host last of all.  according to established etiquette, the chief guest
+now asks permission to examine the tea-equipage.  Rikiu places the
+various articles before them, with the kakemono.  After all have
+expressed admiration of their beauty, Rikiu presents one of them
+to each of the assembled company as a souvenir.  The bowl alone
+he keeps.  "Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of
+misfortune, be used by man."  He speaks, and breaks the vessel
+into fragments.
+
+The ceremony is over; the guests with difficulty restraining their
+tears, take their last farewell and leave the room.  One only, the
+nearest and dearest, is requested to remain and witness the end.
+Rikiu then removes his tea-gown and carefully folds it upon the
+mat, thereby disclosing the immaculate white death robe  which
+it had hitherto concealed.  Tenderly he gazes on the shining blade
+of the fatal dagger, and in exquisite verse thus addresses it:
+
+"Welcome to thee,/ O sword of eternity!/ Through Buddha/
+And through Dharuma alike/ Thou hast cleft thy way."
+
+With a smile upon his face Rikiu passed forth into the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE BOOK OF TEA ***
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