and the simplified course, known among us as the 'Great Tea' and the
'Small Tea.' In either case, it might be defined in its present form as
a system of cultivating good manners as applied to daily life, with the
serving and drinking of a cup of tea at its centre. The main stress is
laid on ensuring outwardly a graceful carriage, and inwardly presence of
mind. As with the national form of wrestling known as _ju-jitsu_, with
its careful analysis of every push and pull down to the minutest
details, so with the Cha-no-e, every move of body and limb in walking
and sitting during the whole ceremony has been fully studied and worked
out so as to give it the most graceful form conceivable. At the same
time the calm and self-control shown by the partaker in the rite is
regarded as an essential element in the performance, without which
ultimate success in it will be quite impossible. So it is more a
physical and moral training than a mere amusement or a simple quenching
of thirst. But this original sense has not always been kept in view even
by the so-called masters of the tea-ceremony, who, like your
dancing-masters, are generally considered to be the men to teach us
social etiquette. Thus, diverted from its original idea, the Cha-no-e is
generally found to degenerate into a body of conventional and
meaningless formalities, which, even in its most abbreviated form as the
'Small Tea,' is something very tiresome, if not worse. To sit _à la
japonaise_ (not _à la turque_, which is not considered polite) for an
hour, if not for hours together, on the matted floor to see the
celebration of the monotonous rite, daring to talk only little, and even
then not above a whisper, in the smallest imaginable tea-room, is not
what even a born Japanese of the present day can much appreciate, much
less so Europeans, who would prefer being put in the stocks, unless they
be themselves Cha-jin or tea-ceremonialists, that is to say, eccentrics.
How to open the sliding-door; how to shut it each time; how to bring and
arrange the several utensils, with their several prescribed ways of
being handled, into the tea-room; how to sit down noiselessly in front
of the boiling kettle which hangs over a brasier; how to open the lid of
the kettle; how to put tea-powder in the cup; how to pour hot water over
it; how to stir the now green water with a bamboo brush; how to give the
mixture a head of foam; how and where to place the cup ready for the
expecting drinker--this on the part of the person playing the host or
hostess; and now on the part of the guest--how to take a sweet from the
dish before him in preparation for the coming aromatic drink; how to
take up the cup now given him; how to hold it with both hands; how to
give it a gentle stir; how to drink it up in three sips and a half; how
to wipe off the trace of the sipping left on the edge of the cup; how to
turn the cup horizontally round; how to put it down within the reach of
his host or hostess, etc., etc., _ad infinitum_--these are some of the
essential items to be learned and practised. And for every one of them
there is a prescribed form even to the slightest move and curve in which
a finger should be bent or stretched, always in strict accordance with
the attitude of other bodies in direct connection with it. The whole
ceremony in its degenerated form is an aggregate of an immense number of
_comme il faut_'s, with practically no margin for personal taste. But
even behind its present frigidity we cannot fail to discern the true
idea and the good it has worked in past centuries. It has done a great
deal of good, especially in those rough days at the end of the sixteenth
century, when great warriors returning blood-stained from the field of
battle learned how to bow their haughty necks in admiration of the
curves of beauty, and how to listen to the silvery note of a boiling
tea-kettle. They could not help their stern faces melting into a naïve
smile in the serene simplicity of the tea-room, whose arrangement, true
to the Zen taste to the very last detail of its structure, showed a
studied avoidance of ostentation in form and colour. To this day it is
always this Zen taste that rules supreme in the decoration of a Japanese
house.
Visit a Japanese gentleman whose taste is not yet badly influenced by
the Western love of show and symmetry in his dwelling: you will find the
room and the whole arrangement free from anything of an ostentatious
nature. The colour of the walls and sliding-doors will be very subdued,
but not on that account gloomy. In the niche you will see one or a
single set of _kakemono_, or pictures, at the foot of which, just in the
middle of the slightly raised floor of the niche, we put some object of
decoration--a sculpture, a vase with flowers, etc. These are both
carefully changed in accordance with the season, or else in harmony with
the ruling idea of the day, when the room is decorated in celebration of
some event or guest. This rule applies to the other objects connected
with the room--utensils, cushions, screens, etc.
The European way of arranging a room is, generally speaking, rather
revolting to our taste. We take care not to show anything but what is
absolutely necessary to make a room look agreeable, keeping all other
things behind the scenes. Thus we secure to every object of art that we
allow in our presence a fair opportunity of being appreciated. This is
not usually the case in a European dwelling. I have very often felt less
crowded in a museum or in a bazaar than in your drawing-rooms. 'You know
so well how to expose to view what you have,' I have frequently had
occasion to say to myself, 'but you have still much to learn from us how
to hide, for exposition is, after all, a very poor means of showing.'
To return to the main point, we owe to the Cha-no-e much of the present
standard of our taste, which is, in its turn, nothing more than the Zen
ways of looking at things as applied to everyday life. This is no
wonder, when we remember that it was in the tasteful hands of the Zen
priests that the whole ceremony reached its perfection. Indeed, the word
_cha_ is a term which conveys to this day the main features of the
Contemplative sect to our mind.
In connection with the tea-ceremony, there are some sister arts which
have been equally effective in the proper cultivation of our taste.
Landscape gardening, in which our object is to make an idealised copy of
some natural scene, is an art that has been loved and practised among us
for more than a thousand years, although it was not indigenous like most
things Japanese. This practice of painting with tree and stone soon gave
rise to another art, the miniature reproduction of a favourite natural
scene on a piece of board, and this is the forerunner of the later
_bonkei_, or the tray-landscape, and its sister _bonsai_, or the art of
symbolising an abstract idea, such as courage, majesty, etc., by means
of the growth of a dwarf tree.
The same love that we feel for a symbolic representation is also to be
traced in the arrangement of flowers. The practice of preserving cut
branches, generally of flowering trees, in a vase filled with water is
often mentioned in our classical literature. But it was first in the
sixteenth century that it assumed its present aspect, when, in
conjunction with the Cha-no-e, it found a great patron in that most
influential dilettante Shogun Yoshimasa. Already in his time there were
a great many principles to be learned concerning the way to give the
longest life and the most graceful form to the branches put in a vase,
besides investing the whole composition with a symbolic meaning. Up to
this day we look upon this art as very helpful for the cultivation of
taste among the fair sex, who receive long courses of instruction by the
generally aged masters of floral arrangement, who, along with their
teaching in the treatment of plants, know how to instil ethics in their
young pupils, taking the finished vase of flowers as the subject of
conversation. The masters of the tea-ceremony are also well versed in
arranging flowers in that simple manner which is yet full of meaning
called _cha-bana_, or the 'Zen type of floral art.'
You see how much all these arts have contributed to the production of
our taste, whose ideals are the dislike of loudness and love of symbolic
representation, with a delicate feeling for the beauty of line as seen
in things moving or at rest. This last quality must have been immensely
augmented by the linear character of our drawing, and also by the great
importance we are accustomed to attach to the shape and the strokes of
the characters when we are learning to write.
All these qualities you will see exemplified in any Japanese work of
art--from a large picture down to a tiny wooden carving. Take up a
girl's silk dress and examine it carefully, and note how the lining is
dyed and embroidered with as great, if not greater care, in order to
make it harmonise in colour and design with the visible surface and add
some exquisite meaning. Do not forget to look at the back when you come
across a lacquered box, for it is not only the surface that receives our
careful attention. And above all, you must always keep in mind that our
artists think it a duty to be suggestive rather than explicit, and to
leave something of their meaning to be divined by those who contemplate
their works.
* * * * *
The time is now come to conclude my essay at an exposition of the
Japanese spirit. I think I have given you occasion to see something of
both the strong and the weak sides of my countrymen; for it is just
where our favourable qualities lie that you will also find the
corresponding weaknesses. The usual charges brought against us, that we
are precocious, unpractical, frivolous, fickle, etc., are not worthy of
serious attention, because they are all of them easily explained as but
the attendant phenomena of the transitory age from which we are just
emerging. Even the more sound accusation of our want of originality must
be reconsidered in face of so many facts to the contrary, facts which
show us to be at least in small things very original, almost in the
French sense of that word. That we have always been ready to borrow
hints from other countries is in a great measure to be explained by the
consideration that we had from the very beginning the disadvantage and
the advantage of having as neighbours nations with a great start in the
race-course of civilisation. The cause of our being small in great
things, while great in small things, can be partly found in the
financial conditions of the country and in the non-individual nature of
the culture we have received. These delicate questions will have to be
raised again some centuries hence, when a healthy admixture of the
European civilisation has been tried--a civilisation the effect of which
has been, on the whole, so beneficial to our development, that we feel
it a most agreeable duty gratefully to acknowledge our immense
obligation to the nations of the West.