Tea of the Sages
The Art of Sencha
The study of the history of tea-drinking in Japan has long been dominated by 'chanoyu', the so-called tea ceremony. In the West 'chanoyu' is generally regarded with an attitude of reverence by both the informed and the not-so-informed. This attitude can make it difficult to imagine that 'chanoyu' has ever been criticized, let alone that there may have been something like a rival tea ceremony. A review of Patricia J. Graham's book: 'Tea of the sages: The art of sencha'.
By ANNA BEERENS
It has been suggested that chanoyu was a dominant factor in the shaping of Japanese material culture and the development of a Japanese aesthetic. It should be understood, however, that during the larger part of the history of chanoyu most Japanese did not share in its pleasures. Many may not even have known that it existed at all. Chanoyu was an exclusive pastime for the very wealthy. Although in theory people of a social classes could devote themselves to chanoyu in practice only those with the means to build and furnish a tea-room and the leisure to study the etiquette did so. At the Meiji Restoration of 1868 chanoyu suffered greatly under the general atmosphere of rejection of the traditional heritage in favour of Westernization. Moreover, chanoyu lost its wealthy feudal patrons when the daimyo class was dissolved. The various tea schools were obliged to adapt to the circumstances. One solution was to promote the adoption of chanoyu into school curricula. Another was to hold large public tea gatherings to introduce chanoyu to a wider audience. Thus, ironically, many Japanese first became acquainted with chanoyu at the same time as the Western world did.Sencha, what we might call the 'rival tradition' of drinking tea, has perhaps done more to develop the aesthetic sensibilities of the average Japanese than the 'elitist' chanoyu. This tradition can now be explored by a Western audience thanks to Patricia Graham's Tea of the Sages. Sencha is steeped tea, that is tea made from loose tea leaves with the help of a pot of hot water. This method of making tea was introduced into Japan in the second half of the seventeenth century by refugees from China, many of them monks and intellectuals, who fled their country after the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. The new ideas, techniques, and inventions brought by these refugees were eagerly received as nouveautés. Appreciation of Chinese art and literature was also nourished by a renewed interest in Chinese philosophy. Sencha first caught on in intellectual circles, most notably a group of artists and scholars who strongly identified with the Chinese tradition of the scholar-recluse. They are known as bunjin, the Japanese reading of the Chinese wenren 'literatus'. Graham describes at length how, in the course of the eighteenth century these bunjin became the most prominent proponents of sencha. She does not fail to mention, however, however, that the drinking of sencha was by no means limited to this group.
Graham stresses the fact that sencha 'could not have grown so popular if people were not already dissatisfied with chanoyu' (p. 75). The first half of the eighteenth century not only saw the growing popularity of sencha but also the first criticisms of chanoyu The vast amounts of money that were spent in creating an atmosphere of feigned poverty, the emptiness and listlessness of the etiquette and the blind admiration for the tea-masters were vehemently attacked. Chanoyu came to stand for the formal and the pretentious and sencha for what was informal, liberating, and creative. As Graham states: '... sencha helped create an acceptable niche in Japanese society for those Individuals desirous of a lifestyle outside the prescribed social structure of which chanoyu was an integral part' (p.97). In this way sencha can be seen as a silent protest against the rigid structure of Edo-period society as a whole (see Graham, p. 100; cf Varley & Kumakura, 1989).
In this light it is a bit sad to find that in the course of time sencha lost much of its original spontaneity and developed its own rigidities, its own 'ceremony'. But still, throughout the nineteenth century, the drinking of sencha was considered cultivated and elegant, an excellent way to demonstrate ones good taste without being pretentious. Graham describes the assimilation of sencha into Japanese society and its influence on material culture in great detail. In the 1880s the interest in sencha as a ceremony waned. At that time a reaction against the unrestrained Westernization of the 1870s had set in and the favouring of native traditions inevitably turned against the sencha ceremony, considered 'foreign' because of its strong Chinese bias. Sencha did not disappear, however, and Graham describes how the story continues into the twentieth century. Graham's Tea of the Sages is the first book on sencha in the West. It is important for the valuable information it contains, for its excellent bibliography of pre-modern Japanese texts on sencha, and for its fine illustrations. Its greatest value lies in the fact that it introduces the 'rival tea ceremony' to a Western audience. It helps to redress the balance in the historiography of tea-drinking in Japan. I am convinced that this pioneering study will inspire many other researchers. *
References
- Graham, Patricia J.
Tea of the sages: The art of 'sencha',
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998, 412 pp. isbn 0-8248-1826-1
- Varley, Paul and Kumakura Isao (eds)
Tea in Japan, essays on the history of chanoyu, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989
Anna Beerens can be reached at e-mail: Abeerens@brick.cistron.nl