CHAWANS - Introduction

With this JNT website we don't try to give a full overview of the history and the cultural importance of chawans. There are many other websites about that.

In this chapter you find some baisc background information about chawans and the tea ceremony. Below a nice text, with kind permission of the author, Jay Hanes, one of the participants of the Exhibition.

"Hot water for tea"

text by Jay Hanes (site)

Mindful awareness
Cha-no-yu literally means hot water for tea, although tea ceremony is the generally accepted translation. It is a call to mindful awareness in careful preparation of a simple beverage for those who practice tea ceremony. For others it can serve as a reminder to pause and to find meaning in daily life.

Originating in China, tea or cha also has a long history in Japan. Tea drinking in Japan continued in the manner of the Chinese until bad relations between the two countries resulted in a shortage of tea in Japan. The Japanese then created their own ritual practice.

For health and meditation
In 1191 the founder of Zen Buddhism in Japan, Eisai Myo-an, returned from China with his teachings and with seeds to grow tea for religious purposes. He taught practitioners to grind the tea to a powder and drink it with hot water not only for health enhancing properties, but also for enhancing meditation. Eventually in the late 16th century Sen Rikyu continued the tea ceremony tradition but developed a particular style know as wabi-cha, an aesthetic cult that continues today throughout the world.

Wabi-sabi
Wabi-sabi is the Japanese aesthetic of beauty in simplicity and harmony. According to Leonard Koren: "Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional." Like Zen, wabi-sabi views objects transcendentally in that all things are impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete.

Wabi-cha embodies the characteristics of natural process, irregularity, intimacy, unpretentiousness, earthiness, and simplicity in the architecture of the teahouse and in the utensils. Thus the tea host creates a quiet and simple gathering influenced by nature. The tea house is arranged with art objects and a flower, all characteristic of the season. These decorations are offered for contemplation and for the enjoyment of the guests.

Harmony and equipoise
The event becomes a moment of harmony and equipoise. It is an opportunity to leave conflict behind and to cultivate peace. Again from Koren "wabi-sabi is the perfect antidote to the pervasively slick, saccharine, corporate style of beauty." Raku pottery is characteristically wabi-sabi.

Raku
Raku is the name given to the family of potters originating from Korean born Tanaka Chojiro. Loosely translated, raku means pleasure or amusing accomplishments. The firing method known today as raku originated when there was a need to quickly produce roofing tile for coastal Korean villages destroyed by tidal waves. Today we recognize that the natural qualities of clay are enhanced in this fast fire technique.

Simple and unpretentious
For tea Rikyu selected the bowls of Tanaka's son, Sasaki Chojiro, because they best represented the wabi spirit. The form and surface of his ware were found to be simple and unpretentious. Typical ware is either black, red or white with slight decoration, used to contrast the bright green tea. Though these wares seem rough and crude, they are ingeniously sophisticated and favored by devotees of tea ceremony and tea masters, or cha-jin.

Fit the hand
Tea bowls are never perfectly round, for they must fit the hands comfortably. A quality preferred by cha-jin include an undulating lip or rim to feel pleasant and yielding to the mouth. It is also preferred to have a soft glaze that reveals the naked clay at the foot or base of the bowl. Cha-jin examine the foot for evidence of the potter's working manner.

Shared experience
While all are kneeling, a quiet hush settles in the tea house as tea is being prepared. The sounds of water boiling in an iron kettle and the bamboo whisk blending the powdered tea with water all become part of a shared experience. Each guest is presented with a bowl of tea.

Introspection
The event is an opportunity for introspection, a meditation. First you attune your senses to the vessel. Then you focus on the warmth, fragrance, color and texture of its contents as it is brought to your face. The intimate moment that you are sharing with the other guests becomes a singular experience with a bowl of tea.

Admire the aesthetics
Once you have finished sipping the brew you hold the cha-wan and admire what is perhaps reminiscent of sea foam left on a weathered stone. The irregular lip provides an opportunity to reflect on the peaks and valleys in your life. The circularity of the bowl stands to punctuate the completeness of meaningful repose. Here, the aesthetic object becomes an event that offers a moment of deep reflection and contemplation resulting from preparing hot water for tea.

Early tea people were discontent with the civil wars of the time. They entertained friends in surroundings suggestive of poverty, serving tea with discarded pottery. They kept the conversation at such gatherings away from conquest and the spoils of war, to pioneer for new ways.

Following centuries of civil war, late 16th century Japan was under military rule. After uniting Japan, leading war-lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi was preparing to invade Korea. Against this backdrop, Hideyoshi's favorite tea master, Sen Rikyu, further developed the Japanese tea ceremony to a heightened state of elegant simplicity and peaceful repose.

Traditional values
Today in Japan, tea ceremony is representative of conservative traditional values. However in the beginning it represented progress and adventure. It was a reaction to materialism, revolutionary in its embrace of the beauty found in imperfection and the joy of living in harmony with nature.

Peace and justice
Given the present human condition and current exploitation of nature, we are faced with issues of peace as well as environmental and social justice. Perhaps once again it will be revolutionary to boil hot water for tea.