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After some delicious soup and tea, we resume our tour and come upon some
tea bowls.
“These aren’t as good as Randy’s,” Yoshimi comments. “He makes
excellent tea bowls. Some have sold for very good prices.”
“The tea ceremony is only partly about drinking tea. It’s mostly about the
ritual, the ceremony. It’s religious, it’s Zen. The ochawe drink every day is not
what is used in the tea ceremony. The tea is matchu, which is a powder made of
green tea leaves. Everything in the ceremony is prescribed, every movement of the
host and guests must be learned by heart and there are several different styles that
can be used. People who want to preserve the Japanese culture take classes to
learn how to do it. The powdered tea is kept in a container called a natsume; the
chashakuis a spoon made from bamboo that is used to put the tea into the chawan
(tea bowl); the hot water is kept in the mizusashi; the hishakuis a bamboo ladle
used to draw hot water from the mizusashiand pour it into the chawan; the chasen
is a whisk made of bamboo that is used to whip the tea and the hot water into froth
in the chawan; when the tea is drunk, more water from the mizusashiis ladled into
the chawanto clean it; that waste water is dumped into the kensui; then the
chawanis wiped dry with the chakin, a linen towel.”
“It’s very complicated. I’m not trained to perform Tea. Oh, I almost forgot;
the water is heated in an iron pot called a kamaand even the rest its lid is placed on
has a name:the futaoki. The kamacan be heated on either a brazier or an open
hearth. Of course a different protocol is required for each.”
by Morley Evans