茶道の身心空間
Analysis of the Tea Ceremony System 3
3. The Spacial Property of the Way of Tea 1
5. Tea as a Space for Encounter
Isao Kumakura (1943~) pointed out the following four factors that constitute the performing arts: firstly, the ‘visual aspect’ (appearance) which is the art of transformation that invites people into an extraordinary world. Secondly, the ‘conduct’ of a transformed, new personality. Thirdly, the ‘installation’ which consists of the tools and the stage for that purpose. And fourthly, the ‘thought’ which is the sense of beauty, the idea that combines these factors. *15
In the case of offering tea or hot water at the Buddhist home altar, the Tea master wears a particular kimono including a short over garment. He has a special name only used in this occasion and changes into that persona. A folding fan that he invariably holds in his hand is also part of the attire. When entering a tea ceremony room, people follow the formalized manners and etiquette of the tea ceremony. This is the behavioral pattern born out of the tea offering at the altar. The tea offering generated the tea room as stage, the pathway as approach, the utensils; all these things constitute the ‘installation’. And, in the case of Wabi Tea, the ideology combining them is ‘Wabi’ (subdued taste, quiet refinery, beauty found in poverty and simplicity).
Kakuzô Okakura (1862-1913) has said, ‘the way of tea was an impromptu drama constructed out of the themes tea, flowers, painting etc. ‘ *16, and Tetsuzô Tanikawa (1895-1989) also likened the host and guests to actor and audience, respectively, and the records kept about tea ceremonies to a script, thus pointing out the entertaining character of the way of tea. *17 . The host is the performer, but the guests are not merely the audience, but also actors who support a part of the tea gathering. There are not the watching and the watched facing each other. This completely differs from the view of the Occidental tradition since Ancient Greece that sees the performer as ‘praxis’ (practice) and the audience as ‘theoria’ (theory)
In this kind of performance the ‘furinokoto’ of the host ( the behavior and the wisdom/understanding the host ought to achieve) and the ‘furinokoto’ of the guests (the behavior and the wisdom/understanding the guests ought to achieve) are requested.
Toward the perfect collaboration of even a small meeting of tea, all the installations and arrangements have to be perfect; guests have to respect all of them, there is no room for small talk or chatting. *18 This idea of drama is realized as the spirituality of a once-in-a-lifetime occasion according to Naosuke Ii. *19
As for the tea room of Jôô Takeno (1502-1555), host and guests started sitting facing each other with the fireplace in between. Consequently, a stage suitable to this drama emerged. While the wide tatami hall systematically asserted itself to be a place for special occasions, the small tatami room increasingly followed the way of condensation, becoming the smallest possible space suitable for the needs of wabi tea people.
Sen no Rikyû’s Tai-an (a tea room at Myôki-an temple, Kyoto prefecture) is a tea room consisting of two tatami mats. That means if we exclude one mat for the host to make tea, there remains no more space than one mat for the guests. Ordinariness makes a change in quality inevitable, so in the tea ceremony an extraordinary body control (movements), mouth (breathing, utterances), and mind (consciousness and unconsciousness) came to be demanded all the more. This extraordinariness called “merely boiling water, making tea, and drinking it” by Sen no Rikyû sublimates ordinariness into a new ordinariness, a new naturalness which leads to an improvisational theater called wabi tea.
In this improvisational theater mere watching, mere observation cannot exist.
What Sen no Rikyû calls “association of the truehearted” is a state that all participants create within the atmosphere of the tea room, it is a co-existence.
This oneness and co-existence of host and guests is called ’shuchûhin’ or guests -in -host and host -in -guests (beyond binal opposition of subject and object) in the Way of Tea.
In this way the Way of Tea works synergistically to alter the common ego, thus utilizing a clinical effect.
6 The Topology of the Tea Room
The spacial design from the entrance path to the tea room is not Euclidean but topological. The nodal points consisting of waiting area, inner gate, sitting area, and nijiriguchi (low entrance to tea room) are being connected by the stepping stones.
According to Sen no Rikyû, sixty percent of the importance of arranging stepping stones is are in passing through, and the other forty percent are for appearance" so the topological aspect of relation between closeness and separation becomes more important, and the emphasis is placed on the element of motion rather than vision. As the stepping stones are natural stones, they cannot be placed in the same way as formed tiles.
As for the way to place the stepping stones it is called from ancient times “perfect fit of in-between”. “In-between” is the space, the relationship between one stepping stone and the next. “Perfect fit” stands for the feeling of connection in the coupling of the two stones, in other words it indicates the gestalt nature. In this way, one’s “steps” are guided smoothly, and the nodal points construct psychological boundaries based on the actions of passing through, sitting down, crouching, and moving forward in a kneeling position using one’s fists.
According to Kurt Lewin’s concept of ‘topological psychology’ *20, the waiting area, the inner gate (passing through), the sitting area, the ritual crouching, the low entrance to the tea room etc. are topological boundaries connected by ‘hodos’, the path, that we follow to reach the goal, the tea room. In this sense it is a hodological space experience. Through this experience a deep stability of mind and body is gradually realized.
Jean Piaget says that the spacial concepts acquired in the developmental stages of mankind are in the order of topological space, projectional space, and Euclidean space. *21 In other words, the topological space experience of the Way of Tea is guiding us back to the perception of the early stages of human development.
As pointed out in another paper of mine, the Eastern techniques in healing have a shared tendency in retracing the developmental stages of mankind backwards *22. The topological space experience of the way of tea can also be perceived as being intended like that. Of course, here tracing the development back does not mean to actually reverse the biological time, but to restore the archetypical (Jung) baby and infant also existing in adults, thus trying to achieve a psychic totality of the mind.
The nijiriguchi (low entrance to tea room) is the most unshakable among the topological boundaries of the space in tea ceremony. The guests move while squatting, a peculiar movement where the knees and fists are used to slowly move forward. With this kind of action the boundary is crossed and the last one of the guests closes the door with a latch immediately after sitting down. Going through this minuscule opening adds new life force and is a ritual, a ceremony to cleanse oneself. On the other side is the tea room, hinting of a sacred space in another dimension.
In Dante’s ‘La Divina Commedia’, the place where the author undergoes mental training is narrow and he is forced to move forward while crouching. Furthermore there is a statue of the Virgin Mary. In the Christian bible, too, there is an admonition to ‘enter through the narrow gate’. In this way, it is a universal image that the entrance leading to holy ground is narrow.
In conclusion we can say that the topological space of the Way of Tea is constructed in a hierarchical order leading to a sacred space.
15 Isao Kumakura: op. cit.
16 Kakuzô Okakura: The Book of Tea, Duffield & Company 1906
17 Tetsuzô Tanikawa: Cha no Bigaku (The Aesthetics of Tea), Tankosha Publishing 1977
18 Yamanoue Sôji Ki Chronicle, Tadachika Kuwata: Research of the Chronicle of Yamanoue Sôji Ki, Kawara Book Store, 1985
19 Naosuke Ii: Chanoyu Ichie Shu (Collection of Meetings in Tea), Toeisha Publishing 1988
20 Kurt Lewin: Field Theory in Social Science, Harper & Brothers 1951
21 Jean Piaget & Bärbel Inhelder: The Child’s Conception of Space, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1956
22 Yasushi Nakajima, others: Eastern Meditation and Creation of its Space
National Institute of Technology, Akashi College, Research Journal no. 43, 2000
translated by Barbara Inui
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