The book of tea - Uji the tea-famous

Today is coming-of-age day in Japan. You "become" adult at the age of 20 in Japan, being legally allowed to consume alcoholic beverage and tobacco. You may be happy, but this ushers in the agony called hangover.

When I have hangover, I do basically two things to alleviate the agony. The first is to walk as long as time allows, and the second is to have non-alcoholic drink(of course!) as much as possible. The choice of drinks can be coffee, but usually tea.

This usage of tea to cope with hangover is far deviant from the tea that Okakura Tenshin observed in his book, but it is effective. Green tea contains a lot of caffeine and vitamin C. Only if I have tea before I drink!

Zen monk Eisai brought back tea from China in the early 13th century, and planted tea in the suburb of Kyoto, including Kozan-ji and Uji. Since then, Uji has been renowned as home to the best of quality tea.

Central part of Uji city does not have tea plantation, but there are a lot of tea wholesalers and tea blenders. And as Okakura talked, imperfection of tea philosophy or just curiosity has no boundary of imagination, resulting in the creation of green tea KitKat, green tea candy, green tea jelly, green tea Castella sponge cake, green tea soba noodle, and green tea carbonara pasta!

Inside of tea wholesaler Nakamura Tokichi Honten, 12-Jan-2015

Tea wholesaler Yamamoto Jinjiro, 12-Jan-2015

Green tea carbonara pasta on offer, 12-Jan-2015

Tea wholesaler Ito Hisaemon the inventor of green tea KitKat, 12-Jan-2015

Tea wholesaler Izumien the presenter of green tea to Pope John Paul II, 12-Jan-2015

When you are tired of tea, you could even do sightseeing. Uji used to be retreat for nobles in the Heian period of 9th to 12th century, during which Uji was the location that the oldest literature of its kind "The tale of Genji" was depicted in. Also there is Byodo-in temple, which was built to represent the western pure land, a century before Buddhist monk Honen opened the Pure Land School of Buddhism.

World heritage site Byodo-in, 12-Jan-2015

The book of tea - Sakai city the birth place of Rikyu

To the south of Osaka city sits Sakai city. Overshadowed by "Osaka", but Sakai is itself a big city, one of the 20 ordinance-designated cities in Japan.

It was a self-governed city of merchants in the warring era, when feudal warlords were fighting with each other in total anarchy from 15th to 16th century. Sakai was well known for its merchant and foreign trade with Portuguese. Sakai's blacksmiths and merchants were the top class suppliers of guns for warlords, and its kitchen knife is now among the best in the world inheriting the tradition of gun production that involved the handling of iron. In fact, Sakai now produces 90% of kitchen knives used by professional chefs in Japan. The great tea master Rikyu was born in this city in the exact era of feudal warring era.

The site of Rikyu's residence, 11-Jan-2015

It may be an exaggeration to say that Sakai was also a religious city, but there are a lot of Buddhist temples of various schools. Trade with Portuguese introduced Christianity directly to Sakai. Walk in the city, and you would find a lot of Nichiren school temples, and also shin Pure land school of Hongan-ji temple Sakai branch, and Rinzai Zen school of Nanshu-ji, which had been closely related to Rikyu's ancestor. According to Okakura Tenshin, tea culture has been developing with Zen. Rikyu was Zen master as well as tea master.

Obai-an tea house, 11-Jan-2015

Tea house looks like just a simple hut, and it is. It is asymmetrically constructed by design, which gives the space of imagination to everyone. Novice like me who gets used to admire the symmetrical construction can not come up with anything in its asymmetrical-ness. Rikyu's universe is of asymmetrical, but natural phenomenon of complexity produces symmetrical phenomenon of fractal. Is the universe symmetrical or asymmetrical in its nature, complex or simple in its nature? Could it not be that Rikyu was of scientific strain as well?

The book of tea - Daitoku-ji, which lead to tea master Rikyu's death

Daitoku-ji is the large temple complex belonging to Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, located in the north of Kyoto. It has been contributing to the development of tea-ism, which Okakura Tenshin used to describe tea culture of Japan instead of commonly used phrase of "tea ceremony". Okakura's view is that a cup of tea is not only mere cultural activity but similar to "ism" in its significance. Ironically, the greatest of the great tea master Rikyu was ordered ritual suicide of "seppuku" because he was said to build the great gate there, which angered his patron of samurai leader Hideyoshi.

Daitoku-ji has been familiar to me since my childhood, as the graves of my ancestor is in one of the sub-temple of Daitoku-ji temple complex. But it had been just a temple and no more than that when I was young.

A couple of sub-temples is open to the public, and all of them have splendid gardens, most of them being dry landscape garden. Ryoan-ji's rock garden is widely known as the greatest dry landscape garden so it is always crowded. But Daitoku-ji's garden is not crowded except in the autumn foliage season, and yet their beauty is equal to Ryoan-ji's rock garden. To me, their world view is best appreciated in the cold days in the winter. There is no heating appliances, you have to take off your shoes, and you have to face the garden squarely.

Today, I visited Zuiho-in inside Daitoku-ji complex. There were only a couple of visitors, but just that. So I could occupy the whole space. If you like to experience a dry landscape garden, I strongly recommend to visit Daitoku-ji. Always open to the public includes Ryogen-in, Zuiho-in, Daisen-in, and Koto-in. Daisen-in hosts za-zen session on the weekend, so it would be of interest to you if you like to try za-zen.

Dry landscape garden of Zuiho-in, 10-Jan-2015

Tea room of Ansho-ken of Zuiho-in, 10-Jan-2015

Further north of Daitoku-ji, there are a couple of good temples and retreat. One of them is Genko-an, which belongs to Soto school of Zen Buddhism. Two window, one is circular, the other is rectangular,  are said to represent the enlightenment and doubt respectively. Window of enlightenment uses circular shape to symbolize Zen and circular path, while window of doubt uses rectangular shape to symbolize man's life of birth-aging-sickness-death.

Circular window and rectangular window in Genko-an, 10-Jan-2015

The book of tea - snow capped Ginkaku-ji

There is a television program that picks one classical literature and takes 100 minutes to read it in four weeks(one month). It is called "100 pun de meicho", aired by NHK, translated roughly to "classical literature in 100 minutes". January 2015's pick is "The book of tea" by Okakura Kakuzo(Tenshin).

Okakura wrote this masterpiece originally in English, which was later translated into Japanese. Okakura was born in Yokohama neighborhood, where the earliest trade between Japan and America took place in the late 19th century. It was written about 100 years ago, just after Russo-Japanese war. After Meiji restoration, Japan was obsessed with all things Western, particularly technology and life style, thus it was close to the point of abandoning what had been accumulated over 2000 years of Japanese artistic history. In that period, Okakura found the immeasurable value in Japanese aesthetics. He had never been understood by contemporary Japanese, but had unlikely comrades from America. This lead to the valuable collections of Eastern arts in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The origin of art of tea could be traced to Ginkaku-ji temple in Kyoto, which I visited on 4-Jan. Kyoto experienced the heaviest snow fall in 56 years in the new year holidays of 2015. Ginkaku-ji was covered in snow. This snow fall may be once in a life experience. Now I go earnestly to take "The book of tea" in this background.

This wood sign post in Ginkaku-ji tells this is THE well that served the tea for shogun, 04-Jan-2015.

Ginkaku-ji covered with snow, 04-Jan-2015.