essay
The sprit of avant-garde
TESHIGAHARA Hiroshi
I have always felt very strongly that Sen no Rikyu was one of those rare few who have managed to express the Japanese style of beauty in its most refined state.
Sen no Rikyu was an enlightened man. He rose above mundane passion for power, and broke free of the ordinary values commonly held by those around him. He designed tea gardens, buildings, and Japanese-style gardens. He also designed many different tools and utensils. Taking the simple act of drinking tea, he built an entire ceremony that guided participants in the ceremony to a deep spiritual communion. The tea ceremony that he developed is an extremely sophisticated mental exercise.
I think it would be accurate to say that the essence of the tea ceremony is a spirit of hospitality. There is a warmth to everything that Rikyu made. Austere, to be sure, but nonetheless warm, for one would be completely mistaken to equate austerity with coldness.
Every last detail in a tearoom designed by Rikyu is imbued with the maker's spiritual and aesthetic presence. You can tell that whenever a tearoom was being built for him, he must have stayed at the site all day to supervise the work, because so much attention has gone into every detail. The mud-daubed walls of his famed tea house, Taian, near Kyoto, are an excellent case in point. The mud in places has simply not been applied, thus exposing the straw backing. One can well imagine Rikyu watching the workers apply the mud and thinking to himself, "I like the look of that exposed straw!" When he instructed the workers to leave part of the walls exposed that way, he must have done it on the spur of the moment. Breaking free of existing aesthetic norms, he sought only to create something that was pleasing to himself. The result was a tiny two-mat room just barely big enough for the host and his guest to fit into. For Rikyu, that tiny space was a device meant to allow the human spirit to open up to the fullest.
A guest of Rikyu s passed through a few "way stations" before beginning the tea ceremony. There was a yoritsuki (a room where guests first gather to prepare for the ceremony), a machiai (waiting room), a garden, and family, the teahouse itself. By passing slowly though these steps one at a time, the participants were gradually led away from everyday affairs and concerns into an abstract, contemplative universe. The most important thing of all was that the teahouse was not a place for ordinary' superficial socializing. No, the teahouse was a place where committed individuals gathered for a deeply spiritual meeting of the minds. Rikyu was the only one who ever truly succeeded in creating such a venue while maintaining a lively spontaneity in the tea ceremony itself. I believe that Rikyu's teahouses were the products of a very strong yet supple will. In this teahouses, culture and politics became one. In the tea ceremony, it meant nothing to have expensive possessions, or to be a powerful political figure, for such value and such power were only meaningful within the context of a mundane, worldly outlook on life. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the shogun who unified the country in the closing years of the 16th century, was an enthusiastic disciple of Rikyu's for a time, but the two men eventually had a falling out. I believe they parted ways because the shogun couldn't follow where Rikyu would have led him-to a spiritual realm beyond the constraints of spatial and material reality. In my opinion, that was the root cause of the events that led to Rikyu's forced suicide by hara-kiri. It would have been inconceivable for Rikyu to compromise his tea ceremony style. There would have been no way for him to do it.
Rikyu showed us the tremendous power of culture. His system of values was not based on the outwardly visible things of which those in positions of power are so fond. In an age when people found their spiritual anchor in material things, Rikyu championed the cause of spiritual values, and his values spread throughout society in many different ways. And the flower of his philosophy came to bloom in a tiny, rustic tearoom.
I feel a deep affinity for this man Rikyu, who used his spiritual strength to stand up against everything in the culture around him.
(TESHIGAHARA Hiroshi: Iemoto of the Soetsu School of Ikebana; Director)
