The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment in Modern Japan

Bodies Re-Presenting the Past

Etsuko Kato

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134372362
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sous-sujet: Histoire du Japon

The subject of the tea ceremony is well researched both in and outside of Japan, but the women who practice it are hardly ever discussed. The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment in Modern Japan rectifies this by discussing the meaning of the Japanese tea ceremony for women practitioners in Japan from World War II to the present day. It examines how lay tea ceremony practitioners have been transforming this cultural activity while being, in turn, transformed by it.

Part I

The tea ceremony as bodily discipline

1 The tea ceremony as bodily discipline

‘The tea ceremony is bodily discipline’: This is the premise of all the discussions in this book. This chapter gives an explanation of ‘in what sense’ it is. The word ‘discipline’ here means ‘to control one’s body movement so as to control one’s mind’. This definition partly stems from Foucault (1975); I will clarify the difference between my usage here and Foucault’s.

Temae, the center of the tea ceremony

What is the Japanese tea ceremony? ‘A highly structured method of preparing powdered green tea in the company of guests.’¹ Such a descriptive definition leads to the more crucial question: Why does a ‘highly structured method’ exist to prepare tea? Typically, without answering this ultimate question, more descriptive explanations follow, for example, ‘The tea ceremony incorporates the preparation of and service of food as well as the study and utilization of architecture, gardening, ceramics, calligraphy, history, and religion.…’² Here, what the tea ceremony is for is no longer in question.

Most discourses on the tea ceremony in the past and the present have attempted to paraphrase the tea ceremony in many different abstract ways without actually articulating its raison d’être. Some examples are ‘aesthetics of hospitality’ (Sen Sōshitsu 1991: 2), a ‘synthetic cultural system’ (Hisamatsu 1947; in Fujiyoshi (ed.) 1987: 53), ‘performing art of body movement’ (Tanikawa 1977: 12), or ‘a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful’ (Okakura 1906: 3). Going back to the famous poem allegedly made by the sixteenth-century establisher of the tea ceremony only leads us to a Zen-Buddhist-like riddle: ‘The tea ceremony is just to boil water and drink tea.’³

The absence of any definite explanation about why the tea ceremony exists can be attributed to both the activity’s nature as an invented aristocratic culture and to various myths that have evolved around it, which I will examine in Chapter 2. For now, my task is to extract the necessary and sufficient conditions for one’s activity to be called ‘the tea ceremony’.

As far as I can observe, formalization and control of body movement is what every tea ceremony practitioner I have met does. In reverse, one cannot identify oneself as a tea ceremony practitioner unless one has learned the specific body movements required for making tea. Therefore, examining the nature of such specific body movements should shed light on one of the most crucial aspects of the ceremony’s raison d’ être.

In the tea ceremony, vocabulary for body movements abounds. The major four terms are temae, shosa, tachi-i-furumai and i-zumai. In my knowledge as a native Japanese speaker and a tea ceremony practitioner for four years before this research, each has a slightly different semantic domain. Temae, or o-temae with a prefix indicating politeness, refers either to:

1 the rules of body movement necessary to make tea, often in a specific performance, as in the expression ‘I am learning a temae which uses a Chinese tea powder container’ (karamono no temae wo naratteimasu),

2 one’s body movement to make tea governed by rules, as in ‘Your temae is beautiful’ (anata no o-temae wa kirei desune),

3 tea made, as in ‘I will drink your temae’ (o-temae chōdai itashimasu).⁴

Shosa also refers to rules or rule-governed body movements, but unlike temae, it refers to those not only of making tea but also of drinking tea and other movement in the tearoom. Tachi-i-furumai, which literally means ‘behavior of standing and sitting’, is almost synonymous to shosa, but its referent is expanded to stillness (of sitting) as well as movement. The word also refers to movement and stillness not necessarily related to making or drinking tea, such as standing, sitting, walking, or opening the sliding door. I-zumai refers to the overall posture of sitting, and therefore has more connotations of stillness than of movement.

Of the above four words, the usage of shosa, tachi-i-furumai and i-zumai is not limited to the sphere of the tea ceremony. Temae, however, is a technical term which is used exclusively in the tea ceremony. And it is temae, the rules of body movement to make tea, or body movement governed by such rules, on which all the other elements of the tea ceremony are based.

The characteristics of temae – a comparative examination

Before exploring the centrality of temae in the tea ceremony today, let us clarify the characteristics of temae in comparison to its closest Western counterparts: good manners, dance and discipline, as well as to the Japanese concept (reigi-/gyōgi) sahō, which is close to the Western concept of good manners but has a more mental connotation.⁵ I claim that temae mostly approximates discipline, although it importantly entails good manners and sahō, and partly resembles dance.

Good manners

The Western concept of ‘manners’, or ‘polite ways of social behavior’ as a dictionary puts it,⁶ seems to be best defined in comparison to ‘discipline’; the former, unlike the latter, does not necessarily imply the inner virtue but can refer to certain outer behavior. Arditi (1998), who uses the term ‘manners’ as a superordinate category for ‘courtoisie’, ‘courtesy’, ‘civility’ and ‘etiquette’, marks the advent of the fourth type of manners, ‘etiquette’, in eighteenth century England as ‘a disconnection of propriety from ethics’ (Arditi 1998: 4), while discussing their predecessors as embedded in ethics. He means that ethics are optional in manners. Asad (1993) goes even further, defining ‘manners’ in terms of the lack of ethical connotation; ‘formal manners’ in the Renaissance court or among gentlemen, he argues, distinguished itself from the preexisting monastic program of ‘discipline’ when the display of ‘proper’ behavior became disconnected from formation of a virtuous self and acquired the status of a tactic (Asad 1993: 65–67).

As a comparison between Christian virtue and the ideals of the tea ceremony is not the issue of this book, let us simplify the above discussion as a question of the relationship between ‘control of body movement’ and ‘control of mind’.⁷ Is temae all about control of body movement but not about that of mind, like ‘good manners’ in the Western concept?

Obviously, the dominant discourse on temae emphasizes not disconnection but connection between body movement and mind. In a textbook for a TV program, the headmaster of a school of the tea ceremony says, ‘Some people only see an aspect of temae as manners (sahō; see the later discussion) and give the superficial criticism that it is too stiff. But such a remark comes from their ignorance of the true meaning of the tea ceremony’ (Sen Sōshitsu 1998b: 4). He continues:

The way of communication, and movement of hands, feet, or overall body posture regulated by temae – all these are in accordance with five Confucian virtues to which every human being should conform: loyalty [jin], righteousness [gi], politeness [rei], wisdom [chi] and trust [shin]. And it [temae] naturally leads one to the practice of morals that every human being should conform to. Then it [temae] eventually constitutes daily habits and mental attitudes [kokoro-gamae] which prevent one from careless mistakes. Thus it [temae] constitutes the motive force in human life.

(Sen Sōshitsu 1998b: 4)

The headmaster’s reference to ‘virtues’ and ‘mental attitudes’ indicates that temae is supposed to be a means of what Asad calls ‘formation of virtuous self’ (Asad 1993: 65–67). Such a mental explanation of temae seems to have originated in the late nineteenth century (see Chapter 2) and became especially popular after World War II (see Chapter 3).

Whatever the initial motivation is, a practitioner can soon recognize, through discourses from teachers or in books, that the tea ceremony holds something about the mind. One of my participants, Yuriko, a woman in her early thirties, said that she might have started the tea ceremony out of a feeling of shame (for her ignorance of good manners) and of vanity, but that she now thought she was practicing it to cultivate her ‘concentration and mental force’.

Another characteristic that separates temae from good manners is its far greater elaboration of body movement than that expected in ‘good manners’. The formality and precision of body movement required in the tea ceremony extend far beyond the expression of social politeness, as I will depict shortly.

Dance

The overwhelming control of body movement may make temae resemble dance. Western anthropologists of dance, however, seem hesitant to offer not only a universal definition of ‘dance’ but also definitions of ‘Western dance’.⁸ Also, definitions in dictionaries such as ‘rhythmic movement of the body and feet, ordinarily to music’⁹ seem too naïve when so many modern dances can be danced without rhythms, foot movement or music. Still, one could at least ambiguously circumscribe ‘Western dance’ as including certain body movements associated with such concepts as ‘aesthetics’, ‘art’ or ‘performance’.

Temae could be viewed in this framework. Somebody’s practicing temae in the gaze of others may well give an observer the idea that it is a kind of performance. One plausible argument even claims that the word temae derives from te (hand) and mai (dance) (Horiuchi 1944: 160).¹⁰ A book of the tea ceremony for general readers not only explains temae as something ‘mentally profound’, but also argues that ‘one should elaborate temae to the artistic (geijutsu-teki) level’ (Tankō-sha (ed.) 1991: 42). This aesthetic or artistic element was especially emphasized after World War II (see Chapter 3).

The relationship between body movement and mind in the tea ceremony, however, distinguishes itself from dance. Whereas dance can be viewed as ‘a means of expressing confined emotions’,¹¹ the movement in the tea ceremony is never explained in terms of ‘emotions’ or their ‘expressions’. Instead, it is explained in terms of ‘mind’ (seishin or kokoro), which does not necessarily imply emotions. Moreover, the body movement of the tea ceremony is explained as a means of affecting mind ‘inwardly’. As Sen Sōsa (1991: 2) puts it, ‘The form [of the tea ceremony] was born from mind. Training is a means of proceeding the other way round [that is, from the form to mind].’ Another book on the tea ceremony argues that ‘not being bound by the law [of temae] but by using it as a clue’ every tea ceremony practitioner is expected to step into the ‘profound’ world of mind (Tankō-sha 1991: 42). Such control of mind may not necessarily be dancers’ primary objective in dancing.

Sahō

Here one should pay special attention to the Japanese concept of sahō. Sahō (also gyōgi-sahō, reigi-sahō; often interchangeable with reihō) is usually translated into English ‘manners’ or ‘etiquette’ in Japanese-English dictionaries. Actually, sahō primarily concerns techniques that the Western concept of ‘manners’ or ‘etiquette’ covers, including the posture of standing, sitting and walking, how to bow, how to eat formal dishes, or how to dress oneself or behave properly in formal occasions (Ogasawara 1975: the table of contents 3–8).

Sahō, however, seems to be more explicitly embedded in morals than ‘manners’ or ‘etiquette’ is. Symbolically enough, sahō was taught to schoolgirls as a part of moral training (shūshin) from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II. Girls’ moral textbooks often discussed the importance of disciplined body movement (as an expression of mind), while sahō textbooks discussed the importance of mind, thus often making the two kinds of textbooks look similar. A 1925 moral textbook, for example, argued:

As an old country, Japan has well-developed reigi-sahō. Moreover, not a few people [in history] have learned the tea ceremony or flower arrangement to calm their minds and cultivate themselves, or have had keiko of dance [shimai, butō] to learn elegant body movement [tachi-i-monogoshi]. It is expected for young women today to succeed such humble spirit of past people. ‘Do not lean back, nor bend, but be straight. Walking too fast looks vulgar; walking too slowly looks affected. Do not take too big or small steps. Feel the lower half of your body [when walking],’ [as] Sakuma Shōzan [wrote].

(Shimoda 1925)¹²

Meanwhile, one of the early sahō textbooks stated that ‘tidiness in hairstyles, clothing and body naturally makes the inside of your mind (kokoro no naka) tidy, and keeps evil ideas away. This is because sahō does not simply correct outer forms, but thereby influences the inside of your mind’ (Kiuchi and Tanikawa 1892: 4). Related to this point, I will discuss the teaching of docility to women through sahō in the period of nationalism and militarism in Chapter 2.

Temae has often been associated with sahō. Actually, some girls’ high schools in the prewar period introduced the tea ceremony into their curriculums as a substitute for sahō classes (see Chapter 2). This event must have both typified and intensified the association between the two. Also, it is often pointed out that one of the reasons the tea ceremony flourished after the war is that women, with the disappearance of sahō classes at school due to curriculum reform, have no other occasion to learn it but through the tea ceremony (see Chapter 3). Certainly, temae should entail sahō.

Temae, however, is not identical to sahō, but goes beyond it. Unlike sahō (and manners/etiquette), temae does not exist primarily as an expression of propriety necessary to maintain society, even if it could be partly used for that purpose. The formal body movements required in temae often exceed the necessity for propriety. Moreover, the discourses of temae emphasize mental training much more than those of sahō do, as witnessed in the headmaster’s criticism on the ‘superficiality’ of those who ‘only see an aspect of temae as sahō’ (Sen Sōshitsu 1998b: 4). In short, with more emphasis on both physical and me...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• A note on local terms and transcriptions
• Introduction
• Part I The tea ceremony as bodily discipline
• Part II Two postwar phenomena in the tea ceremony
• Part III Women’s tea ceremony today
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index