Jinrikisha Days in Japan
stricted- to a certain size—six feet square; the entrance became a mere trap not three feet high; no servants were permitted to assist the host, and only four guests might take part in the six-hour or all-day-long ceremony. The places of the guests on the mats, with relation to the host, the door, and the tokonoma, or recess, were strictly defined. Even the conversation was ordered, the objects in the tokonoma were to be asked about at certain times, and at certain other times the tea-bowl and its accompaniments were gravely discussed. Not to speak of them at all would be as great an evidence of ill-breeding as to refer to them at the wrong time.
The masters of cha no yu were revered above scholars and poets. They became the friends and intimates of Emperors and Shoguns, were enriched and ennobled, and their descendants receive honors to this day. Of the great schools and methods those of Senke, Yabunouchi, and Musanokoji adhere most closely to the original forms. Their first great difference is in the use of the inward or the outward sweep of the hand in touching or lifting the utensils. Upon this distinction the dilettanti separated, and the variations of the many schools of to-day arose from the original disagreement. To get some insight into a curious phase of Japanese social life, I took lessons in cha no yu of Matsuda, an eminent master of the art, presiding over the ceremonial tea rooms of the Hoishigaoka club-house in Tokio.
There could be no more charming place in which to study the etiquette of tea drinking, and the master was one of those mellow, gentle, gracious men of old Japan, who are the perfect flower of generations of culture and refinement in that most æsthetic country of the world. In the afternoon and evening the Hoishigaoka, on the apex of Sanno hill, is the resort of the nobles, scholars, and literary men, who compose its membership, but in the morning hours, it is all dappled shadow and quiet.
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