CONTENTS 9
Chapter I
THE CUP OF HUMANITY
Tea ennobled into Teaism, a religion of aestheticism, the adoration of the beautiful among everyday facts—Teaism developed among both nobles and peasants—The mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old—The Worship of Tea in the West—Early records of Tea in European writing—The Taoists’ version of the combat between Spirit and Matter—The modern struggle for wealth and power
27
Chapter II
THE SCHOOLS OF TEA
The three stages of the evolution of Tea—The Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea, representative of the Tang, the Song, and the Ming dynasties of China—Lu Yu, the first apostle of Tea—The Tea-ideals of the three dynasties—To the latter-day Chinese Tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal—In Japan Tea is a religion of the art of life
47
Chapter III
TAOISM AND ZEN
The connection of Zen with Tea—Taoism, and its successor Zen, represent the individualistic trend of the Southern Chinese mind—Taoism accepts the mundane and tries to find beauty in our world of woe and worry—Zen emphasizes the teachings of Taoism—Through consecrated meditation may be attained supreme self-realisation—Zen, like Taoism, is the worship of Relativity—Ideal of Teaism a result of the Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life—Taoism furnished the basis for aesthetic ideals, Zen made them practical
69
Chapter IV
THE TEA-ROOM
The tea-room does not pretend to be other than a mere cottage—The simplicity and purism of the tea-room—Symbolism in the construction of the tea-room—The system of its decoration—A sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world
Chapter V
ART APPRECIATION
Sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art appreciation—The secret understanding between the master and ourselves—The value of suggestion —Art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us—No real feeling in much of the apparent enthusiasm today—Confusion of art with archaeology—We are destroying art in destroying the beautiful in life
113
Chapter VI
FLOWERS
Flowers our constant friends—The Master of Flowers—The waste of Flowers among Western communities—The art of floriculture in the East—The Tea-Masters and the Cult of Flowers—The Art of Flower Arrangement—The adoration of the Flower for its own sake—The Flower-Masters—Two main branches of the schools of Flower Arrangement, the Formalistic and the Naturalesque
137
Chapter VII
TEA-MASTERS
Real appreciation of art only possible to those who make of it a living influence —Contributions of the Tea-Masters to art—Their influence on the conduct of life—The Last Tea of Rikyū
149
OKAKURA. A LIFE IN STYLE
Gian Carlo Calza
191 Acknowledgments
Nü Wa, one of the Three August Ones, mending the Heavenly jade vault which Gong Gong caused to collapse during his losing battle with the Yellow Emperor (p. 24)
Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism— Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.
The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature—all have been subject to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance we speak of the man “with no tea” in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal drama. Again
1. Tea, Camellia sinensis, is a species of the genus Camellia in the family Theaceae, the same as the flowering camellia.
2. Okakura is probably referring to the traditional and dignified reserve of the Chinese sage (who, according to tradition, lived between 551 and 479 BC) with respect to his public and private life.
3. In the original text: “Laotse.” According to tradition, Laozi, lived during the 4th century BC. He is linked to a rich collection of anecdotes in which he is often attributed with salacious and sarcastic expressions. Supposedly he is the author of Daodejing (Classic of the Way and Virtue). This world-renowned book is the second most widespread one after the Old Testament, and it has been translated into English countless times; among them: Laozi. Daodejing, translated with notes by Edmund Ryden; with an introduction by Benjamin Penny, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2008, or Lao-Tzu. Tao Te Ching, translated by D. C. Lau, Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1963 (which is the edition referred to in this book).
4. In the original text: “Sakyamuni.” Śākyamuni, the sage of the Śākyas, is the epithet of the historical Buddha, who lived, according to tradition, between 566 and 486 BC.
5. Okakura is referring to episodes that took place during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and, eerily, seem to anticipate some he never saw in World War I and the even more tragic ones of World War II.
6. In 1900, a book by Nitobe on the spirit of the samurai became popular in the West (Inazō Nitobe, Bushidō. The Soul of Japan. An Exposition of Japanese Thought, Philadelphia, The Leeds & Biddle Co., 1900). The book, which was reprinted (New York-London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905) on the wave of the small nation’s sensational defeat of the Russian empire, was circulated far and wide. Also see the afterword, pp. 173–174.
we stigmatise the untamed aesthete who, regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of emancipated emotions, as one “with too much tea” in him.
The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias,1 and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius,2 the piquancy of Laozi,3 and the ethereal aroma of Śākyamuni himself.4
Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.5 Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,—the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self-sacrifice;6 but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life. Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation were to be based on the gruesome
Tea utensils first described by Lu Yu and later introduced in the Japanese tea ceremony (pp. 33 sg.)
30. Sesson Shukei (1504–1589) was one of the greatest Japanese painters. His work was influenced by the painting of the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1279) and the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) as well as Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506), the greatest classical Japanese landscape painter. His celebrated paintings are in ink, with the addition of some colour, especially in his later period.
31. In the original text: “Lichihlai.” There is disagreement over the identity of this poet. Muraoka Hiroshi (in Okakura Kakuzō, The book of tea, ed. Muraoka Hiroshi, Tokyo, Kenkyusha, 1939, p. 106, and the note at line 13 on p. 15), thought that Lichihlai was a mistake made by the author, and that it was his transcription of the name “Li Jiqin.” This theory is unconvincing because, since the author wrote the text in English, there are no Chinese characters to base it on and also because the passage cited by the author is not found in Li Jiqin’s work, as also noted by Muraoka. This note was omitted in the 1929 edition of Muraoka’s volume. A more convincing theory is the one proposed by Naoko Fuwa Thornton, namely that Okakura had confused the poet with Rihua Li, who lived during the Ming dynasty (for which, see note 35 below): indeed, the cited passage is found in the second volume of his work Zi tao xuan za zhui (Okakura Tenshin, Cha no hon, ed. Naoko F. Thornton, Tokyo, Kainan Shobō, 1978, p. 161, note 18).
32. In the original text: “Sung.”
33. In the original text: “man hideth not”. Confucius, Analects, 2.10, translated by D. C. Lau, Baltimore, Penguin Classics, 1979.
Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings—generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for producing a Titian or a Sesson.30 Each preparation of the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat, its own method of telling a story. The truly beautiful must always be in it. How much do we not suffer through the constant failure of society to recognise this simple and fundamental law of art and life; Li Jiqin,31 a Song32 poet, has sadly remarked that there were three most deplorable things in the world: the spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation of fine art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation.
Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea. We moderns belong to the last school. These several methods of appreciating the beverage are indicative of the spirit of the age in which they prevailed. For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Confucius said “In what way is a man’s true character hidden from view?”33 Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal. The tiny incidents of daily routine are as much a commentary of racial ideals as the highest flight of philosophy or poetry. Even as the difference in favourite vintage marks the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods and nationalities of Europe, so the Tea-ideals characterise the various moods of Oriental culture. The Cake-tea which was boiled, the Powdered-tea
34. In the original text: “T’ang.” A Chinese dynasty that lasted from 618 to 906.
35. Ming: A Chinese dynasty that lasted from 1368 to 1644.
36. In reality, the origins of tea remain uncertain today, although it is almost universally accepted that it must have originated in the region between the Chinese province of Yunnan and the Indian one of Assam.
37. In the original text, respectively: “Tou, Tseh, Chung, Kha and Ming.”
38. In the original text: “Yangtse-Kiang.” The Chang Jiang is the Blue River. The fertile territories that it runs through have always been at the center of Chinese history.
39. This is not a modern character, but a later modification of tu, a term used in the past for cha. I would like to thank Marco Ceresa, from whom I learned that the term cha was probably coined during the Han dynasty. The use of the relative character, however, first appears during the Tang dynasty (for which see note 42 below), and more precisely in the Chajing (The Classic of Tea).
40. In the original text: “tou.”
which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang,34 the Song, and the Ming35 dynasties of China. If we were inclined to borrow the much-abused terminology of art-classification, we might designate them respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.
The tea-plant, a native of southern China,36 was known from very early times to Chinese botany and medicine. It is alluded to in the classics under the various names of tu, she, chuan, jia, and ming, 37 and was highly prized for possessing the virtues of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening the will, and repairing the eyesight. It was not only administered as an internal dose, but often applied externally in form of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains. The Taoists claimed it as an important ingredient of the elixir of immortality. The Buddhists used it extensively to prevent drowsiness during their long hours of meditation.
By the fourth and fifth centuries Tea became a favourite beverage among the inhabitants of the Chang Jiang valley.38 It was about this time that modern ideograph cha39 was coined, evidently a corruption of the classic tu. 40 The poets of the southern dynasties41 have left some fragments of their fervent adoration of the “froth of the liquid jade.” Then emperors used to bestow some rare preparation of the leaves on their high ministers as a reward for eminent services. Yet the method of drinking tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme. The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions! The custom obtains at the present day among the Thibetans and various Mongolian tribes, who
In a container not the shape is important for Laozi but its empty space, its capacity to contain
74. The author’s use of the term Zennism was probably meant to give this Buddhist school, virtually unknown in the West at the time, a weight and importance comparable to that of the better-known Taoism. However, he also uses the term “Zen,” especially as an adjective. In this edition only the term Zen is used in the belief that this Buddhist current is very distant from any type of “ism”).
75. Obviously, the ones in use in the author’s China, when the last Manchu dynasty, the Qing, was collapsing.
76. In the original text: “Kwanyin.” Guanyin is the name of the legendary keeper of the pass at the border of the state that Laozi was leaving to withdraw from the world. Guanyin asked him to write a book for him, and the result was the Daodejing (see also, chapter 1, note 3).
77. A reference to the ancient legend that Laozi was born already old.
78. The Han Pass is the exit from the state of Zhou, in present day Henan, which, according to the great historian Sima Qian (145?–90? BC), Laozi was abandoning out of disgust for the general decadence there.
79. We should like to call attention to Dr. Paul Carus’s admirable translation of the Taotei King, Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1898 [author’s note]. There are of course today numerous studies on both schools.
80. A philologically more appropriate translation could be: “When the worst student hears about the way / He laughs out loud / If he did not laugh / It would be unworthy of being the way,” D. C. Lau, cit., p. 102.
The connection of Zen74 with tea is proverbial. We have already remarked that the tea-ceremony was a development of the Zen ritual. The name of Laozi, the founder of Taoism, is also intimately associated with the history of tea. It is written in the Chinese school manual concerning the origin of habits and customs75 that the ceremony of offering tea to a guest began with Guanyin,76 a well-known disciple of Laozi, who first at the gate of the Han Pass77 presented to the “Old Philosopher”78 a cup of the golden elixir. We shall not stop to discuss the authenticity of such tales, which are valuable, however, as confirming the early use of the beverage by the Taoists. Our interest in Taoism and Zen here lies mainly in those ideas regarding life and art which are so embodied in what we call Teaism.
It is to be regretted that as yet there appears to be no adequate presentation of the Taoists and Zen doctrines in any foreign language, though we have had several laudable attempts.79
Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade,—all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design. But, after all, what great doctrine is there which is easy to expound? The ancient sages never put their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise. Laozi himself, with his quaint humour, says, “If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it.”80
The Tao literally means a Path. It has been severally translated as the Way, the Absolute, the Law, Nature,
The lotus flower, the highest symbol of spirituality in Asia, is born of mud
107. We refer to Ralph N. Cram, Impressions of Japanese Architecture and the Allied Arts, New York, The Baker and Taylor Co., 1905 [author’s note]. The name is actually Ralph Adams Cram (1863–1942).
108. Okakura’s expression “Abode of Fancy” has a more romantic feel than the perhaps more precise translation “house of refined taste” (from suki, fine arts, refined taste, and ya, roof, house).
109. It is known that characters were brought to Japan from China. They are called ideograms when they express a concept and pictograms when they synthetically describe an image. The Japanese later added phonic marks, abbreviations of a few characters, which they needed for inflections and particles, which are not a part of the Chinese language but of vital importance to Japanese writing.
110. In the original text: “Senno-Soyeki.”
ToEuropean architects brought up on the traditions of stone and brick construction, our Japanese method of building with wood and bamboo seems scarcely worthy to be ranked as architecture. It is but quite recently that a competent student of Western architecture has recognised and paid tribute to the remarkable perfection of our great temples.107 Such being the case as regards our classic architecture, we could hardly expect the outsider to appreciate the subtle beauty of the tea-room, its principles of construction and decoration being entirely different from those of the West.
The tea-room (the sukiya) does not pretend to be other than a mere cottage—a straw hut, as we call it. The original ideographs for sukiya mean the Abode of Fancy.108 Latterly the various tea-masters substituted various Chinese characters109 according to their conception of the tea-room, and the term sukiya may signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment. It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving something unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete. The ideals of Teaism have since the sixteenth century influenced our architecture to such degree that the ordinary Japanese interior of the present day, on account of the extreme simplicity and chasteness of its scheme of decoration, appears to foreigners almost barren.
The first independent tea-room was the creation of Sen no Sōeki,110 commonly known by his later name of
Boya listens in rapture to the sound of the Paulownia guqin (heptachord) that only he was able to make vibrate
138. In the original text: “Harp.” Actually a guqin, or qin, a traditional heptacord instrument of the zither family.
139. The Dragon Gorge of Honan [author’s note]. In the text: “Lungmen.” More precisely, the gorge of Dragon’s Gate of Henan, near Loyang, filled with caves and rock temples of considerable historical and architectural importance, including major monuments built there during the period of Buddhism’s introduction and expansion into China.
140. The Paulownia tomentosa, the “emperor’s tree.”
141. Actually it would be a king, since the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, styled himself in such manner (di) only in 221 BC, after he had unified China.
142. In the original text: “Peiwoh.” Yu Boya was a mythical musician who lived during the spring and autumn period (770–453 BC). Liezi, in his homonymous work (on which see chapter 3, note 91), recounts that Boya, after the death of his only great friend Zong Ziqi, the only person who could penetrate the deep meaning of his melodies, played his guqin on his friend’s tomb one last time, then destroyed it, renouncing music for ever.
Have you heard the Taoist tale of the Taming of the Harp?138
Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Longmen139 stood a Kiri tree,140 a veritable king of the forest. It reared its head to talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver dragon that slept beneath. And it came to pass that a mighty wizard made of this tree a wondrous harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of musicians. For long the instrument was treasured by the Emperor141 of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings. In response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they fain would sing. The harp refused to recognise a master.
At last came Boya,142 the prince of harpists. With tender hand he caressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an unruly horse, and softly touched the chords. He sang of nature and the seasons, of high mountains and flowing waters, and all the memories of the tree awoke! Once more the sweet breath of spring played amidst its branches. The young cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the budding flowers. Anon were heard the dreamy voices of summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain, the wail of the cuckoo. Hark! a tiger roars—the valley answers again. It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and through the snowfilled air swirl flocks of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with fierce delight.
Then Boya changed the key and sang of love. The forest swayed like an ardent swain deep lost in thought. On
Secret life of flowers and paintings
In the trembling grey of a spring dawn, when the birds were whispering in mysterious cadence among the trees, have you not felt that they were talking to their mates about the flowers? Surely with mankind the appreciation of flowers must have been coeval with the poetry of love. Where better than in a flower, sweet in its unconsciousness, fragrant because of its silence, can we image the unfolding of a virgin soul? The primeval man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended the brute. He became human in thus rising above the crude necessities of nature. He entered the realm of art when he perceived the subtle use of the useless.
In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends. We eat, drink, sing, dance, and flirt with them. We wed and christen with flowers. We dare not die without them. We have worshipped with the lily, we have meditated with the lotus, we have charged in battle array with the rose and the chrysanthemum. We have even attempted to speak in the language of flowers. How could we live without them? It frightens one to conceive of a world bereft of their presence. What solace do they not bring to the bedside of the sick, what a light of bliss to the darkness of weary spirits? Their serene tenderness restores to us our waning confidence in the universe even as the intent gaze of a beautiful child recalls our lost hopes. When we are laid low in the dust it is they who linger in sorrow over our graves.
Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above the brute. Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon show his teeth. It has been said that a man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he
191. Okakura is referring to a passage in the Southern Record (Nanpōroku, 399), the posthumous collection of Rikyū’s teachings, about a poem by Fujiwara no Ietaka (1158–1237): “Show them who wait / Only for cherry blossoms / There in the mountain village: / Grass peeks through the snow, / And with it, spring,” Nicolas Fiévé, “A Critical History of Japanese Housing from the Perspective of the Human-Nature Relationship” in: M. Mariotti, M. R. Novielli, B. Ruperti and S. Vesco (eds) Rethinking Nature in Post-Fukushima Japan. Facing the Crisis, Venezia, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, Digital Publishing, 2018, pp. 26-27.
192. Okakura’s statement are at least in part debatable. The crisis originating from the political conservatism of the Tokugawa clan created innovatory tensions and pressures within the country’s social structures that could not be freely expressed due to the persistent feudal structure. These tensions drove the government to institute a system of administrative and ideological (neo-Confucianism) commands and controls, curbing the country’s most creative energies with a system of institutions and limitations of every kind. This is why the Tokugawa period marked, among other things, the triumph of a Baroque-like style generated by opposing social and religious pressures, similar to what happened in Europe, and especially in Italy, consequent to the Counter-Reformation. The style that the author is referring to can also be considered a continuation of a “national current” of architecture, and so little, if at all, influenced by the Chinese, with ancient roots that emerge, for example, in a few aspects of the shindenzukuri of the second phase of the classical age or that of the Fujiwara (984–1185).
193. Construction began on the imperial villa of Katsura and its celebrated garden south of Kyoto in 1620 (see also chapter 4, note 129). In the West, perhaps even more than in Japan, it is considered the supreme masterpiece of organic, modular architecture. All of the great modern architects were influenced by it, including Gropius, Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
194. In the original text: “Najoya.” The castle of Nagoya is the celebrated fortress of the Tokugawa family, built by Ieyasu in 1610. All of the daimyō were forced to pay a special tax to finance its construction.
195. See chapter 4, note 124.
196. One of the buildings in the Daitokuji complex in Kyoto, built in 1323. It belongs to the Rinzai branch of Zen.
The heart of the Master as a tea brazier bringing warmth to the flow of being
In religion the Future is behind us. In art the present is the eternal. The tea-masters held that real appreciation of art is only possible to those who make of it a living influence. Thus they sought to regulate their daily life by the high standard of refinement which obtained in the tea-room. In all circumstances serenity of mind should be maintained, and conversation should be conducted as never to mar the harmony of the surroundings. The cut and colour of the dress, the poise of the body, and the manner of walking could all be made expressions of artistic personality. These were matters not to be lightly ignored, for until one has made himself beautiful he has no right to approach beauty. Thus the tea-master strove to be something more than the artist,—art itself. It was the Zen of aestheticism. Perfection is everywhere if we only choose to recognise it. Rikyū loved to quote an old poem which says: “To those who long only for flowers, fain would I show the full-blown spring which abides in the toiling buds of snow-covered hills.”191
Manifold indeed have been the contributions of the tea-masters to art. They completely revolutionised the classical architecture and interior decorations, and established the new style which we have described in the chapter of the tea-room, a style to whose influence even the palaces and monasteries built after the sixteenth century have all been subject.192 The many-sided Kobori Enshū has left notable examples of his genius in the Imperial villa of Katsura,193 the castles of Nagoya194 and Nijō,195 and the monastery of Kohōan.196 All the celebrated gardens of Japan were laid out by the tea-masters. Our pottery would probably never have attained its high quality of excellence if the tea-masters had not lent it to