Japanese incense burner of 
the Tokugawa Period, the 
early 17 th Century 
THE 
J A P A 
CEREMONY 
The Epitome of Japanese Culture, This Native Custom Presents Many 
Opportunities to the Collector of Things Oriental 
GARDNER TEALL 
humanity,” as it has been called, may have an 
ancestry of 4,657 years for the traditions of its 
cheer. Dengyo Daishi, a celebrated Buddhist 
saint, brought seeds of the tea plant from China 
to Japan in A. D. 805. According to an 
early Buddhist legend, as set forth by Basil 
Hall Chamberlain in Things Japanese, ‘'the 
origin of the tea-shrub was on this wise. 
Daruma (Dharma), an Indian saint of the 
6th Century, had spent many long years in 
ceaseless prayer and watching. At last, one 
night, his eyelids, unable to bear the fatigue 
any longer, closed and he slept soundly until 
I T has been said that a full understanding 
of Japanese art in and after the Middle 
Ages is impossible without a knowledge of the 
Cha-no-yu, the Tea Ceremony, a ceremony 
famous in the annals of Japanese culture. 
This is true. 
The various art objects connected with the 
Cha-no-yu have long received the enthusiastic 
interest of the connoisseur and collector, not 
only in the Orient, but in the Occident as well. 
To this ceremony we undoubtedly owe the pres¬ 
ervation of many exceptionally remarkable 
art treasures, examples of the ceramic art of 
China, Korea and Japan, 
objects in bronze and in 
lacquer and probably 
many masterpieces of the 
early painters of the East. 
The Cha-no-yu — the 
literal translation of the 
name is “hot water for 
tea”—may, as a Japanese 
authority says, briefly be 
described as “a meeting 
for tea drinking held 
among people of the high¬ 
er class in accordance 
with a code of rules and 
an etiquette peculiarly its 
own. Historically it is 
closely related to the Zen 
sect of Buddhism.” 
Tea Traditions 
lea drinking is a cus¬ 
tom which was introduced 
into Japan from China. 
At how early a period the 
Chinese were acquainted 
with the tea plant we do 
not know, but legend 
avers that the Emperor 
Chinnung discovered its 
virtues in the year 2737 
B. C., and so “the cup of 
morning. When the saint awoke, he was so 
angry with his lazy eyelids that he cut them 
off and flung them on the ground. But lo! 
each lid was suddenly transformed into a 
shrub, whose efficacious leaves, infused in 
water, minister to the vigils of holy men.” 
Tea in Japan 
Notwithstanding the credit given Dengyo 
Daishi for introducing tea into Japan in the 
last year of the reign of the fiftieth sovereign, 
the Emperor Kwammu, tea drinking did not 
gain favor in this Heian Period, but awaited a 
later development. Tea 
was re-introduced into 
Japan by the Buddhist 
abbot Myoe, who planted 
seeds from China near 
Kyoto, although a coarse 
wild variety of tea plant 
was then native to Nip¬ 
pon. In the second year 
of the Kempo era, A. D. 
1214, the celebrated Zen 
priest, Eisai, offered a 
brew of tea to the Shogun, 
Sanetomo Minamoto, who 
was confined to his bed 
by a serious illness, recom¬ 
mending it as a medicine 
and handing the Shogun 
a volume by himself bear¬ 
ing the title of The Salu¬ 
tary Influence of Tea- 
Drinking. Evidently the 
Shogun found it a pana¬ 
cea, and thenceforth tea 
was to hold an established 
position in Japanese his¬ 
tory. 
Allusion has been made 
to the Buddhist legend of 
the origin of the tea plant, 
and we have said that 
historically the Cha-no- 
Korean tea bowls, IS th 
and lbth Centuries, 
above; Japanese tea jar, 
1650, below 
Japanese pottery censer, 
18 th Century; Sheng 
Nung, a typical tea cere¬ 
mony exhibit 
Tea jars are an essential object in the ceremony and upon them Japanese ceramicists 
expended some of their noblest efforts. These four are examples of Seto ware of the 
\lth and 18 th Centuries 
