Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/299

 esoterics of the cult, their redeeming points being entirely of the impressionist order and their qualities having reference solely to the moral attributes that the tea philosophy sought to inculcate. Perhaps in the whole range of Japanese characteristics there is none so perplexing to a foreign observer as this phase of sthetics. Yet the riddle is resolved at once when the "rusty things" are considered not exoterically but esoterically; not as specimens of art but as symbols of a cult. Many of them are indescribably ugly. Never intended to be choice productions, they present gross technical defects, which very defects constitute merits in the eyes of a Cha-jin. Blisters resulting from excessive heat in the potter's kiln become marks of special manufacture; solutions of continuity in the glaze of a porcelain vessel are prized evidences of a certain era; deformity of shape is a natural caprice; absence of every outwardly attractive quality typifies unpretentious utility, and accidents of decoration suggest freedom from artifical regularity. These homely failures survived originally by tolerance. Some of them had even been thrown into the refuse heap before the Cha-jin picked them up and consecrated them to his cult, wrapping them in silk crape or rich brocade, repairing their fractures with gold lacquer, and enclosing them in boxes of the finest and costliest workmanship. Evidently this phase of the tea cult offered no encouragement to the progress of the