Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/302

 * A stand of black lacquer, for an alcove ornament (worth about fifty sen from an artistic point of view). 238 yen.
 * A scroll inscribed with the ideographs hei shin (mens qua), from the pen of a litterateur of the Tang dynasty. 1,580 yen.
 * A scroll inscribed with ideographs from the pen of a Sung litterateur. 488 yen.
 * A bamboo tea-ladle (used by Sen-no-Rikiu). 518 yen.
 * A miniature screen, of the kind used for placing beside the furnace in the Tea Ceremony; painted by Shokwado. 258 yen.
 * Five small blue and white porcelain cups, from the kiln of Shonzui Gorodayu. 121 yen.
 * Five small cups of Ming porcelain (red glaze with traces of gold decoration). 110 yen.

The only plea that could ever have been set up on behalf of such objects, namely, their simplicity and costlessness, is at once destroyed when they are thus extravagantly valued for the sake of association.

Had the aesthetics of the Cha-no-yu been limited to this narrow sphere, the result must have been to create hopeless confusion between beauty and archaism, and to rob art of all incentive. But, as has been stated above, there was another side to the cult. If the ceremonial of the Ko-cha, or powdered tea, when conducted on perfectly orthodox lines, forbade any departure from the severest and rudest principles, the ceremony of the Sen-cha, or infused tea, permitted a wide range of ideals, and dispensed with many of the forms and conventions of the practice. In the Sen-cha rite technical excellence, gracefulness of shape, and rarity were valued at their full worth, though prime importance continued to be attached to the