Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/107

 It was six hours after the entrance of the tabako bons before the guests rose to depart. All the troop of maidens escorted us to the door, and after endless bows and farewells, sat on the mats In matchless tableaux, their sweet sayonaras ringing after us as our jinrikishas whirled us down the dark avenues of Shiba.

Cha no yu might well be a religious rite, from the reverence with which it is regarded by the Japanese, and a knowledge of its forms is part of the education of a member of the highest classes. Masters teach its minute and tedious forms, and schools of cha no yu, like the sects of a great faith, divide and differ. The cha no yu ceremony is hedged round with the most awesome, elaborate, and exalted etiquette of any custom in polite Japanese life. Weddings or funerals are simple affairs by comparison. The cha no yu is a complication of all social usages, and was perfected in the sixteenth century, when it was given its vogue by the Shogun Hideyoshi. Before that it had been the diversion of imperial abbots, monarchs retired from business, and other idle and secluded occupants of the charming villas and monasteries around Kioto. Hideyoshi, the Taiko, saw in its precise forms, endless rules, minutiae, and stilted conventionalities a means of keeping his daimios from conspiracies and quarrels when they came together. It was an age of buckram and behavior,_when solemnity constituted the first rule of politeness. Tea drinking was no trivial incident, and time evidently had no value. The daimios soon invested the ceremony with so much luxury and extravagance that Hideyoshi issued sumptuary laws, and the greatest simplicity in accessories was enjoined. The bowls in which the tea was made had to be of the plainest earthen-ware, but the votaries evaded the edict by seeking out the oldest Chinese or Korean bowls, or those made by some celebrated potter. Tea-rooms were 91