Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/468

456 among collectors of Japanese curios than the cha-no-yu, or tea ceremonies, of which so many of the highly prized little "japanosities" in their collections are in one way or another the implements. And as quarrelling with other collectors is part of every true collector's nature, so also has the battle raged round the Japanese tea-table,—a veritable and literal storm in a tea-cup. One set disparages the tea ceremonies as essentially paltry and effeminate, and asserts that their influence has cramped the genius of Japanese art, by confusing beauty with archaism and making goals of characteristics worthy only to be starting-points. The opposite school sees in these same ceremonies a profoundly beneficial influence, an influence which has kept Japanese art from leaving the narrow path of purity and simplicity for the broad road of a meretricious gaudiness.

What, then, are these tea ceremonies. And first of all, what is their history? Have their votaries at all epochs been enamoured of simplicity and archaism to the degree which both friends and foes seem to take for granted? If our own slight researches into the subject prove anything, they prove that these traits are comparatively modern.

The tea ceremonies have undergone three transformations during the six or seven hundred years of their existence. They have passed through a medico-religious stage, a luxurious stage, and lastly an esthetic stage. They originated in tea-drinking pure and simple on the part of certain Buddhist priests of the Zen sect, who found the infusion useful in keeping them awake during the performance of their midnight devotions. The first aristocrat whose name is mentioned in connection with tea is Minamotono-Sanetomo, Shōgun of Japan from A.D. 1203 to 1218. He seems to have been a youthful debauchee, whom the Buddhist abbot Eisai endeavoured to save from the wine-cup by making him take tea instead. As is still the custom of propagandists, Eisai accompanied this recommendation by the gift of a tract on the subject. It was composed by himself, and bore the title of "The Salutary Influence of Tea-Drinking." In it was explained