04 - Book of Tea by Kakuzō Okakura

The Book of Tea, written by Okakura Kakuzo in the early 20th century, is a profound exploration of the art and philosophy surrounding tea in Japanese culture. First published in 1906, this timeless work has captivated readers across generations. Kakuzo introduces the concept of Teaism, illustrating how tea has permeated nearly every aspect of Japanese life, from thought to aesthetics. His unique background‚being born and raised in Japan yet fluent in English‚allows him to bridge cultural gaps, making the book accessible to Western readers. Within its pages, he delves into the intersections of Zen, Taoism, and the secular dimensions of tea culture, emphasizing the simplicity that Teaism imparts. This simplicity, he argues, has profoundly influenced Japanese art and architecture. The book culminates with insightful reflections on the Tea Masters, particularly Sen no Rikyu, and his pivotal role in shaping the Japanese Tea Ceremony. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information are to volunteer, please
visit www dot LibriVox dot org. The Book of t
by Okakura Kakuzo, Chapter five Art Appreciation. Have you heard

(00:25):
the Taoist tale of the Taming of the Harp? Once
in the Hoary Ages, in the ravine of Lungmen, stood
a Kidi tree, a veritable king of the forest. It
reared its head to talk to the stars. Its roots
struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils with
those of the silver dragon that slept beneath. And it

(00:46):
came to pass that a mighty wizard made of this
tree a wondrous harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed,
but by the greatest of musicians. For long the instrument
was treasured by the Emperor of China, But all in
vain were the effort of those who, in turn tried
to draw melody from its strings. In response to their
utmost strivings there came from the harp, but harsh notes

(01:09):
of disdain ill according with the songs they fain would sing.
The harp refused to recognize a master at last came
Pei Woe, the prince of Harpis. With tender hand, he
caressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an
unruly horse, and softly touched the chords. He sang of

(01:29):
nature and the seasons of high mountains and flowing waters,
and all the memories of the tree awoke once more.
The sweet breath of spring played amidst its branches. The
young cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to
the budding flowers. Anon were heard, the dreamy voices of
summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain,

(01:51):
the wail of the cuckoo hark, a tiger roars, The
valley answers again. It is autumn. In the desert. Night
shone arp like a sword, gleams the moon upon the
frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and through the snow filled
air swirl flocks of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon
the boughs with fierce delight. Then Peiwoh changed the key

(02:16):
and sang of love. The forest swayed like an ardent,
swaying deep lost in thought on high like a haughty maiden,
swept a cloud, bright and fair, but passing trailed long
shadows on the ground black like despair. Again the mode
was changed. Peiwoh sang of war, of clashing steel and

(02:36):
trampling steeds, And in the harp arose the tempest of lungmen.
The dragon rode the lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through
the hills. In ecstasy, the celestial monarch asked Peiwoh wherein
lay the secret of his victory? Sire, He replied, others
have failed because they sang, but of themselves. I left

(02:57):
the harp to choose its theme and nuna, but not
truly whether the harp had been Peiwoh or Peiwoe where
the harp. This story well illustrates the mystery of art appreciation.
The masterpiece is a symphony played upon our finest feelings.
True art is Peiwoh, and we the harp of Lungmen.

(03:19):
At the magic touch of the beautiful, the secret chords
of our being are awakened. We vibrate and thrill in
response to its call. Mind speaks to mind, We listen
to the unspoken, We gaze upon the unseen. The Master
calls forth notes we know not of memories long forgotten
I'll come back to us with a new significance. Hopes

(03:43):
stifled by fear, yearnings that we dare not recognize, stand
forth in new glory. Our mind is the canvas on
which the artists lay their color. Their pigments are our emotions.
Their chiros grow the light of joy the shadow of sadness,
the masterpieces of ourselves as we are of the masterpiece.

(04:06):
The sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art appreciation must
be based on mutual concession. The spectator must cultivate the
proper attitude for receiving the message, as the artist must
know how to impart it. The tea master kobori Enshu,
himself a daimyo, has left to us these memorable words.

(04:31):
Approach a great painting as thou wouldst approach a great prince.
In order to understand a masterpiece, you must lay yourself
low before it and wait with bated breath for its
least utterance. An eminent sung critic once made a charming confession,
said he, in my young days, I praised the master

(04:51):
whose pictures I liked, But as my judgment matured, I
praised myself for liking what the masters had chosen to
have me like. It is to be deplored that so
few of us really take the pains to study the
moods of the masters. In our stubborn ignorance, we refuse
to render them this simple courtesy, and thus often miss

(05:11):
the rich repast of beauty spread before our very eyes.
A master has always something to offer while we go
hungry solely because of our own lack of appreciation. To
the sympathetic, a masterpiece becomes a living reality towards which
we feel drawn in bounds of comradeship. The masters are immortal,

(05:34):
for their loves and fears live in us over and
over again. It is rather the soul than the hand,
the man, more than the technique, which appeals to us.
The more human the call, the deeper is our response.
It is because of this secret understanding between the master
and ourselves that in poetry or romance we suffer and

(05:55):
rejoice with the hero and the heroine she come up
our Japanese Shakespeare has laid down as one of the
first principles of dramatic composition, the importance of taking the
audience into the confidence of the author. Several of his
pupils submitted plays for his approval but only one of

(06:17):
the pieces appealed to him. It was a place somewhat
resembling the Comedy of Errors, in which twin brethrens suffer
through mistaken identity. This said Chikamatsu has the proper spirit
of the drama, for it takes the audience into consideration.
The public is permitted to know more than the actors.
It knows where the mistake lies, and pities the poor

(06:38):
figures on the board who innocently rush to their fate.
The great masters of both the East and the West
never forget the value of suggestion as a means for
taking the spectator into their confidence. Who can contemplate a
masterpiece without being awed by the immense vista of thought
presented to our consideration? How familiar in some pathetic are

(07:00):
they all, how cold in contrast to the modern commonplaces.
In the former we feel the warm outpouring of a
man's heart, and the latter only a formal salute. Engrossed
in his technique, the modern rarely rises above himself. Like
the musicians who vainly invoked the lungmen harp, He sings

(07:20):
only of himself. His works may be nearer science, but
are further from humanity. We have an old saying in
Japan that a woman cannot love a man who is
truly vain, for there is no crevice in his heart
for love to enter and fill up. In art, vanity
is equally fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part

(07:41):
of the artist or the public. Nothing is more hallowing
than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the
moment of meeting the art lover transcends himself at once
he is and is not. He catches a glimpse of infinity.
But words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has
no tongue, freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit

(08:04):
moves in the rhythm of things. It is thus that
art becomes akin to religion and a nobles mankind. It
is this which makes a masterpiece something sacred. In the
old days, the veneration in which the Japanese held the
work of the great artist was intense. The tea masters
guarded their treasures with religious secrecy, and it was often

(08:24):
necessary to open a whole series of boxes, one within
the other before reaching the shrine itself, the silken wrapping
within whose soft folds lay the holy of holies rarely
was the object exposed to view, and then only to
the initiated. At the time when Teaism was in the
state of ascendency, the tycho's generals would be better satisfied

(08:47):
with the present of a rare work of art than
a large grant of territory as a reward of victory.
Many of our favorite dramas are based on the loss
and recovery of a noted masterpiece force stance. In one play,
the Palace of Lord Hosolkawa, in which was preserved the
celebrated painting of the Dharuma by Sesson, suddenly takes fire

(09:09):
through the negligence of the samurai in charge. Resolved at
all hazards to rescue the precious painting, he rushes into
the burnt building and seizes the Kakemono, only to find
all means of exit cut off by the flames. Thinking
only of the picture, he slashes open his body with
his sword, wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson, and

(09:30):
plunges it into the gaping wound. The fires, at last extinguished.
Among the smoky numbers, is found a half consumed corpse,
within which reposes the treasure. Uninjured by the fire, horrible
as such tales are, they illustrate the great value that
we set upon a masterpiece, as well as the devotion
of a trusted samurai. We must remember, however, that art

(09:54):
is of value only to the extent that it speaks
to us. It might be a universal language if we
ourselves were universal in our sympathies. Our finite nature, the
power of tradition and conventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts,
restrict the scope of our capacity for artistic enjoyment. Our

(10:15):
very individuality establishes, in one sense, a limit to our understanding,
and our esthetic personality seeks its own affinitives in the
creations of the past. It is true that with cultivation
our sense of art appreciation broadens, and we become able
to enjoy many hitherto unrecognized expressions of beauty. But after all,

(10:37):
we see only our own image in the universe. Our
particular idiosyncrasies dictate the mode of our perceptions. The tea
masters collected only objects which fell strictly within the measure
of their individual appreciation. One is reminded in this connection
of a story concerning Kobori Enshu. Enshu was complemented by

(10:59):
his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in
the choice of his collection, said they, Each piece is
such that no one could help admiring. It shows that
you had better taste than had Rikiu, for his collection
could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand. Sorrowfully,
m Chu replied, this only proves how commonplace I am.

(11:23):
The great Rikiu dared to love only those objects which
personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the
taste of the majority. Verily, Rikiu was one in a
thousand among tea masters. It is much to be regretted
that so much of the apparent enthusiasm for art the
present day has no foundation in real feeling. In this

(11:46):
democratic age of ours, men clamor for what is popularly
considered to be the best, regardless of their feelings. They
want the costly, not the refined, the fashionable not the beautiful,
to the masses. Con templation of illustrated periodicals a worthy
product in their own industrialism would give a more digestible
food for artistic enjoyment than the early Italians or the

(12:10):
Ashikaga masters, whom they pretend to admire. The name of
the artist is more important to them than the quality
of the work. As a Chinese critic complained many centuries ago,
people criticize a picture by their ear. It is this
lack of genuine appreciation that is responsible for the pseudo
classic horrors that today greet us wherever we turn. Another

(12:34):
common mistake is that of confusing art with archaeology. The
veneration born of antiquity is one of the best traits
in the human character, and fain would we have cultivated
it to a greater extent. The old masters are rightly
honoured for opening the path to future enlightenment. The mere
fact that they have passed unscathed through centuries of criticism

(12:57):
and come down to us still covered with glory, commands
our respect. But we should be foolish, indeed, if we
value their achievement simply on the score of age. Yet
we allow our historical sympathy to override our esthetic discrimination.
We offer flowers of approbation when the artist is safely
laid in his grave. The nineteenth century, pregnant with the

(13:20):
theory of evolution, has moreover created in us the habit
of losing sight of the individual in the species. A
collector is anxious to acquire specimens to illustrate a period
or a school, and forgets that a single masterpiece can
teach us more than any number of the mediocre products
of a given period or school. We classify too much

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and enjoy too little. The sacrifice of the esthetic to
the so called scientific method of exhibition has been the
bane of many museums. The claims of contemporary art cannot
be ignored in any vital scheme of life. The art
of today is that which really belongs to us. It
is our own reflection. In condemning it, we but condemn ourselves.

(14:07):
We say that the present age possesses no art. Who
is responsible for this? It is indeed a shame that,
despite all our rhapsodies about the ancients, we pay so
little attention to our own possibilities. Struggling artists, weary souls
lingering in the shadow of cold disdain in our self
centered century. What inspiration do we offer them? The past

(14:30):
may well look with pity at the poverty of our civilization.
The future will laugh at the barrenness of our art.
We are destroying art, in destroying the beautiful in life.
Would that some great wizard might, from the stem of society,
shape a mighty harp whose strings would resound to the
touch of a genius. This is the end of Part

(14:56):
five of the Book of Ta by Olcacudra Cacuzol