July 5, 2020
Satsubako
We’ve made it through the five, at least for furo. Woohoo.
- About satsubako:
- There’s really nothing special about the temae, and really it does not belong in shikaden. Nothing is like the rest of shikaden — there’s no gyo no te, there’s no “no shoryaku”, ie you abbreviate just like you do in konarai. That means doing yohosabaki in the beginning and 3x dobuki, but only so-sabaki and 2x dobuki at the end.
- Ideally, guest would bring tea during zenrei. But it’s still a shitty thing to do. Try to let your host know in advance if this is something you wanted to do.
- There are three satsubako:
- Rikyu-konomi - has a lid that fully sits on the box, ie how a natsume has a proper lid that wraps around the main body.
- ???-konomi - has a flat lid that sits atop the box, with two strips of wood inside along the narrow edge that keeps the box in place. Yoroubuta?
- Gengensai-konomi — same as the above, but instead of just the narrow strips of wood, the narrow strips also extend down a bit lengthwise.
- All three satsubako are the same except for the lid
- Apocryphal story, it is said that the box is the same box as was used to carry “parcels” of tea (for lack of a better word, ie one unit of tea that is sufficient for koicha for a chaji). At least, I think that’s what it was on the amount contained. For actually doing satsubako, rikyu received tea one time, and he used this box to hold the second type of tea
- About temae
- The usuki displayed at the end should NOT be a natsume. You already have a natsume in the box; use something of a different shape.
- Daikai chaire was the original tea container, so it’s okay to use it as an usuki. Just take the shifuku off and use as you would otherwise.
- At the beginning, you can/should already have the usuki on the tana. If your tana is large enough that you can fit both an usuki and a satsubako on it, then you can do that. If you can’t, then it’s okay to bring the usuki in at the end before you answer questions for haiken, the same way you do for daisu
- You can do this hakobi as well! You just bring the box in (shit, you bring it in first?) and leave it karioki very high up. Otherwise, everything else is exactly the same. Better to do this in ro season when you have a little more room for karioki.
- TODO: If you do hakobi, the box comes in… first?
- HANDLING THE SATSUBAKO:
- When you take it from the tana (and go to move it from imai), you should move thumb and fingers into place (ie holding like a C) before you move. More stable.
- Also you don’t need to make contact first with L/R necessarily, but you should make a clear movement first with L/R as you go to pick it up
- ALSO AT THE BEGINNING DURING NAKADACHI, the lid is kake against the side, not flat on the floor.
- TSUTSUMIBUKUSA INSTEAD OF OTSUBUKURO:
- You end up with two fukusa, one on your left (the normal one) and the tsutsundabukusa (that ends up on your right). You only use the tsutsundabukusa to deal specifically with that natsume. So kiyome at the beginning, then kiyome at the end. When you exit for the mizuya for the first time while taking out the kensui, then you should remove the fukusa from your obi and leave in the mizuya.
- Satsubako is only done in a 4.5 mat room or smaller because you don’t want to have to make guests stand with the dougu. There is a way to do it, ie the way the teishu does it, but it’s pretty bad to make the guests do that.
- Other notes:
- If you are doing usuki/chaire irekae and have an unstable mizusashi lid to put the chashaku on, you have two options. One, you could hold the chashaku in your hand while you’re doing things. So you pick up chashaku with R, then do everything you would normally, just swapping hands s.t. the unused hand holds the chashaku. So pick up chashaku with R, give to L, take chaire with R, give chashaku to R, move usuki to honjimae position with L, then place chashaku with R. The alternative is to put the chashaku on the near-right side of the tana (in lieu of putting on the mizusashi)
- Snapping the fukusa:
- Hold in about a normal position (maybe a little more toward the ears). Thumb should be closer to the ears than the forefinger (rather than pinching your thumb between your forefinger and your middle finger)
- Forefinger brings the far edge of the fukusa up, middle finger makes the second crease with a portion maybe 2-3cm below the upper edge of the fukusa so you have a valley
- Entire thing should be facing upwards somewhat, ie rather than facing your body directly
- Okibishaku
- Make a more concerted effort to think about it as a three step process, not a two step process. My instability comes from going from regular hold directly into placing-down hold. If I gave the in-between bit a little more umph, then it may be safer.
- He thinks the arrow on the mizusashi should point toward the guests. Specifically, having your palm over the pointy part is weird.
- From the beginning, temae:
- Everything from the beginning is literally the same.
- Move your whole body when scooping water. Try not to reach out with your arms.
- After the first bowl is served and last guest does suikiri, first guest requests bowl haiken. Then you turn and shibori chakin, then deal with fukusa if need be. Once you’re done with that, the shokyaku watches and then requests the second bowl. Something like “Douzo o cha wo mo isshu onegai itashimasu”.
- Natsume positioning should be himado, but maybe in line with the bowl rather than in line with the chaire. His thinking: “Having shinnuri so close to himado makes me nervous”. Sgtm.
- After you serve the second bowl of tea and ask about the fukukagen, you immediately add mizu. Then you (turn?) for the chamei discussion etc (?????). I don’t think you turn here but I can’t remember.
- At suikiri (I THINK), shokyaku asks for haiken. Once you do chaire and shifuku and put them out, guests deai to swap out the bowl for haiken mono.
- After you do sorei and ichiyo oshimai, THEN guests start doing haiken for the chaire and shifuku.
- Then everything is usual until the end… yeah I think everything is normal at this point.
- Similar to the orisue in kagetsu, the chaire and shifuku must be out of the room by the time the mizutsugi come out. So that means that the guests need to deai and swap the chairemono with the usukimono before the host comes out with the mizutsugi. This means that they can start their deai when you leave with the kensui.
- Kyaku haiken:
- Natsume and chashaku stay heriuchi, hako stays herisoto
- Shokyaku/makyaku place box ON THE GROUND (flat, not kake) on kamiza/geza, not on right.
- For all makyaku, lid stays naname as it’s passed (same as fuchidaka, ie naname to the left)
- I think that’s it? Owari?