March 26, 2022
Notes from Ula at the Warsaw University Library chashitsu. Hakobi Koicha, Tana Usucha, Kasane-jawan daime (all ro).
Temae things
- Opening the small papered door
- Cannot remember the name, small door that’s papered all over, maybe 3/4 width of a hanjo entrance (same as JH yojohan door)
- Official Urasenke stance (as of recently ??) is to homogenize all door openings and open this door the same way as other doors.
- However, this door has no lacquered/wood/whatever sections to grip, so your recourse when opening “normally” is to pinch on the paper. However, there is another way! An original way!
- Split the movement into two, not three, and use the inset in the paper where it helps. Use your opposite hand to open, and switch at the half-way point. (Note: Ula has her own personal taste, to open one-third [keeping closer to the shut position], then open the remaining third, instead of splitting in half).
- Opening the door from mizuya as teishu with wall on right: L crosses body and pulls from the insert. R takes over and pushes from the side (touching the paper, but fingers not extending beyond the plane of the door) for the rest.
- Closing from same position: R crosses body and pulls from inset, L takes over and pushes from inset (crossing).
- All is the same from inside the tea room, except there is no inset! You must reach around and pull the inset from the other side.
- Kakufukudate temae notes:
- Temae is predominantly done as normal hakobi temae (sotozumi though). Chaire is only filled with one person’s worth of tea (which will be emptied mawashi-dashi).
- After first guest ofuku-kagen’s, teishu stands as-is from temaeza (no nakajimae, fukusa still out) and brings in a nagabon with bowls on it.
- Four bowls are arranged in zig-zag with upper-right bowl as first bowl. Three bowls are arranged as triangle pointing away from you.
- Tea will be made immediately. Bowls should be warmed, then just before bringing out, they are filled individually with tea from the mizuya. It’s best to have a hanto.
- Teishu sits with nagabon at imai as usual. It is very tight. It’s okay.
- Make tea:
- Water is immediately poured, no warming or anything (already done in mizuya). Water scoop should be exact, no returning water to the kama. Practically, if you are filling four bowls, you should use two scoops of water. First for the first two, second for the second two. Not full scoops (one koicha is around 1/3 of a ro hishaku scoop).
- Order of filling bowls is counter-clockwise, starting from the upper right.
- After water is in all bowls, tea is kneaded in the same order. Go as quickly as you can while still making good tea.
- Turn with bon to gyo position (completely outside of the ro). This is purely practical — bon is huge, needs somewhere to go. Turn tray on the floor, place out for guests. Turn back, water, fukusa.
- Q: Water immediately? Teishu (me) drank with guests, didn’t do this part exactly.
- Guest manners:
- Jikyaku brings bon out to them (herisoto). They take bowls in the order that they were made. No osaki-ni or anything, just drink immediately.
- Note: These bowls are usually unremarkable, kazujawan or something, so no need to pass around for haiken.
- After drinking, bowl can be passed down to tsume, who is sitting with the bon in front of them. Tsume assembles bowls on the tray.
- Q: What happens next? I was teishu but drank with them, and I just took it right back to the mizuya.
- Our thinking is that tsume probably takes it back to the dougu position for the teishu to take, then they bring it back to the mizuya, given that the teishu is the one who brought it out?
- Jikyaku brings bon out to them (herisoto). They take bowls in the order that they were made. No osaki-ni or anything, just drink immediately.
- Host finishes as usual for a koicha temae. Nagabon is back in the mizuya by this point, so everything goes back to normal.
- Gentle hishaku (no catapult)
- Try to bring hishaku go exactly where it’s going to be, then correct the direction of the handle later.
- ie taking from futaoki on the ground and bringing to kamae, rather than bringing the go all the way to over your L knee and swinging it into kamae, try bringing the go to center (ish), then rotating the handle under it.
- Hishaku position as-written is parallel to your body. But Ula likes to pretend there is a “vanishing point” far away, and that the hishaku handle follows that. So, turned inward a little bit (it’s a perspective thing — sometimes parallel actually looks like it’s rotated away).
- Chashaku on natsume should point to your core, not parallel to your body. (in practice, this is tenari).
- Serving sweets
- Serving to shokyaku in a yojohan, you should sit squarely on the kinindatami and face the guest head on. It’s tight, but you should fit.
- Bowing
- Try not to let your bow swallow your words. Say words first, then bow.
- Always point toward the guest when you bow when you’re serving to them. Don’t serve to them, but bow toward someone else.
- If you need to serve sweets from a different angle, that’s okay. Use your scooting-back opportunity to turn toward the guest for the bow.
- Chaji aisatsu - scoot by covering your knees and sidling forward, not scooting.
- Moving dougu after deai
- The idea of “touch the dougu as little as possible” starts in shikaden. (I haven’t heard this before, but it’s interesting)
- In konarai, shokyaku faces the tsume when taking dougu. Then the move the dougu one position, then return to teishu.
- In shikaden and up, shokyaku stays facing the final direction and does not reposition the dougu after deai. Tsume puts dougu in front of them, shokyaku puts dougu home.
- Walking
- Try to avoid “backing up”. When you stand with kensui after closing the door at the beginning, for example, you should be going to the center of the mat, not to the back of the mat. (“People like to go to the back of the mat, because they feel like the should ‘start at the beginning’.”). That means going from standing position → to ready position in the center of the mat happens along one line, not looping back. Try to follow that line.
- Ula was taught to do the same for walking into ro temaedatami. Specifically, walk up to center of kama (!!!!), then rotate over.
- Haiken dougu spacing
- Three mei from the heri is considered spacious. Right up against the heri is suffocating and makes the room feel too small. One mei from the heri is cozy but comfortable.
- Chashaku kaisaki, projected onto the floor, should be one mei from the heri.
- Chaire is centered vertically on the chashaku, ignoring the fushi.
- Shifuku, she heard recently (from who?) that the center is actually the tsuyu (the joining seam for the two halves). This is weird for me, given that the tsuyu can move up and down, and is not necessarily the visual center of the shifuku.
- Chawan foot can go right up to the robuchi if needed. Yes, the chashaku may fall in, but that’s okay. Make the space you need.
- When placing chashaku temporarily after haiken in tana usucha, you should only place the chashaku on the mizusashi lid if it’s nuributa. If it’s tomobuta, general rule is to place it elsewhere (ie far right top side of tana).
- No solid reasoning for this. “Doesn’t feel right to place on gold patterning” or something?
- Haiken for chaire, she avoids the hole when wiping the inner lid in the same manner as she avoids the center when wiping the natsume at beginning.
- Opening the kama lid, she pulls the lid forward first to allow steam to release forward, then tsuyu cuts.
- Her reason to avoid the corner of the robuchi, to avoid dripping on the corner and damaging robuchi.
- Pouring water, she loves the “pearly sound” you get when both pouring into kama at the end (with mizu) as well as chasentoshi with mizu. This is done by pouring higher (one go or more).
- First hot water pour after bowl comes back, try to pour with more vigor. If the water splashes around inside a bit, it will actually clean the bowl a little.
- Taking hishaku at end to exit, try not to “anticipate” holding the futaoki and extend two fingers. Keep all four fingers holding hishaku, then open later to take futaoki.
- Karioki fukusa in ro should be at corner of right knee, 3 mei from heri.
- Nojiri-sensei thing, a stable body in seiza only bends downward, never to the side etc.
- It is possible to do this in general. When taking the bowl from mizusashi shomen in ro, rather than turn and bend, you can just bend forward and extend your hand to the side.
- Higashiki, while “operational,” never should go all the way up (for shokyaku). It should always sit in front of you. Higashiki should never go to the wall for tsume (putting things that low is dame).
Philosophical things
- Sou-sabaki ichi
- What is your thought process when you’re drawing ichi on the fukusa? “One to ten and back to one? Honrai mu ichi butsu?”
- Yoho-sabaki
- What four things are you thinking about?
- The entire temae, from the moment you enter, is a purification rite for the space. We believe that any space transforms into a tea space by virtue of making temae.
- “Shi-hou”, or four directions, is a representation of the world for Japanese. So purifying all four directions is a clear symbol of purifying the whole world.
- But you can think about any four things. Wa-kei-sei-jaku? Aaron-Ula-Kid1-Kid2? Etc
- No shitsureishimashita at the door
- Daimyo schools have even worse things, saying, “I’m sorry my temae was painful to look at” (o-medaru I think?). This was relevant when you were doing tea for literal lords, and is much more present for samurai schools.
- But Urasenke tends to be much more egalitarian. There is no reason to do that now. Why would you fake modesty?
- Better to say nothing. Try to put your entire humanity into your bow, and let that speak.