Japanese Traditional Activities
Japanese arts, with their links to Zen Buddhism, are often more a disciplined meditation than an emotional expression. Trying a traditional Japanese art can be a wonderful addition to your visit to Japan, and Into Japan is pleased to be able to arrange the experience for you.
Flower Arrangement - Ikebana
Ikebana, meaning “living flowers,” is sometimes referred to as kado, or “the way of flowers.” Ikebana masters create symbolic works from cut flowers, branches, grasses, and other natural and sometimes synthetic materials. Along with calligraphy, ikebana is an integral part of tea ceremony, and no tea house would be complete without a formal arrangement of seasonal flowers.
Japanese Calligraphy - Shodo
The pictographic nature of Japanese writing lends great artistic scope to Japan’s flowing, brush-written calligraphy. Though often ornate to the point of illegibility, shodo is suggestive of natural phenomena even to the untrained eye. With links to Buddhism and tea ceremony, seasonal calligraphic scrolls are paired with ikebana arrangements and hung in the tokonoma alcove of traditional houses and Japanese inns, or ryokan. Hanging scrolls always grace the walls of tea houses, and play an important role in the tea ceremony.
Bonsai & Gardening
The art of growing and sculpting miniature trees, though practiced throughout East Asia, is understandably popular in Japan, where arable land is limited and expensive. By using a variety of techniques and styles, bonsai gardeners can bring a windswept pine or a piece of forest into even the smallest Japanese house. Larger-scale Japanese gardening follows the same principle, actually or abstractly re-creating landscapes in any space, from tiny urban gardens to vast parks.
Tea Ceremony
Japanese Tea Ceremony is perhaps the most enigmatic of the traditional arts. Unlike the more familiar daily brew of steeped green tea, or o-cha, tea for the ceremony is made from bright green powdered matcha, and served with the utmost hospitality during an elaborately restrained ceremony.
Also called chanoyu, sado, or chado, the ceremony is, quite literally, “the way of tea,” or “[making] water for the tea.” Most famous of the Zen arts, drinking the stimulating matcha began in the monasteries as an aid to meditation. Developed as an art by the samurai in the thirteenth century, it was formalised two centuries later by the great tea master Sen-no-Rikyu, who laid down rules linking tea ceremony to the arts of calligraphy, flower arranging, and ceramics.
A full tea ceremony is traditionally performed in a specially designed tea house within a formal garden. The guests enter the tea house through a door so low that everyone must stoop to enter, signifying equality within the tea house. Traditionally samurai weapons were left outside: people entered unarmed and equal. Chanoyu ceremonies vary in length depending on the food and tea served, from a light and very traditional kaiseki dinner accompanied by both thick and thin whisked teas, to a simple bowl of thin tea complemented by a Japanese confection.
Chanoyu, however, is more than a simple serving of food and tea. Tea ceremony rests on the fundamental principle of wabi, a refined and subdued aesthetic. Great attention is paid to the precise and delicate movements of the host, the instruments used to serve the tea, as well as to the ikebana flowers and shodo calligraphy displayed in the tea room.
Tasting the tea is simple enough, but arranging a tea ceremony and following the rules can be confusing without the language. Into Japan is happy to do the hard work for you and arrange tea ceremonies at an English-speaking private residence or a Buddhist temple in Kyoto.