JAPANESE TEA UTENSILS REVERED AS ARTWORKS

To a casual observer, the ceramic bowls, bamboo scoops and iron kettles may look merely like props for a simple tea party.

But the centuries-old, Japanese tea utensils and related artworks on view at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center mean much more. The delicate implements, revered by the Japanese as artworks, are integral to chanoyu, the traditional “way of tea” ceremony, and represent an ancient aesthetic, a social code and evolved spiritual ideals.

“Looking from the outside, one would think chanoyu is very constricted,” says Grand Tea Master Soshitsu Sen, head of the Urasenke School of Tea in Kyoto, Japan. “But it is not,” he continues through an interpreter. “It is a place to put into practice all the principles of the world’s religions.”

Sen was here for the recent opening of the “The Art of Chanoyu--The Urasenke Tradition of Tea” at the Japanese center. He is the 15th-generation descendant of Sen Rikyu, the 16th-Century tea master of “impeccable taste,” said to have institutionalized and refined the art of tea three centuries after it was introduced to Japan from China.

For this exhibition, the silver-haired Sen brought about 75 objects from Urasenke, the 17th-Century Sen family residence and tea school he maintains as present leader of the Urasenke lineage and guardian of the Rikyu tea tradition. According to Robert Hori, director of the Japanese center’s Doizaki Gallery (where the works can be seen through March 30), the institution houses one of the finest of about 10 similar private collections in the world.

“By sharing a bowl of tea, we can attain world peace,” says Sen. The 62-year-old grand master is also a Zen Abbot or senior monklike figure, and has made more than 100 trips abroad to promote the way of tea , a practice intimately infused with Zen philosophy and a social custom that forms the basis for Japanese etiquette.

The pieces on loan, dating from the 12th Century to the present (many still used today), include black and red raku and ceramic chawan or tea bowls, graceful chaire or tea containers, tidy wood and lacquered tea caddies, metalwork and calligraphic scrolls.

“The exhibit is divided into two segments,” Hori said, “the first half creates the feeling that viewers are attending a tea gathering,” or chaji , the formal, multi-tiered ceremony. “And the second half is chronologically laid out, showing the development of tastes of grand tea masters in the Urasenke line who commissioned their creation.”

Hori also explained the objects’ characteristic Urasenke aesthetic of wabi , a spare, rustic and subdued quality fostered by Rikyu, who was the first to commission Japanese artisans to create tea utensils in this style. The pieces, most 400-500 years old, will be displayed for three weeks only, Hori added, because of the extreme fragility of the soft clay and delicate bamboo of which many are made.

Takako Akanuma, one of three exhibit curators from Japan, said through an interpreter that “rather than focusing on the individual pieces, we wanted to achieve a balanced whole,” and to create a harmonious display in which the individual ceramic works or utensils formed a cohesive collective, as they would in a tea ceremony.

Hoping to engage viewers experientially, not just as passive onlookers in the way of tea, exhibit organizers also planned several tea servings and demonstrations of chanoyu to accompany the static exhibition. Many who attended last weekend are pupils of a 2,000-strong Los Angeles chapter of the Urasenke School of Tea (one of about 45 worldwide branches), on this occasion celebrating its 35th anniversary.

Sen moved silently through one such offertory tea, bowing, kneeling and pouring with the poise of a ballet dancer and the manual dexterity of a magician. Ceramic and lacquer implements glistened beneath the bright stage lights as he steeped, strained and served. He then delivered a lecture on the spirituality and aesthetic of his life’s work.

“Always keep in mind, that when each of us is following a way--any way--we walk with God,” he said solemnly. And any discipline, practiced over and over again, will lead one to the truth which is “right at hand, right within you” with the mastery of any art or “way.”

And where is one likely to find a clear and imminently accessible path to such illumination, he asked rhetorically?

“In the tea room,” of course, with the mastery of the way of tea.