It has replaced the powdered tea in
ordinary consumption, though the latter still continues to
hold its place as the tea of teas.
It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination
of tea-ideals. Our successful resistance of the Mongol
invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement
so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic
inroad. Tea with us became more than an idealisation of
the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The
beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity
and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and
guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost
beatitude of the mundane. The tea-room was an oasis
in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers
could meet to drink from the common spring of art-
appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama
whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and
the paintings. Not a colour to disturb the tone of the
room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a
gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break
the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed
simply and naturally--such were the aims of the tea-
ceremony.
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