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Inside the Blue Book
A Taste for Tea
by
Jennifer L. Holley
April
2003
HSAR 421b:
Art and
Aesthetics of the Japanese Tea Ceremony
Faculty:
Mimi Yiengpruksawan, Professor, Art History
"I'm
very honored to be drinking this tea"
and "Excuse me for going first" are two sentences rarely heard in
Yale dining halls. However, Mimi Yiengpruksawan's students in "Art
and Aesthetics of the Japanese Tea Ceremony" will be using such
honorific language at a ceremony with a licensed tea master this
month. The event will be a highlight of the popular art history
spring seminar, for which Yiengpruksawan began receiving e-mail
inquiries in September. The 21 students who made the cut look at
the objects, environments, and philosophy of the tea ceremony. "The
ceremony emerged in the context of Buddhist monastic life, yet it
has an aesthetic dimension," she says.
Students have the opportunity
to think about connoisseurship and how different cultures learn
to value objects. "The seemingly plainest items, such as bowls,
whisks, and scoops for tea, are valued highly for their beauty,"
says Yiengpruksawan. "Although the tea ceremony is about making
do with simple, small things, people spend fortunes on tea objects."
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The
quiet practice of tea taught Yiengpruksawan self-discipline
and patience.
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The ceremony started
in the 15th century in the culture of wealthy merchants, warlords,
and monks. Today, it follows traditions that were in place at the
end of the 16th century. The service, which is intensely choreographed,
didn't come easily to Yiengpruksawan. She remembers nearly five
years of three-hours-long Saturday morning training sessions, which
she attended as a graduate student in Japan in an attempt to understand
the culture. She had usually been out partying the night before,
and the 9 a.m. meeting time and the gentle hiss of the water boiling
proved to be a lethal combination. "I'd fall asleep!" she says.
However, she also notes
that when she received a scolding for her behavior and returned
to the quiet practice of tea, she learned self-discipline and patience.
"You have to be really focused," says Yiengpruksawan. "At the same
time, you are visually cherishing the tea and the environment."
Now one who appreciates the tradition, she calls it "a learned aesthetic,
like for certain Japanese food."  |
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