Chanoyu: How to Understand the Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony is called chanoyu, literally “hot water for tea”, or sado, the way of tea. A host prepares matcha, powdered green tea, and serves it to a small number of guests in a room built for the purpose. Nothing more happens. Yet the practice has influenced Japanese architecture, garden design, ceramics, lacquer, flower arranging and cooking, and it is a good way for a visitor to see how those arts fit together.

Where it came from

Powdered tea was brought from China by the monk Eisai in about 1191, and was drunk in Zen monasteries. By the fifteenth century tea gatherings among the warrior class often displayed prized Chinese objects. Murata Juko, who had studied Zen, turned the gathering towards simplicity, and Takeno Joo continued in that direction. A phrase closely associated with tea is ichi-go ichi-e, “one time, one meeting”: each gathering happens once and cannot be repeated, and should be treated accordingly.

Their successor, Sen no Rikyu, who lived from 1522 to 1591 and served the warlords Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, gave tea its lasting form. He preferred a tiny thatched hut to a reception hall and a rough black bowl by a local potter to an imported celadon. This is the aesthetic of wabi: beauty found in the plain, the irregular and the worn. Rikyu’s four principles are harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity. His descendants founded the three schools that still teach tea in Kyoto: Omotesenke, Urasenke and Mushakojisenke.

The room and the garden

The classic tea room measures four and a half tatami mats, about nine square metres. It has a low ceiling, a hearth sunk into the floor, and an alcove, the tokonoma, where the host hangs a scroll and places a single arrangement of flowers chosen for the day. Guests enter through a nijiriguchi, a square opening so low that everyone must crouch and, in Rikyu’s time, leave swords outside.

The room is approached through a small garden, the roji, of moss and stepping stones. Before entering, guests rinse hands and mouth at a low stone basin. The walk is meant to separate the gathering from ordinary life.

What happens

A full gathering, a chaji, lasts up to four hours. It begins with a meal, continues with thick tea and ends with thin tea. The meal is the origin of kaiseki cuisine, explained in our guide to kaiseki. The thick tea, koicha, is kneaded to the consistency of paint and passed between the guests in one bowl. The thin tea, usucha, is whisked to a froth and served in individual bowls.

Most visitors meet only the last part: a sweet followed by a bowl of thin tea. The host cleans each utensil in front of the guests in a set order, with a folded silk cloth. Tea is lifted from a lacquer caddy with a bamboo scoop, hot water is ladled from an iron kettle, and the tea is whisked with a brush of split bamboo. The sequence changes with the season. From November to April the kettle sits in the sunken hearth; in the warm months a portable brazier is used, placed farther from the guests.

How to be a guest

Eat the sweet first; its sugar prepares the mouth for the bitterness of the tea. When the bowl is set down, pick it up with the right hand, rest it on the left palm, and turn it a little so as not to drink from its front, which the host has turned towards you as the best side. Drink in a few sips. Afterwards it is polite to admire the bowl. These are common practices; details such as how many times the bowl is turned differ between schools, and the host will usually guide first-time guests.

Guests traditionally sit on their heels. Hosts who receive foreign visitors do not insist, and many provide low stools. Wear socks, remove watches and rings that might scratch a bowl, and avoid perfume, which competes with the incense.

For travellers

Kyoto is the centre of tea, and the nearby town of Uji is famous for its matcha. Short sessions for visitors are offered by temples, tea schools and private teachers. See our experience page, Take part in a tea ceremony in Kyoto, for how to choose.