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Tea Masters. Easily the most piquant subject before the Institute was Teaism. Explaining that Japanese use the expression "It isn't tea!" in exactly the same sense as Englishmen exclaim "It isn't cricket!" at any bounderish action, Professor A. L. Sadler of Australia's Sydney University launched into a spirited description of "Chanoyu, Teaism, or The Tea Philosophy of Japan.
" Said he: "For the last 400 years there has existed in Japan a very definite point of view, or way of life, associated with the ceremonial drinking of tea. It is called Cha-no-you, literally—Hot Water for Tea; or Chado, the Way of Tea; and its Masters are known as Chajin or Tea-men. ... It now seems to us perhaps the most Japanese of all institutions.
"Teaism is the art of making a house and living in it ... the Tea Master was the architect of older Japan in the widest sense of the word. . . . The Tea Masters . . . kept the national taste more healthy and sensitive and potent than that of any other country, and this I think is now being demonstrated in what is called 'Modernism' in Western art, architecture and interior decoration. . . . Since, even in its smallest details, this 'Modernist' work of today is identical with that long produced and regarded as ordinary in Japan, it would really only be a graceful compliment to the source of its origin to call it the Rikyu style. For Sen Rikyu [most famed Tea Master] did more than any other artist to stimulate and standardize that sort of architecture and interior decoration, and to expound the creed . . . that a house is a machine to live in and from which all superfluous and irritating ornaments should be banished.
"It does not seem to have struck many European observers that the Japanese house is a standardized one. . . . All rooms are multiples of one unit, the mat of six feet by three. . . . This standardization is not confined to the house but extends to clothes also. Just as a house is assembled of materials of fixed dimensions, and comparatively little labor is required, so also all kimonos are made of bolts of material of the same length and breadth, and so simple is the way of putting it together that every house as a rule makes its own dress. Hence it is not easy ... to dictate to the population . . . what kind of costume they shall wear. . . .
"In England the two Beaux, Nash and Brummel, are perhaps the nearest approach to a Japanese Tea Master, though their interests were far more limited and on the ethical side they fell very short. . , .
"It is very apparent from the various anecdotes of the great Japanese generals that they regarded their battles as won in the Tearoom both literally and figuratively, for not only was it a first-rate training place for the disciplined mentality and resourceful observation so needed in a strategist, but it was also the most convenient one for a quiet discussion of the very disingenuous plans of campaigns such as the decisive one of Sekigahara. No bunaga* had an almost uncontrollable enthusiasm for Tea, and he sprang upon a Tea-bowl or Kettle like a lion on a hare "
*Totally excluding Japanese classed as immigrants. Classed as "tourists," "students," "business agents," etc., they may enter and remain six-month periods indefinitely extensible.