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The Crafts & Culture of Japan

The Sensei of Japan

At the very foundation of Japanese culture is a reverence for mastership, whether that mastery is of an artistic expression, a traditional path of self-cultivation or a martial art. The Japanese masters are addressed as “sensei,” and they are revered for far more than their refined talent. Theirs is a mastery gained from devotion, from a centuries-old tradition carried down through a family line, from mindful and patient learning. The Japanese honor their sensei, recognizing that they are the keepers of Japanese culture, tending to and refining the magnificent beauty of this gracious country. Let us bring you closer into the world of these masters.

Cha No Yu

It is commonly called “tea ceremony,” but that misses the point. It is not really a ceremony, and the tea is only one part of the experience. Rather, the Japanese word, sado, is both more nebulous and more accurate: it means “the way of tea,” and is a personal path of self-cultivation.

It starts with the tea room, a small, rustic and understated room that conveys intimacy, warmth and welcome. The traditional low door forces each guest to bow upon entering, a gesture of humility and gratitude.

Inside the tea room, every element is chosen with attention: attention to the guests, attention to the season, attention to the esthetic and emotion that the host is trying to express. In the toko-no-ma, an alcove that is dedicated to art, a hanging scroll conveys just the right message. A single piece of pottery and the flowers inside it might evoke a specific week within a specific season.

Then the tea is prepared. Notice the buku-buku sound of the water boiling. Notice also the wordless concentration with which the host warms each tea bowl and then gently empties it, wipes it dry, adds a precise amount of powdered green tea and then water, then froths it with a whisk fashioned from a single stalk of bamboo. Accept with your full spirit, rotate the bowl just so, and drink.

Afterwards, examine the bowl chosen especially for you. Take in the roughness of its earthenware in winter or the refined, light-white elegance of summer porcelain, and appreciate that a moment of perfection can be assembled even from the most humble of elements.

Yakimono

The master potter approaches us slowly, solemnly, as if every movement matters. He opens the gate, greets us and leads us onto the rural property he calls home. In his simple, yet timelessly elegant home with its brown wooden beams, golden tatami mats, and sesame colored walls, we sit and talk of his career as an artist and his work reviving the ancient techniques of his craft.

He is one of Japan’s leading potters. He began with a solid education in modern ceramics technologies and how to work with efficient kilns, but discovered that the simple truth found in working the clay called to him. In time, he found his own path and returned to the ways of the ancients, foregoing modern kilns, and working with a simple wood-fired anagama kiln. He says, “Once I put the pot in the kiln, I give it all up to the fire. My ego has been tossed away.”

Modern kilns maintain a clean, steady heat, but the wood used in the anagama kiln brings many elements, impurities and uncertainties. With any kiln there is a magical moment when the potter peeks inside after a firing. This potter’s idiosyncratic anagama heightens the moment. He might fire 220 tea bowls at a time, but keep only eight. “To people working rationally and efficiently, this approach probably seems unbelievable,” he laughs.

He wants to leave the legacy of the Momoyama potters (golden age of ceramics at the end of the 1500’s) for the next generation. That is why he uses the anagama and a rare hand-push potter’s wheel rather than a modern electric wheel. He says, “I recently found a broken shard from the Momoyama period. You could see one of the potter’s finger marks on it, and I matched my own to it. It was an experience beyond words.”

Washi Handmade Mulberry Bark Paper

We enter a simple, modern building in an old Kyoto neighborhood. Nothing about the utilitarian concrete exterior suggests that the studio of one of Japan’s most successful contemporary artists resides within. But this humble building is where we meet with the artist. Even the material she works with is modest. Washi is well-known as a beautiful paper for wrapping gifts, calligraphy, painting, business cards, and making attractive lamps. Washi paper as installation art in the form of stunning single-sheet paper tapestries up to 50 feet long is something quite different.

This master is different from what one might expect in an artist. She doesn’t have an art background. In fact, she began her career in banking and discovered washi while working with a client specializing in art events. Soon she was experimenting with making washi for fun, then became completely enthralled by the medium and devoted herself to producing it as an art form.

The pieces she creates today take ten skilled workers to produce—five artists and five craftsmen working together in an elaborate, choreographed operation. “We can create washi to match any architectural need or function,” she explains. But there is one element that always finds its way into her art. She explains, “Because we cannot completely control the outcome of the finished work, we accept nature as part of this collaborative process.”

You can see her work installed in restaurants, hotel lobbies, public halls and nightclubs throughout Japan. A recent project was a collaboration with cellist Yo Yo Ma. She created an enormous single piece of washi that served as the stage backdrop for his Silk Road concert tour. Her team worked for two months to create a set embodying the essence of the Silk Road, the ancient Asian highway that connected people of many cultures. Committed to excellence and energized by challenges, This washi artist is an inspiring example of how traditional Japanese crafts are being reinvented by 21st century artists.

Living the Dream

In your dream of Japan, a Buddhist monk bestows a gift and a smile upon you. The smile carries humor and patience, delivered by a very human being, full of foibles and grace. The gift is a polished river stone that fits in your palm, perfectly conveying the timeless cycles of nature. This stone is the one that a master would choose, if he had every stone in the world from which to select. It comes in a lacquered box marked with the brushstrokes of a master calligrapher and lined with indigo-dyed silk.

You bow in humble gratitude, but instead of returning the gesture, the monk produces a bright red Kawasaki, tosses you a sleek helmet and takes you for high speed tour of the Ginza in Tokyo, past blazing neon, hip nightclubs and twenty-something Japanese workers out for a night on the town. As you zoom past temples and high rises, traditional ceramics workshops and contemporary art galleries, you realize that Japan is everything you thought it would be, and much, much more. And if you had the dream every night, there would still be more to discover.

It is perhaps easy and even obvious to say that Japan is a rich and compelling study in contrasts. But nothing can quite prepare you for how gracefully ancient arts and modern ways come together in Japan. Everything from the way a school girl covers her mouth while giggling shyly, to how students in ikebana class learn to place a stem just so, reveals the glorious layers of Japan’s cultural past and present. Japan’s culture lives in the abbot who invites you in, a stranger to his home, but a fellow traveler in life. It lives in the careful swirl of a bamboo whisk through green tea, tones chanted at dawn by monks, and the old jokes told every morning at the fish market. Culture is personality and style and taste, and it awaits you in Japan.

~ Nancy Craft, Esprit Travel & Tours www.esprittravel.com

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