Last 28th July the tea community in London, UK, celebrated the third edition of Summer Tea Festival organised by London Tea Friends.
This year I joined up with Sumie Miyahara, an Urasenke tea practitioner who I’d met at the festival last year. Since then we’ve shared quite a bit of tea, visiting each other for tea ceremony sessions and events. London Tea Friends doing what it says on the tin and bringing new tea friends together!
There are many differences between warrior style tea (Ueda Sōko Ryu) and merchant style tea (Urasenke) in general, and we could go for hours talking about that. As our two schools have such different chabako (traveling tea box) we thought they would be the perfect to showcase this. Plus, as the London Tea Friends Summer Festival is held outdoors in a park, Chabako Temae is the perfect choice.
My chabako, the Ueda Sōko style, is a carry box, usually plain wood, with a little handle on the top and which opens from the front with the utensils arranged on shelves and drawers inside. We principally have one chabako temae, though of course, being used outdoors, spontaneous adaptions often come into play.
Sumie’s chabako, the Urasenke style, is totally different. Most often lacquered, the lid lifts off the top, there is a tray inside which lifts out and underneath that the utensils are gathered in the body of the box. Urasenke has multiple version of the Chabako temae, featuring additional items or different collections and arrangements of utensils within.
Both visually and stylistically they’re very different temae. We had a lot of fun practicing and comparing them as we planned how we would host our sessions at the festival.
In the morning we focused on a demonstration style, each taking a turn performing our respective temae whilst the other took the guest role. Festival attendees were invited to watch and we served as shot of cold brew matcha whilst we displayed and discussed comparisons between our Chabako after the demonstration.
For the afternoon session we each took turns preparing and serving bowls of tea whilst the other took the role of hanto or helper by serving the bowls the host made to guests, washing and preparing bowls so the host could keep making more and making extra bowls of matcha to help when guest numbers were big. And guest numbers were big! We’d initially intended a max of 10 guests per session in the afternoon but ended up serving over twenty bowls each! Impossible to do individually but by taking turns helping we were able to serve everyone who came to our sessions.
One thing that really came up in taking turns as host and guest (morning session) were the differences in guest etiquette between our schools and how we should handle this. For example, who indicates when the session is finished and it’s time to pack up? The host or the guest? It’s different between schools and this can easily cause confusion and make people only want to “play” with those who’ve learnt the same rules. What really became clear is that neither host nor guest should try to adapt to the other schools way of doing it because it simply becomes too complicated and confusing. However, by understanding and exploring the differences between our two schools we were able to understand where as a guest we might need to assist the host differently to our usual rules and where as the host we might need to work around the guest differently than we have learnt at practice. Neither host nor guest can be overly firmly fixed to the idea of only doing it the way his school teaches. Both instead must work together to jointly create and share a beautiful tea moment. By spending time with students and practitioners of different schools we can all learn to be better chajin (tea people) by understanding some of the fundamental differences and learning to read and work with these and our own tea practice when we share tea with those who have learnt a different schooling. We both become better hosts and guests with just a little understanding.
Sadly, all too many students of chanoyu, particularly in Japan, are only ever exposed to other chajin and tea events within the teachings of their particular school. This sadly can lead to people only wanting to “play” with others who know their same rules. It’s just easier. But by meeting and sharing tea more often with those of other schools and especially by working together with those of other schools like Sumie and I did for the London Tea Friends Summer Tea Festival, we can all develop as chajin and learn to be both better hosts and better guests. Chanoyu comes alive when we share it with others and stretch ourselves as tea people. So a big shout out to London Tea Friends for creating an environment bringing so many tea people together and which gives an opportunity for things like this to happen!
* Text by our Tea Fellow Kyle Whittington and photos by Sumie Miyahara