Introduction
Matcha seems to be everywhere these days. It’s meant to be good for your health, good for your skin, and a lot of people are drinking it instead of coffee now.
But did you know that here in Japan, matcha used to be just one small part of something much bigger?
People even built small tea rooms just to drink a single bowl of matcha, and samurai had to leave their swords outside before going in. In that world, it didn’t matter if you were a lord or an ordinary person.
So why did drinking a single bowl of matcha require all of that?
Because tea in Japan was never just about what was in the bowl. The architecture, the objects, the sounds, and even the way people moved were all part of one experience.
So today, I want to look at why such a huge world was built around a single bowl of tea.
By the end of this video, matcha might look a little different to you.
Matcha Beyond the Bowl
Hi, I’m Satomi Takayama. I’m a Japanese artist based between Japan and London. On this channel, I look at the things we tend to overlook in our busy lives, mainly through Japanese culture and aesthetics.
For this video, I want to draw on one of my favourite books, The Book of Tea by Okakura, written in the early twentieth century.
In Japan, matcha was enjoyed as part of something called chanoyu. In Japanese, chanoyu or chado usually gets translated into English as “tea ceremony”.
But I think that translation is a bit misleading. When you hear “tea ceremony”, you probably imagine a fairly formal gathering built around drinking tea. But chanoyu was so much bigger than that.
Even European afternoon tea was aiming at something quite different from what chanoyu was.
Chanoyu wasn’t just about drinking tea. It brought together the space, the objects, the way people carried themselves, even their state of mind, as one whole world.
Okakura himself went beyond the idea of a ceremony. He called it “Teaism”, a whole philosophy, a way of living.
Tea started out in China as a medicine, before it grew into an everyday drink and, eventually, a culture of its own.
It made its way to Japan, and over the centuries it was shaped into something distinctly Japanese: chanoyu.
Okakura believed that underneath this aesthetic sat the ideas of Taoism and Zen.
Why Is Chanoyu Called a “Total Work of Art”?
Chanoyu is often called a “total work of art”.
And that’s not just because beautiful bowls and tools were used.
It’s because so many other elements had to come together for chanoyu to be complete.
The experience actually starts before you even step into the tea room.
Guests first walk along a garden path called the roji on their way to the room.
The roji isn’t just a path to get you there. Walking quietly over the stepping stones, past the moss and the trees, is a way of gradually leaving the outside world behind, and preparing your senses for what’s about to happen.
Then, once you’re inside, there’s a scroll and flowers in the alcove, and the bowl, the kettle, and every other object used that day has been chosen with real intention.
It’s not about filling the room with beautiful things.
Everything was arranged to work together, depending on the season, the weather, the guests, and whatever the central object of the day happened to be.
Okakura gives an example. Say there are flowers on display, you wouldn’t also hang a painting of the same flower. Or if a round kettle is being used, you’d avoid repeating that same shape in the other utensils.
Everything was there to bring out something in everything else.
And it wasn’t only about what you could see, either.
The sound of water coming to the boil. The light coming into the room. Even the silence. All of it was part of what made the moment.
Okakura described this as an “improvised drama”, and I think that’s such a precise way to put it.
No single element is the artwork on its own. The artwork is the entire span of time.
The Tea Master as Creative Director
But what chanoyu turned into art wasn’t limited to what you could see or hear.
The tea master who created that whole space was considered part of the art too.
And by tea master, I don’t mean someone who simply teaches how to prepare tea. These were people with deep knowledge and skill in chanoyu, who built an entire world for a single gathering.
There was even a time when chanoyu was so closely tied to politics that some tea masters became trusted advisers to the most powerful warlords, standing close to the centre of power. Sen no Rikyu, the most famous of them, was far more than a tea expert.
So a tea master, back then, held a role far bigger than what we’d picture as a “tea teacher” today.
They needed knowledge that went well beyond how to prepare tea: architecture, gardens, ceramics, flower arranging, calligraphy, painting, incense, food, reading the seasons, and how to host a guest. The list goes on.
Some tea masters designed tea rooms themselves, wrote the calligraphy that would hang in the alcove, or decided exactly which craftsman should make which object.
Choosing the right scroll, flowers and bowl for the season and for the guests was a real test of a tea master’s knowledge and taste.
They work alongside craftspeople across every one of these fields, pulling it all together into one experience.
Which, when you think about it, makes them sound a lot like what we’d now call a creative director.
But what a tea master was trying to shape wasn’t only the space or the objects.
Okakura writes, in The Book of Tea, that tea masters tried to turn themselves into art.
How you walk. How you sit. How you handle an object. How you meet another person.
Every one of those small, everyday things was thought to carry a person’s aesthetic sense.
So in chanoyu, it wasn’t just the scroll, the garden, or the bowl that counted as art. The tea master himself had to embody it.
Rikyu and the Autumn Leaves
There’s a story about Rikyu in The Book of Tea that I really want to share.
One day, Rikyu was watching his son sweep the roji. His son washed the stepping stones, watered the trees, and cleared away every last branch and leaf from the ground. The garden looked immaculate, however you looked at it.
And still, Rikyu told him, “That’s not how you sweep the roji.”
He went down into the roji himself, shook a tree, and scattered the freshly cleaned ground with gold and red autumn leaves.
What Rikyu wanted wasn’t just cleanliness. He wanted it to look beautiful, and natural, at the same time.
What do you think of that kind of aesthetic sense?
When I read this, it genuinely gives me chills.
Being spotless isn’t the same as being beautiful.
I’m just in awe of that iki sensibility in Rikyu, and just how cool his aesthetic sense was as a tea master.
What the Tea Room Feels Like
I actually used to practise chado myself.
When you step into a tea room, the air feels so still, almost tense in a way. You find yourself sitting up straighter without meaning to, and your senses feel sharper than usual.
Looking at the scroll, or the bowl and the tea scoop being used that day, you realise there are so many layered worlds sitting inside that one room.
I love that space.
Reading The Book of Tea again reminded me that I want to be someone a bit like a tea master.
Not literally becoming one, but using the space, the objects, the flowers, the sound, even the way I carry myself, to properly host the person in front of me. Getting involved from the very start if I need to, even down to making the objects or the architecture itself.
Wouldn’t that be just brilliant?
Obviously, getting anywhere close to that takes a long time.
But I think, even if it takes decades, I want to keep learning throughout my life, and slowly sharpen that skill and sense.
A Small Peace Around a Single Cup
So, going back to where we started. Why was such a huge world built around a single bowl of matcha?
I think it’s because they weren’t just trying to drink matcha, they were trying to make the time spent around that one bowl as good as it could be.
Right now, matcha is popular all over the world. But knowing there’s a whole world sitting behind that one cup, I think it changes how you taste it, even just a little.
Instead of rushing through it, you might just pause, quietly, and give that one cup a bit of your attention.
Okakura writes, in The Book of Tea, that the tea room was a space where peace was valued above almost everything else.
Reading that, what I took from it was: even if tea couldn’t stop the battles samurai were once forced to fight, or solve the bigger problems the world faces today, perhaps it could still create a small peace around a single cup.
I really love that idea.
I hope today’s video gives you a little something to think about, next time you’re drinking matcha.
Continuing the Journey
There is still so much I want to learn, experience and share with you, and I’ll keep doing that on this channel as I work towards my dream of one day creating a space that people can actually walk into and experience.
Every one of you who subscribes and supports this channel brings that dream closer than you’d think. If that’s already you, thank you.
And on Quiet Japan, I write about the things that didn’t make it into the video, so do check the link in the description.
If you enjoyed this one, I think you’ll enjoy these videos too.
See you in the next one.
