Wabi Sabi. Andrew Juniper

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      AS THE GUIDING FORCE behind wabi sabi aesthetics, a look at the tea ceremony will throw light on the reasons for its development and the figures who formed the ideas that remain to this day.

      The tearoom is to wabi sabi what the church is to Christianity.

      Both enshrine their ideals and philosophies and cultivate an atmosphere appropriate for the intended religious goals. In a church there is a sense of reverence for the deity of God and his son Jesus Christ; within the vaulted ceilings and the magnificent stained-glass images there is a glorification of the greatness and omnipotence of God. In the tearoom there is a sober veneration for unadorned rusticity, for the greatness to be found in the most restrained expression of the humble and simple. The idea of venues being switched invites some interesting imagery.

      The tea ceremony, which is usually held in a secluded and intimate tearoom, has been one of the focal points for advocates of wabi sabi.

      It was through this semireligious ritual that the tea masters, well versed in the philosophy of Zen, gave full voice to their love of art rich in wabi sabi expression. They developed their shrines in the same way church clergy have created ecclesiastic designs. Both are guided by their spiritual beliefs.

      The tea ceremony, where the art and philosophy of wabi sabi cemented its foundations, can trace its roots back to twelfth-century China with the drinking of tea by Zen monks who gathered before the image of Bodhidharma and drank the beverage as a part of the ritual. Like its guiding philosophy, Zen, the appreciation of tea found its way to Japan through the Zen monks. But unlike China, whose refined culture was decimated in the thirteenth century by the Mongol invasion, Japan was able to continue the refinement of tea drinking until, under the patronage of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, it became an independent secular ceremony.

      The nobility in Japan took great interest in tea and it was not too long before it had established itself as a cultured beverage to be enjoyed in a refined atmosphere. Through the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the formalization of the tea ceremony began to emerge, and certain rules and etiquette surrounding its consumption were observed. The tea ceremony was promoted along with the teachings of Zen and the two cultures developed hand in hand throughout Japan. With the Zen belief of greatness in the smallest things, immense emphasis was put on all the small details of life, and with the attention to detail came care, and with the care came the meditative qualities of the tea ceremony. The intense concentration needed to perform a tea ceremony was both a discipline and a purification, for through the focusing of the mind on the microcosm of the tearoom, the rest of life’s concerns would melt away.

      In the troubled Muromachi period, when the warring clans were all seeking to establish greater strength in their power bases, the samurai and warrior classes found great solace in the sublime world of tea. In entering the small room, they were existentially removed from their roles and responsibilities, from the hardships of combat, and taken to a place of harmony and peace where the world might make sense again. As with the development of many great artistic achievements through history, it was the upheaval of the Muromachi period that brought the Herculean leap in the arts of Japan. Ironically, it was under the greatest stress that the best art was produced, and it was during this time that the foundations for the tea ceremony, along with many other peculiarly Japanese art forms, were laid.

      The Zen monk Ikkyu (1394–1481), whose life straddled an era of great political instability, was a pivotal figure both in Zen and in the development of a wabi sabi–style tea ceremony.