Enlightenment with Tea

KATE THE SLOPS

Chloe trudged up the slope on her way from the bus stop when she noticed the Japanese girl she had met about a year prior.

Chloe had been wearing a stylish gray suit that day yet she didn’t feel sure in it because she had worn it many times. The Japanese woman had introduced herself in such a polite and friendly way, Chloe could not mistake that she wanted to become friends, but Chloe felt intimidated by her polished British accent and fine aristocratic lines of the face with her hair pulled back in a manner which would have looked too severe on anyone else.

Hamada-san had studied in both France and England. She had come back to Japan because she was to inherit the title of Tea Master when her mother retired. She had two small children and spent all her free time reading to reach enlightenment. She had extended an invitation to Chloe to visit sometime, politely saying, “I’ve seen you many times and wanted to meet you. You live in the big Western house, don’t you? I live just down the hill. Come and see me sometime.” Chloe accepted, fully knowing that she would never drop in on her; Hamada-san was too high class for Chloe. Chloe was a plain country mouse.

She had grown up on a farm in Canada and with her scientist husband had come to Japan on an exchange program with a famous university.

So it was with some mortification that Chloe met the young woman again. Hamada-san was wearing funky Japanese clothes like peasants might wear, similar to those she had seen other housewives bundle up in to keep warm when they didn’t have the space heater on. It was late spring but there was a nip in the air and the ground was overlaid with a pink blanket of cherry blossom petals like a blanket of snow. Chloe wondered if the woman would recognize her, or if she could just amble by.

The Japanese girl caught sight of Chloe and boldly reintroduced herself asking if Chloe remembered her. Even in her baggy clothes she looked stylish; she gave them style. Chloe no longer felt so intimidated because she had a new job as a copy reviser at an Osaka newspaper, so when Hamada-san said, “I’m on my way to my mother’s house where I study tea. How would you like to join us today?” Chloe accepted. She thought she could learn more about Japanese culture. They dropped off Chloe’s groceries at her house and rode the bus together to Hamada-san’s mother’s house. Hamada-san elucidated: “Before we have tea ceremony we must clean the tea house and garden. At the entrance of the hall, I sprinkle water so as to avoid the dusty air. In the main room, I burn incense which suits the season. The fragrance fills the room and helps to create an atmosphere far from everyday life. I arrange flowers in the tokonoma, that is, alcove. The flowers must be simple. Their fragrance shouldn’t be too strong. Poisonous flowers and trees are avoided. Also thorny flowers and leaves are not to be used. I hang a scroll which signifies the season. Japanese cakes and Japanese sugar cookies, rakugan, are prepared and put in a big bowl. They are also put in lacquer ware. A variety of ware is used, porcelain, pottery, jade cups. Their pattern often signifies the season. Early spring, plum blossom, the Japanese nightingale, camellia, ohinasama. Mid-spring, peach tree. Late spring like today, cherry blossoms.”

Hamada-san said she would have liked to have stayed in Paris but couldn’t because she had to come back to Japan and marry and learn tea ceremony to carry on the name of the school. She said her husband was like a child and she had to look after him like one. She said it’s the custom to begin the eldest child in the art of tea ceremony with the intent that they will carry on the name of the school. Her new friend had said, “Usually it’s the eldest, but my eldest is not too smart, so I want the youngest to carry on. She is bright. The eldest is too quiet and reads too much.”

She told Chloe that from the way she talked and acted she thought Chloe was something like a fairy, someone not real.

They went to the main house first where Hamada-san’s mother could be espied through the glass doors, writing at her desk. Chloe and Hamada-san slipped off their shoes, and as Chloe was arranging her shoes so she could step into them easily when she left, she was awed by the light and flower-filled adjoining room. Hamada-san perceptively explained that they were flowers which her mother had received from friends after she appeared on TV to do a modern flower arrangement.

Hamada-san led Chloe upstairs and introduced her to the maid. “Nice to meet you, Kyomi-chan,” Chloe said.

Hamada-san suddenly turned to Chloe and asked sharply, “Why did you call her ‘chan’? Here, our maids are part of the family and we treat them with respect.” “I’m sorry,” Chloe said falteringly, “my landlady calls me Chloe-chan so I thought it was a friendly gesture from someone older to someone younger.” “Oh,” was all Hamada-san said and Chloe didn’t persist.

Hamada-san told Chloe to undress and step into the white undergarment. Then Kyomi plunged into dressing her in a pink-flowered kimono. Hamada-san’s mother appeared and roughly pulled at the kimono neck, rearranging what Kyomi had done, saying in Japanese what Chloe thought was “I don’t know why you are doing this for her. Foreigners do not understand tea. It’s a waste of time.” Chloe listened, wondering what would make her give such a brisk jerk of the kimono which could only be interpreted as contempt. Was it because she didn’t speak Japanese very well? Or that she didn’t speak English eloquently enough? Chloe stood like a mannequin as if nothing had happened, allowing Kyomi to finish securing the obi, the long wide sash which is wound around the waist and secured in a bow at the back of the kimono. She wondered what Hamada-san’s mother’s experience had been like when she was abroad. Hamada-san said her mother often went abroad. Perhaps someone had been coarse to her and she was just extracting revenge.

They were soon dressed and Chloe followed Hamada-san out of the main house toward the tea house through a Japanese-style garden with bonsai trees. Down the walk Hamada-san ritualistically washed her hands, demonstrating the procedure by gently filling a bamboo cup with a long handle full of running water and letting the pure water run over both her hands in turn and finally sipping the clear water. Chloe clumsily washed her hands trying to emulate Hamada-san without success, and accidentally dipping the kimono sleeve in the water. Embarrassed, she wiped at it with her hand. Hamada-san saw and said, “Don’t worry—it can be dry cleaned.”

Hamada-san moved like a swan on a lake entering the hut, with Japanese picture book stylized motions, and Chloe walked in bowing slightly, feeling chagrined at her rigidity. Hamada-san took her to see the scroll and cherry blossoms which had been arranged. “This is a piece of calligraphy which is very old and has been in the family for generations. It’s my mother’s favorite. It came from China.”

Hamada-san told her to take a seat telling her she needn’t try to sit in the Japanese style with the knees bent but to sit however she felt comfortable. Chloe could see the tea pot on a tall white stove beside a wooden cabinet for dishes.

A few minutes later the room was filled by an assortment of women dressed in kimono. A short squat woman with a mouth full of gold fillings sat beside Chloe. Hamada-san approached them with two ties to be secured on top of the obi, one with glittering gold trim and the other plain red. “Which one do you want? Pick one. Take your choice,” said Hamada-san. Chloe couldn’t resist picking the gold trimmed one with gold specks, and as she picked it up she detected a slight furrow on Hamada-san’s soft delicate brow and was immediately sorry she had picked the nicer one. She wished she could put it back, but it was too late. Everybody watched her choose the alluring one. She breathed again when two more women arrived, one a beautiful Japanese, the most stunning Chloe had ever seen, who was introduced as Hamada-san’s aunt.

More ladies arrived and Hamada-san introduced them to Chloe. They were all very plain looking housewives. After she was introduced she sat back and listened to her name being said. The woman with the bright sparkling eyes who had been introduced to her as Hamada-san’s aunt was talking to the woman with the mouth full of gold. And some silver. She was saying she was studying Chinese because she was planning a trip to China. That’s all Chloe understood. Then Chloe heard her name again. The aunt was saying, “A friend of mine said she took her to a flea market at a temple in Kyoto. She wanted to buy a kimono. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you should have seen her go wild at the flea market. She looked at everything with desire and bought indiscriminately, just like a child. She threw away 10,000 yen on a cracked bowl because I said it was a famous Chinese design.’ My friend picked out a children’s kimono for her knowing that she’d never know the difference. Those kinds of things don’t matter with foreigners. They don’t know about Japanese things.” Chloe listened shocked that anyone would utter such things about her right in front of her. While she did not know Japanese well, she was able to pick up the meaning. She was struck by the ordinariness of their conversation, mundane. She thought the hut was a sacred place where nobody would dare speak of anything but lofty things. Mundane gossip and about her, she thought.

Hamada-san took her seat in the middle of the room sitting on her knees and started to go through the ritual of preparing tea. Chloe was sitting on her hip. The conversation died out and Chloe fastened onto watching Hamada-san sitting before the tall chimney-like stove with her left hand motionless on her lap, working with her right hand. She lit the stove and then bowed in a sitting position with both hands touching the tatami. Then she took out the necessary wares. They were small cups because Hamada-san practiced sencha, not powder tea, where the tea is whisked with a brush in big bowls. She was using leaves in the pot and setting cups in front of the stove. Every motion was calculated yet looked natural and smooth. She set each tiny cup with its own stand on wooden saucers.

Then Hamada-san set a cup in front of Chloe and Chloe bowed as she had been instructed to do on the bus to show her gratitude. She then took in the cup and saucer and put them in front of her after bowing again, which signified “Let’s enjoy a cup of tea together.” She drank it up—it was only a small quantity—enjoying the taste, saying, “This is wonderful,” when Hamada-san asked, “Is it good?” Hamada-san told her to have some sweets and prepared another cup of tea. This time Chloe only bowed once as was required. She spilled some drops of tea down the front of the kimono as she drank the second cup of tea. Hamada-san seemed not to notice and asked, “Do you like spring?” and went on talking about the ancient cups they were drinking from. Then she began washing Chloe’s cup and Chloe watched her silently.

Chloe was again intimidated by her graceful movements. How, she marveled, could she be the same person who had spoken earlier so cruelly about her own daughter on the bus. Chloe wondered how she could talk about enlightenment when she didn’t understand the special uniqueness of her eldest daughter. Then it dawned upon her that Hamada-san knew her own mind. She knew what was best for her daughter. She knew her mind enough to make decisions. Chloe realized she had been thinking Hamada-san was all surface because of the way she had talked about her husband and kids. But now she looked at her face and brow. She thought it best described by the word furyu—elegance, taste, refinement.

She was intimidated by that face and she hadn’t felt the proper gratitude that she might have been expected to feel. It was all too difficult to understand. Hamada-san had said she studied and read books and devoted herself to the search for enlightenment. Chloe had read that enlightenment is reached when someone knows their own heart, or was it mind? In Japan there seems to be confusion. Kokoro is for heart and mind and cannot be translated into English.

She would never comprehend her own mind like Hamada-san. If she had two daughters, she’d never know herself well enough to brutally decide which one should succeed her were she in Hamada-san’s position.

Chloe departed feeling inferior. She hadn’t been able to give her hostess all of her heart, spirit, and mind. She felt no honest thankfulness. It was a bad ichigo ichie, a one-time meeting that could never be repeated. She was further confused by her feelings and recollections of a quote she read in Yasunari Kawabata’s Nobel acceptance speech, “If you meet a Buddha, kill him. If you met a patriarch of the law, kill him.” She didn’t understand this any more than she understood Hamada-san or anything else, but she wished she could fathom her mind like Hamada-san did. Why did Kawabata kill himself when he stated that he didn’t respect people who did? She remembered Hamada-san saying she was like a fairy. Maybe she had meant that Chloe could not understand reality. She was confused in her life. She wanted to leave her husband when he left Japan but she didn’t know how to look after herself. What would she do without his money? How could she live? She ambled on thinking about her cousin’s prediction. Chloe had told her cousin she had been thinking about leaving her husband for years. “If you don’t make up your mind, you’ll drive yourself crazy,” her cousin had told her. Chloe was more fearful of suicide.

[1993]