Fuden-an: Leaves from a Tea-journal

　　Although, year after year, the year's end and its attendant tasks and ceremonies wheel round yet again, and therefore there is perhaps no longer anything left to be said about them, I cannot but be aware that, as we enter December, my general surroundings begin to seem somehow all in a rush. In whichever household, the tatami-matting is to be being entirely renewed; the paper-glazed window-screens must be re-papered; a thorough year's-end cleaning has to be being carried out; and the ritual decorations with which the coming year is to be welcomed have once more to be created. In the case of our own household, since on top of all this, there are to be carried out the various events and ceremonies with which we by family custom conclude each year, I feel in the midst of a veritable vortex of bustle. And yet, busy as things do get, by as much do I feel a need at least not to lose the spiritual capacity to be vigilant as to just what I am up to.

　　If I look back over my past year, I realize that it has turned out even more hectic than did the previous one. This has partly been due to the fact that, in addition to our traditional calendar of ceremonies and occasions, I have initiated new endeavours and experiments. And yet, duly carry out or newly attempt what I may, I am painfully aware that I am still far indeed from attaining my personal goal of 'spiritual abundance through cha-no-yu'.

　　Among the more recent of my memories from the year now fast ending are those of our annual National Convention, this time hosted by the Oga Branch of the School, the members of which demonstrated, through their highly coordinated hospitality, a mutual commitment to the pursuit of Tea, and created a truly delightful Convention that left me, for one, feeling gratefully full of heart. The venue chosen for the meeting, ★Okata/Ogata, was apparently created where once there had been but sea; that is to say, it is land that has been generated from nothing - and is a crystallization of a great number of people's blood, sweat, and tears.

　　I much appreciated this choice of place, on the part of the Oga Branch. For to cause something to come of nothing is a kind of activity that is much in tune with the spirit of creativity informing the practice of cha-no-yu. And I understand that the first to suggest this selection was Ms. Sasaki Soai, alas now no more of this world, but for long a leading teacher within the Oga Branch, who served both as its first and enduring Branch Head and also as one of the Deputy Chairpersons of the nation-wide Enshu Society, in which capacity she gave all that encountered her the benefit of considerable experience and wisdom. Above all, she was a personage that constituted the very symbol of the place, in the cultural life of Akita Prefecture, of discipline of Tea; and, whenever I might have the privilege of being with her, I myself received valuable stimulus, from the remarkably youthful flexibility of her ideas.

　　Among my memories of the latter years of this distinguished teacher's life are those of the central role that she played when the various branches of the School within the prefecture of Akita combined their efforts to create an occasion in celebration of my accession to the position of Grand Master. As part of the preparations for this, there was held a colloquy between the members of the Younger Persons' Group and myself; and I found myself unable to do anything other than bow my head in gratitude, when I watched and heard her deliver the opening address, in which she expressed - and more loudly and clearly than any that succeeded her - the proper impulses of youth. She was a person that gave to all those lucky enough to find themselves within her ambit - these including myself - both the courage to continue to pursue the aims they had originally espoused, and also considerable reason to find themselves moved, upon discovering that those aims had met with her approval. And I cannot but feel that it was these convictions that guided the Oga branch in their creating so delightful a national convention.

　　Were I asked to identify the one event that has most characterized this year for me, I should have to say it was the writing and publishing of The Seven Wonders of Cha-no-yu . In this poor work have I attempted to assemble, under the term wonder, all the questions concerning Tea that, during the past twenty-something years, have risen to my mind; and all the answers to these that either my own limited sensibility has suggested, at the times at which such questions became most pressing, or else those that I at last have understood, as a result of putting into practice the directions that I received when I sought such, from those of far deeper experience of cha-no-yu than I could ever claim as my own. Now rereading that same poor work, I already find it contains passages that either make me feel highly ashamed of having ever let them see the light of day, or that express ideas with which I can myself no longer agree. And, with the falling of each drop of time, there increases my dissatisfaction with that work.

　　And perhaps this may only further justify my own conviction that the Way of Tea, if properly pursued, must require one to penetrate as far as the very depths of its mountain interior.

　　Step after step, each of us looks back over this year, and gets ready to welcome the new to come….