Word: chanoyu
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...colored substance that had the most influence on the structure of Japanese taste is a green powder called matcha, or ceremonial tea. Whisked with hot water to a bitter jade froth and served in coarse-looking, irregular bowls, it is the basis of chanoyu, the tea ceremony. The aesthetic of tea has permeated all visual culture in Japan, from architecture to the appreciation of nature...
...wholly Japanese practices. In time, tea came to define the difference between the Chinese and Japanese ideals of exalted beauty: the former based on symmetry and minute gradations of fixed etiquette, the latter on irregularity and "natural" grace. Sen No Rikyu (1521-91), greatest of the tea masters, established chanoyu as a kind of psychic enclave in which warlord, samurai, priest and scholar could shed the burdens of rank and power by refreshing themselves at the well of nature. A developed Japanese form of Rousseau's "natural man," living in harmony with a world he has not made...
...commercialization of chanoyu illustrates a wider fact about Japan: namely that it is the best country in the world in which to study the impact of mass audiences on elite cultural forms. When something like tea becomes so popular, is it democratized? Not necessarily. It may become more snobbish, taking on a coercive preciousness to sustain its mystique when the old mechanisms of aristocratic patronage in small groups have corroded. Japanese snobbery, Japanese cultural insecurity, are hog heaven for merchandisers: once they get into a cultural feeding frenzy, the Japanese can make Rodeo Drive look modest...