This week, I was going to be ready. Though I have been living out of boxes for a long time and haven't seen my Tea seasonality book in months, I decided it was high time that I come to class with a predetermined poetic name for my chashaku.
The chashaku, or bamboo tea scoop that one used to place powdered tea into the cup, plays a pretty big role in chanoyu. It gets ritually purified before use, then ritually cleaned after, and once most everything else is packed up and put away, the guests get a chance to examine the chashaku and ask a couple questions about it. (They also examine the natsume or tea caddy, but I'm talking about the chashaku right now.)
The last question asked about the chashaku is, "Gomei wa?" or "What is its poetic name?" The name is generally a season word, though it can be a few other things as well, and the season word should match up with the current time of year.
For years now, I have wanted to find the right sourcebook, in order to sit down and memorize Japanese seasonal associations. In my understanding, a physical item is connected to a time of year is connected to an emotion, which might be similar to another one of any of the same, and to mention one is to bring them all to the forefront.
I don't have the breadth of knowledge necessary to come up with my own Japanese poetic name, but I wanted to have one ready at class. I went to a defunt Tea group on tribe.net, where the one useful-seeming page is a quick guide to poetic names for the chashaku. Most of the names provided are seasonal, but it is up to the reader to recognize the season.
Shitamoe, the first word on the list, is about the first early grass blades of spring. That would be perfect, except that a classmate made a tea sweet a few weeks ago and named it shitamoe. Hardly creative enough.
Another pretty one was hanafubuki, cherry blossoms scattering. However, even though ugly weather in the coming week is likely to bring about a whole lot of hanfukubuki, the blossoms are still a couple days away from peaking here in DC. Too soon.
The list quickly moved on to summer names, about cold water and smooth bamboo leaves. There was nothing spring that really attracted my attention.
But then, near the bottom of the list, something caught my eye. Kogarashi, chilly gust. It was probably more of an early, early spring word, but this Friday was an early gust kind of a day. I memorized it and came to my lesson prepared!
When the guest asked me, "Gomei wa?" I... well, I mispronounced it. So much for memorization. Once I got the name, kogarashi, correct, my teacher said that it wasn't right for this time of year. It was too late to name th chashaku kogarashi, even if it was a kogarashi kind of day. She suggested haru-arashi, or winter storm.
The seasonality of the poetic name, my teacher explained, was supposed to predate the season. An accurate description of the world outside was only appropriate if it also fit the official seasonality of this part of the calendar. Think ahead.
It's funny. A major rule of tea is that it should be connected to the seasons, and yet the seasonality is all an elaborate trick. Sen no Rikyu, the Ba'al Shem Tov of Tea, gave very few rules about what one should do to host a proper Tea. One of his rules was, "In summer, create a sense of coolness; in winter, warmth." Connected to that I suppose, one should bright forth a sense of warm optimism in chilly late March, or a cool gust on a sticky October afternoon.
It's not quite the here and now I suppose, but spring is coming very soon.
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