To Enter My Tea Room

Leaving the World at the Door

In our previous discourse, we established a foundational perspective on how culture comes into being, using the traditional Japanese discipline known as Sado [茶道] (The Way of Tea) to philosophically contrast it with Chanoyu [茶の湯]. Here, a suspicion naturally arises: are Chanoyu and Sado perhaps similar yet distinct entities? This suspicion is, intuitively speaking, correct. The reason lies in the fact that the impasse modern people face when engaging with the Japanese Tea Ceremony—or indeed any martial or performing art crowned with the suffix Do [道] (The Way)—is universal. This wall lurks at the depths, and because it remains unvisualized, it serves as the driving force behind the complex entanglement that solidifies the public impression of Japanese culture as merely rigid and austere. What, exactly, is this wall?

While Japanese culture has been discussed from diverse viewpoints both domestically and abroad, little attention seems to be paid to the risk that discussing it monolithically causes it to cease being culture at all. Despite the profound spirit flowing at the baseline of this culture, that spirit has historically been difficult to grasp; it has been distorted, has deviated, and has been alienated from its essence countless times, making it impossible to define in a single stroke. However, the circuit that allows us to understand it is Japanese-style Confucianism. In this article, I will present a cultural philosophy that examines this elusive entity of Confucianism from the perspective of whether it is viewed as sympathetic resonance or as a binding agent.