Alleviating Suffering and Bestowing Blessings: A Translation of the Kissa Orai

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In this article, I provide a comprehensive account of the role played by a medieval Japanese historical text called the Kissa Ōrai 喫茶往来 (An exchange of letters on Drinking Tea) in the development of the early Japanese tea ceremony during the medieval Japan (1350-1450). The Kissa Ōrai is said to be a “textbook” composed by art connoisseurs in the hope of expanding the existing tea-drinking culture in medieval Japan. This text is more accurately described as a record of manners and etiquette for the tea ceremony rather than historical records and courtier diaries. It further reveals the growing popularity of Chinese manners and etiquette for the tea ceremony in the Northern and Southern dynasties (1336-1392) in relation to the development of the tea culture in the Song dynasty of China (960-1279). The tea ceremony is believed to have become extremely popular among the Muromachi 室町 aristocrats and samurai warriors. The movement produces the cultural tendency to subjectively seek for original and creative work. It demonstrates ideological patterns of medieval Japanese cognition that are referred to as precedents from the continental culture and gets used to adapt its cultural value and customs. In this way, the Muromachi cultural movements stimulated by the imported Chinese culture intended on constructing a samurai cultural ideology that created a medieval notion capable of amalgamating Japanese culture and the culture of the Song dynasty. The Kissa Ōrai, in turn, reflects the Buddhist notion of ritual simplification. It is necessary to question Buddhist views of alleviating suffering and bestowing blessings that the correct way of obtaining Buddhist teachings depends on the mind of being in this world, while the Buddhist teachings are, at the ultimate realm of realization, absolutely true. The main purpose of this article focuses not on whether the tea gathering is good or bad, but rather on how to interpret the manner in which the textual contents described in the Kissa Ōrai have recorded cultural events and protocols for future reference. This article includes the first English translation of the Kissa Ōrai in the appendix.

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  • 駒澤大学外国語論集

    駒澤大学外国語論集 28 91-116, 2020-03

    駒澤大学総合教育研究部外国語第1・第2部門

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