A chanoyu master named Hechikan living in Yamashina once criticized his contemporary Sen Rikyu as a black hearted flatterer striving to please men of high rank. Hechikan tried to pretend not to be interested in pleasing such men and had even served cheap barley tea to Hideyoshi at the Grand Open-Air Chanoyu party in Kitano Shrine. Nevertheless, Hechikan was proud of the fact that Hideyoshi had praised his insolence as a "tasteful idea."
One summer day Hechikan invited Rikyu to tea in his hermitage at Yamashina. Rikyu suspected some trick had been planned for he had heard rumors of Hechikan's criticism, but if he refused the invitation it would only add more fuel to the fire. He decided to go and fall into the trick on purpose to see what fun he could have, so he proceeded to Hechikan's house pretending not to be skeptical of his host's motives.
As he approached the gate Rikyu spied a big, freshly dug mud puddle hidden on the path. He deliberately walked into the puddle and let out a shriek. Hechikan ran out feigning surprise and showed the mud-splattered Rikyu into the bath with profuse apologies. Rikyu stretched out and relaxed in the bathtub thinking Hechikan probably planned to give him tea afterward. It was very quiet in Yamashina that midsummer afternoon. He closed his eyes and listened to the cicadas incessantly chirring in the persimmon tree by the bathroom window. The bath water was perfect -- neither too hot nor too cold -- and gradually Rikyu began to fee sleepy. He wanted to take a nap without being interrupted and tea didn't matter to him any more. Hechikan's foolish trick was forgotten. In fact, he felt like thanking Hechikan for the trick for he got to enjoy an unexpected respite of comfort and relaxation through it.
Later one of his disciples asked Rikyu why he had intentionally fallen into the pit and speculated that it had been a kind of obedience to Hechkan's will. Rikyu answered that it wasn't obedience, but he had not wanted Hechikan's planning and scheming to be fruitless.
From the book Unpyo Zasshi, by Kien Yanagisawa (1706-1758) and artist and literatus of his time.
It is sometimes good to drop our adult pretensions and rivalries and enter into a spirit of childhood where feelings are expressed more openly so that we can finally laugh heartily with each other. Our present affluent society impresses us with the belief that material accumulation s the goal of human life. We forget to enjoy times of pleasure because of all the pressures on our lives. We get caught up in our games of competition with other adults. We neglect other people and their feelings and our only concern is to return insult with insult and unkindness with unkindness. We can learn much from this sotry of Rikyu and the mud puddle.
~Sen Soshitsu XV
By John Dillon
One year, the legendary 16th century tea master Sen Rikyu planted morning glories in his Kyoto garden. The all-powerful shogun, the tyrannical Toyotomi Hideyoshi, heard of the beauty of the blooms and announced he and his retinue would travel from his castle to Rikyu’s humble tea hut to view the flowers. But when he arrives, all the morning glories have been cut down and removed, roots and all. Not a single blossom remains. Angry at the affront, he enters the tea house . . .
Before I tell you what happens next, let me tell you a bit about why this story interests me. I’m a theater artist and I was born and raised in Oregon. As soon as I finished my sixteen-year stint as the artistic director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, my wife and I headed to the Pacific Northwest for the next chapter in our life. One of the things that pulls me so strongly to our region are its vivid contrasts. I remember recently hustling back from a hike in the Cascades and zipping out of my soiled mountain togs so that I could make the curtain of an urbane English comedy at a downtown theater. And on that same drive back to Seattle, I remember making a note to change the dates of our rodeo tickets in Ellensburg so that I could participate in a special tea ceremony to be held in the Arboretum. Life is more vivid here (despite the more than occasional gray skies) because the contrasts are so striking. And that makes me think of the story of Rikyu and the morning glories, with its humble Zen priest and angry Shogun, of the royal retinue and the fragile teahouse. And then, of course, there’s the mystery of the missing flowers . . .
As Hideyoshi enters the tearoom he finds one perfect morning glory, the glorious flower shining with dew and arranged simply in a bamboo container in the small room’s alcove. As Hideyoshi begins to grasp the meaning of Rikyu’s gesture, a side panel slides open and Rikyu enters to start the tea ceremony.
Without even articulating the story’s meaning, there is something I find dramatically satisfying in the simple tale. To begin, of course, are the contrasts already mentioned. Such conflicts/contrasts are the heart of theater. Next emerge three principles I find vital in drama: selection, context and danger. Rikyu chose one flower to represent the many. A playwright chooses only one character to represent a myriad and he or she chooses only a few events to reveal the meaning of a full and complex life. Next, Rikyu took this one flower he felt represented the multitude in his garden and moved it indoors and placed it in a carefully chosen container. Likewise, we can sometimes see our lives better by viewing another life in the openly artificial context of an art form like the theater. Even the most realistic play has a missing wall through which we view the action to say nothing of the stage lights that grow and dim and the proscenium arch that frames the action. Somehow, viewing the private act publicly allows us to see it better. Selection and context are vital tools in helping us see meanings in the life around us.
Finally, there’s danger. Hideyoshi’s power over life and death was absolute. Rikyu risked his life to make his unspoken point. If you doubt that, you should know that some years later (1591 to be exact), the Shogun sent word to Rikyu that he was displeased with the tea master and that Rikyu was to commit ritual suicide (seppuku). Although the reason for Hideyoshi’s displeasure was never revealed, Rikyu complied. And out of respect for Rikyu, morning glories haven’t been used in the tearoom since.
All of us in the theater live in danger, even if it falls short of the extreme danger that a determined 16th century Zen tea master faced. Each time we decide which play to put on (selection) and in what style to produce it (context), all of us know the result may be disaster. The wrong play, the wrong time or the wrong approach and you harvest angry audiences.
During my years of running the Milwaukee Rep, I never saw anything speed by so fast as a successful production. Full houses and happy actors made the days rush by too quickly to fully savor. By contrast, time never crawled by so slowly as a bomb. Sullen audiences in a half-full auditorium and the dispirited faces of the actors as they left the theater made the weeks of a run feel like years. As much as grants and endowments cushion us from the economic uncertainty of the box office, as theaters and theater artists we live or die by an audience’s financial and spiritual approval.
The world of the visual arts and music are full of stories of the misunderstood genius whose work only gathers a wider audience after their death (the Vincent Van Gogh’s and Charles Ives’) but such stories don’t exist in the theater. We succeed in our lifetime, in front of contemporary audiences, or not at all. The only exception I know of is a minor 19th century German playwright whose very obscurity helps make the point.
So, any time a theater artist is at work, making choices, they are selecting and arranging the flowers, as it were, that will soon be put on display. It’s a nerve-wracking process, you see, and we’re always a bit on edge because the shogun might show up to see the results . . .
John Dillon is a student of the Urasenke Way of Tea, the associate director of Tokyo’s award-winning Institute of Dramatic Arts and the Founding President of Theatre Puget Sound, the service organization for theaters and theater workers in the Seattle area.
