#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/12/14 -- Fifteen Years of Friendship & Learning @ Japan House

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 7: December 14, 2022

 

 

Celebrating 15 Years of Friendship and Learning at Japan House

 

Editor’s Note

                There are many hidden gems on the University of Illinois campus, and I have enjoyed searching them out ever since I matriculated as a freshling in the fall of 1986. Fifteen years ago this week, I discovered my favorite “hidden gem” on the Urbana-Champaign campus – Japan House, which I first visited in December 2007 for an experience of chado (the way of tea) in the Japanese tea ceremony.

                The greatest tea master in Japanese history, Sen Rikyu (1522-1591), described the four ideals of chado over 400 years ago: harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility. The core concept behind the tea ceremony is the realization of the principle, “Ichigo, ichie” (which means “one life, one opportunity” in Japanese). Through applying this principle (and the four ideals of chado) in everyday life, we can learn how to savor the numinosity in every moment of our days, because each moment is truly unique and will never come again.

                Inspired by my friends at Japan House, over the last fifteen years, I have enjoyed learning about Japanese culture and its spiritual foundations, which are rooted in the Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, and Shinto traditions of East Asia. I have brought many friends to visit Japan House for tea ceremonies, and I have forged many lasting friendships there as well. I am delighted to participate in the annual writing competition that Japan House offers to its class of student interns each fall. In addition, I have also been honored to share some of my research about early accounts of Japan in Middle Eastern legends from late antiquity and their significance for our contemporary multicultural society.

                I would like to encourage everyone to visit Japan House’s website (listed in the webliography at the end of the following article) to learn about all the excellent programs that they are currently offering. Japan House and its wonderful staff continue to carry out their intercultural educational mission, both in person and with online resources, to enrich our lives and our appreciation for the numinosity that can be found in our everyday world.

 

This world map from the Old English Cotton manuscript (ca. 1040 CE) is oriented with East at the top. Notice the islands located off the coast of East Asia on this map. Could this be an early representation of the Japanese Archipelago? (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“My First Visit to Japan House”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Reprinted & Slightly Updated from the Author’s Presidential Column in the April 2008 Issue of the Illinois Administrative Professionals’ Newsletter

                In December 2007, ACES James Scholar Shannon O’Laughlin invited me to visit Japan House to take part in a tea ceremony hosted by its Director, Professor Emerita Kimiko Gunji. Shannon was enrolled in Gunji-sensei’s ARTJ 209 (Chado: The Way of Tea) course during the fall semester. According to its catalog listing, the course:

 

Explores the Japanese Tea Ceremony and its relevance to everyday life. Students will acquire a better understanding of Japanese culture and a new appreciation of their own cultures through the study of the Tea Ceremony and the Zen worldview that informs it.

Shannon was eager to share her experience of chado with me, so I was pleased to accept her invitation.

                On a cloudy Thursday afternoon [December 13, 2007], we arrived at Japan House, which is located at 2000 South Lincoln Avenue in Urbana (not far from the College of Veterinary Medicine). As Shannon and I hung up our coats and removed our shoes in the cloakroom, we (along with the other guests) were greeted by a Japan House volunteer: Dr. Morton Weir, Chancellor Emeritus of the Urbana campus. Dr. Weir gave us a tour of the house (including the tearooms) and showed us (through the large glass windows) the gardens that surround it (a traditional Japanese garden on one side and a Zen rock garden on the other). We then entered the classroom where academic courses are taught; there, we were introduced to Gunji-sensei and received an overview of the tea ceremony before it began.

                The Japanese tea ceremony is a beautiful and complex art form that has been developing in East Asia for over a millennium. Gunji-sensei, as our host, prepared the tea – a special variety of green tea called matcha, imported from Japan. Before the tea was served, however, we each received and ate a small sweet; then, after the tea had been prepared with a bamboo whisk and other ceremonial utensils, tea was served to each guest in a bowl decorated with traditional designs (such as flowers). It is customary for the guests to take a few moments to admire the artwork on the bowl before drinking the tea. We then proceeded to savor the matcha tea, which was delicious! J

                The tea ceremony created an atmosphere that was both contemplative and mindful. It was wonderful to participate in a time-honored ritual that opens the door to new levels of intercultural understanding. Each portion of the ceremony was conducted gracefully and graciously by our host, and although the basic form of the ceremony is fixed, it was unhurried, and the format invited each participant to watch, learn, and appreciate the ceremony in every detail. One lesson (among many) that I took away with me from the tea ceremony is that “simple” things, such as enjoying tea with friends, can have a numinous beauty all their own, and so we need to keep our eyes open for this “everyday numinosity” lest we miss out on the enchantment that it can bring into our daily lives.

 

Webliography

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_tea_ceremony (Japanese Tea Ceremony)

·         https://japanhouse.illinois.edu (Japan House)

·         http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm (The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura [1863-1913])

The rebirth of the phoenix bird, as pictured in the Aberdeen Bestiary from the 12^th century CE. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Poem #27: “The Phoenix​”

By Claudian (ca. 370-404 CE)

Editor’s Note: This Latin poem, presented here in a slightly updated public domain English translation, may contain the earliest references to Japan in Western literature. The poet refers to the phoenix’s homeland as the easternmost land in the known world, in the Eastern Ocean (the Pacific). This is the “Land of the Dawn” or the “Country of the Sun” – epithets for Japan that were taken up by later Middle Eastern storytellers and loremasters in their own writings.

 

                There is a leafy wood fringed by Ocean's farthest marge beyond the Indies and the East where Dawn's panting coursers first seek entrance; it hears the lash close by, what time the watery threshold echoes to the dewy car; and hence comes forth the rosy  morn while night, illumined by those far-shining wheels of fire, casts off her sable cloak and broods less darkly. This is the kingdom of the blessed bird of the Sun, where it dwells in solitude defended by the inhospitable nature of the land and immune from the ills that befall other living creatures; nor does it suffer infection from the world of men. Equal to the gods is that bird, whose life rivals the stars and whose renascent limbs weary the passing centuries. It needs no food to satisfy hunger nor any drink to quench thirst; the Sun's clear beam is its food, the sea's rare spray its drink — exhalations such as these form its simple nourishment. A mysterious fire flashes from its eye, and a flaming aureole enriches its head. Its crest shines with the Sun's own light and shatters the darkness with its calm brilliance. Its legs are of Tyrian purple; swifter than those of the Zephyrs are its wings of flower-like blue dappled with rich gold.

                Never was this bird conceived nor springs it from any mortal seed, itself is alike its own father and son, and with none to recreate it, it renews its outworn limbs with a rejuvenation of death, and at each decease wins a fresh lease of life. For when a thousand summers have passed far away, a thousand winters gone by, a thousand springs in their course given to the husbandmen that shade​ of which autumn robbed them, then at last, fordone by the number of its years, it falls a victim to the burden of age; as a tall pine on the summit of Caucasus, wearied with storms, heels over with its weight and threatens at last to crash in ruin; one portion falls by reason of the unceasing winds, another breaks away rotted by the rain, another consumed by the decay of years.

                Now the Phoenix's bright eye grows dim and the pupil becomes palsied by the frost of years, like the Moon when she is shrouded in clouds and her horn beings to vanish in the mist. Now his wings, wont to cleave the clouds of heaven, can scarce raise them from the Earth. Then, realizing that his span of life is at an end and in preparation for a renewal of his splendor, he gathers dry herbs from the Sun-warmed hills, and making an interwoven heap of the branches of the precious tree of Saba he builds that pyre which shall be at once his tomb and his cradle.

                On this he takes his seat, and as he grows weaker greets the Sun with his sweet voice; offering up prayers and supplications, he begs that those fires will give him renewal of strength. Phoebus [Apollo], on seeing him afar, checks his reins and staying his course consoles his loving child with these words: “You who are about to leave your years behind upon yon pyre, who, by this pretense of death, are destined to rediscover life; you whose decease means but the renewal of existence and who by self-destruction regain your lost youth, receive back your life, quit the body that must die, and by a change of form come forth more beauteous than ever."

                So speaks he, and shaking his head casts one of his golden hairs and smites willing Phoenix with its life-giving effulgence. Now, to ensure his rebirth, he suffers himself to be burned and in his eagerness to be born again meets death with joy. Stricken with the heavenly flame, the fragrant pile catches fire and burns the aged body. The Moon in amaze checks her milk-white heifers and heaven halts his revolving spheres, while the pyre conceives the new life; Nature takes care that the deathless bird perish not, and calls upon the Sun, mindful of his promise, to restore its immortal glory to the world.

                Straightway the life spirit surges through his scattered limbs; the renovated blood floods his veins. The ashes show signs of life; they begin to move though there is none to move them, and feathers clothe the mass of cinders. He who was but now the sire comes forth from the pyre the son and successor; between life and life lay but that brief space wherein the pyre burned.

                His first delight is to consecrate his father's spirit by the banks of the Nile and to carry to the land of Egypt the burned mass from which he was born. With all speed he wings his way to that foreign strand, carrying the remains in a covering of grass. Birds innumerable accompany him, and whole flocks thereof throng in airy flight. Their mighty host shuts out the sky wherever it passes. But from among so vast an assemblage none dares outstrip the leader; all follow respectfully in the balmy wake of their king. Neither the fierce hawk nor the eagle, Jove’s own armor-bearer, fall to fighting; in honor of their common master a truce is observed by all. Thus the Parthian monarch leads his barbarous hosts by yellow Tigris’ banks, all glorious with jewels and rich ornament and decks his tiara with royal garlands; his horse’s bridle is of gold, Assyrian embroidery embellishes his scarlet robes, and proud with sovereignty he lords it over his numberless servants.

                There is in Egypt a well-known city celebrated for its pious sacrifices and dedicated to the worship of the Sun. Its temples rest on a hundred columns hewn from the quarries of Thebes. Here, as the story tells, the Phoenix is wont to store his father’s ashes and, adoring the image of the god, his master, to entrust his precious burden to the flames. He places on the altar that from which he is sprung and that which remains of himself. Bright shines the wondrous threshold; the fragrant shrine is filled with the holy smoke of the altar and the odor of Indian incense, penetrating even as far as the Pelusiac marshes, fills the nostrils of men, flooding them with its kindly influence and with a scent sweeter than that of nectar perfumes the seven mouths of the dark Nile.

                Happy bird, heir to your own self! Death, which proves our undoing, restores your strength. Your ashes give you life, and though you perish not, your old age dies. You have beheld all that has been, have witnessed the passing of the ages. You know when it was that the waves of the sea rose and overflowed the rocks, what year it was that Phaëthon’s error devoted to the flames. Yet did no destruction overwhelm you; sole survivor, you live to see the Earth subdued; against you the Fates gather not up their threads, powerless to do you harm.