Students were treated to a tea ceremony

Cultural News, July 2007

Students at California State University, Northridge, experienced ryurei style tea by Neil Anstead in an outdoor ceremony.

Prof. Aki Hirota of California State University, Northridge, second from right, made herself a model of sitting on tatami-mat for students of Traditional Japanese Culture class.

    Students taking the Traditional Japanese Culture class at California State University, Northridge, were treated to a tea ceremony at Master Soshin (Nobuko) Inuma’s tea house in West Hills May First.

   They participated in an outdoor ryurei ceremony (in which chairs are used) using a misono-dana (garden table), a kind of table originally devised during the Meiji period to entertain Westerners not accustomed to sitting on the floor.

   Then they were invited to a ceremony in a tatami-mat room. The theme for the day was Tango no Sekku (the Iris Festival), also called Boys’ Day, which is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month.   

    The host included in the decorations various items associated with the festival, such as iris flowers and carp streamers. In preparation for the visit, the students had studied the history of tea ceremony and proper procedures for guests.

    Afterward, students said they had thoroughly enjoyed this rare opportunity to have firsthand experience of a traditional Japanese art that has been handed down since the middle ages.

   One student commented that he had never felt so calm in his life as when he was drinking his bowl of frothy powdered green tea in Inuma-sensei’s cha-shitsu.