“I have no idea.” The celadon had no place in her eyes.
“Somehow it appears Chinese to me.” I looked at its base by holding up the bowl.
“Do you take interest in things of that sort, Sensei? Would you like to see more?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Father is very fond of bric-a-brac and has quite a collection. I shall tell father about you, and let him invite you to a cup of tea.”
Tea? The word called up before me a picture I am not very enthusiastic about. In fact it made me shrink back. I am persuaded that there is no refined idler that so unwarrantably puts on airs as the frothing tea imbiber. He almost suffocatingly narrows the wide world of poetry and does things most self-importantly, most over-studiedly and most hair-splittingly. He drinks of foamy froth in altogether unnecessarily abject humility, and finds himself in the seventh heaven of joy. Such is the tea man. If there be any pleasure and interest in this intricate tangle of rules, then the denizens of the regimental barracks at Azabu must have joys and pleasures knocking about their nose. The “right-turn!” and “march-on!” lads must be all great tea men. Pshaw! They—the so-called tea-men—are, to tell the truth, merchants, tradesmen, and the like; with no real taste-culture, who have no idea of what makes nature-loving refinement, and swallow mechanically the tea-rules adopted since the days of the great tea-master, Rikyu, of three centuries ago, and delude themselves into being men of refinement. Theirs is a trick to make fools of real men of nature-loving refinement.
“Tea? You mean the tea drinking ceremony?”
“No, Sensei; but tea with no ceremony, which you need not drink if you don’t wish to, take a cup or even two.”
“If that is the kind, then, I may just as well.”
“Father is very fond of showing his collection.”