Zen Culture

by Thomas Hoover

The influence of Zen on the Rikka arrangement was more implicit than direct, and a wholly Zen flower style had to await the coming of the famous tea-ceremony master, Sen no Rikyu. Rikyu predictably found the Rikka style entirely too lavish for understated wabi aesthetics and introduced a new style known as Nageire, which was informal and spontaneous in appearance. Since it was for display at the tea ceremony, it was called chabana, or tea flowers. Instead of an elaborate seven-point design, the teahouse Nageire-style consisted of one or two blossoms stuck in a pot without any hint of artificiality. The Nagiere was not, of course, an undisciplined art—it was merely intended to seem so. Great care was taken to position the bud and its few surrounding sprigs into a perfect artistic composition that would seem natural and spontaneous. The chabana version of the Nageire style is the ultimate Zen statement in living materials. Pared down from the Rikka style, it became a powerful, direct expression of Zen ideals. The difference has been well expressed by Shozo Sato:

Rikka arrangements grew ultimately from a philosophic attempt to conceive of an organized universe, whereas Nageire arrangements represent an antiphilosophic attempt to achieve immediate oneness with the universe. The Rikka arrangement is an appropriate offering to be placed before one of the many icons of traditional Buddhism, but the Nageire arrangement is a direct link between man and his natural surroundings. One style is conceptual and idealistic; the other, instinctive and naturalistic. The difference is similar to that between the arduous philosophic study associated with traditional Buddhism and the direct enlightenment of Zen Buddhism. (The Art of Arranging Flowers. New York: Abrams, 1965).

Although the Nageire is still the preferred style for the teahouse, it is a bit too austere, not to mention demanding, for the average Japanese home. The rising middle class of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sought a compromise between the Rikka and Nageire, and finally developed a simplified Rikka style known as Seika, which made use of only the three main stems of the full Rikka arrangement.

Today various styles flourish, together with experimental modern schools which permit rocks, driftwood, and other natural materials in their compositions. Yet throughout all the schools—and they number in the thousands—the idea remains that flowers are a shorthand representation of man's connection with nature. Zen ideals are never far distant, even in the most abstract modern compositions.

If the Japanese attitude toward flowers differs from that of the West, their approach to dining differs even more. The almost universal Western attitude toward Japanese cuisine was voiced many centuries ago by the European visitor Bernardo do Avila Giron, who declared, "I will not praise Japanese food for it is not good, albeit it is pleasing to the eye, but instead I will describe the clean and peculiar way in which it is served."² Beauty counts as heavily as taste at a formal table, and to say Japanese food is "served" is like calling the members of a string quartet fiddlers. The Japanese devote more artistic resources to the rites of food than any other people on earth. Entire magazines are devoted to supplying housewives with the latest culinary creations: not new recipes but new ways to display dishes created according to well-known formulas. A new condiment is not sought so much as a new color, and a new sauce is of less interest than a new saucer. Indeed, a fine restaurant may prize its ceramics almost as much as its chef.

Yet for all its beauty, the food seems to be oddly deficient in pronounced flavors. This characteristic a Japanese will be the first to admit, but with pride rather than apology. Strong flavors are to a modern Japanese what bold colors were to the Heian aesthetes—unrefined, obvious gratifications for those lacking in cultivated discernment. A connoisseur is one who can distinguish the subtle difference in taste among various species of raw mushrooms or different fermentations of bean curd. A cultivated Japanese can tell you not only what species of raw fish he is tasting, but the number of hours it has been away from the sea. A conscientious Japanese chef would no more think of serving a vegetable not scrupulously fresh than he would drown it in a heavy sauce. Furthermore, he would most prefer to serve it entirely raw, thereby preserving intact all its subtle natural flavor and texture.

Japanese cuisine, which is a water-based art as compared to the oil-based cooking of China or the butter-based dishes of France, is now known and appreciated worldwide. Dining in a Japanese restaurant in the far-flung corners of the globe can be as formal as a fine Continental meal or as expedient as a grilled-chicken-and-noodle emporium. However, whether formal or casual, it will lack the air of solicitude that a really discerning Japanese host can bring to a specially planned banquet. Since dining at his own home would do no honor to you, the guest, chances are he will entertain you at an inn or restaurant where he knows the chef, but he will still plan the meal, working out all the finer details with the cook. There will be few surprises on the menu, for the food is governed by the season. Only the freshest vegetables—preferably those ripening to their finest that week—and the primest sea fare will be permitted.

Upon entering the dining room you will know you have been selected as the guest of honor when you are requested to sit with your back to the art alcove, or tokonoma, a practice dating from rowdier days of the ambush when this represented the one location in a paper-walled room sure to be backed by a solid wall. After seating formalities are resolved, the host will call for tea. If the season is spring, the variety selected may be shincha, a dainty green brew steeped from the freshly plucked early leaves of the Japanese tea bush. When you realize that even your beverage has been brought fresh from the fields, you begin to understand the subtleties of seasonal tastes in store. Indeed, in late spring and summer the table will present delicacies only hours from the soil.

First to arrive may be a tray crowded with ceramic saucers, no two alike in shape or glaze, each offering a condiment or plant of the season. Slices of dark, pickled ginger, the traditional astringent, may be arranged on a diminutive round plate of blue and white porcelain, which stands adjacent to a rough-textured, gray square bowl heaped with slivers of fresh cucumber, its brilliant green contrasting with the splash of vellow from a bouquet of its own blossoms sprinkled across one corner of the dish. These may be joined by tender bamboo shoots from the hillside. (Slowly you begin to notice that the color and texture of each dish has been chosen to contrast and complement those of its contents.) Added to this fanciful course may be a pale brown dish of lotus-root slivers, each garnished with a mound of green horseradish. Next at hand might well be a pale yellow saucer holding sheets of dried seaweed alongside a thin slice of the porous white Japanese turnip, sliced so thin as to be transparent. If the season is fall instead of spring, there could be a thin rectangular dish with a crinkled black glaze containing a single maple leaf, on which might be displayed thinly sliced raw mushrooms skewered with pine needles and set in a display of gourd strands.

Next may come a cold omelet, whose fluffy strata of egg have been wrapped like a cinnamon roll around layers of dark seaweed. The omelet's exterior will have been glazed to an almost ceramic polish and garnished with a white radish sauce, light and piquant. After the omelet may come fish, raw sashimi in a plethora of varieties from freshwater carp to sea bream to the (sometimes lethal) fugu. The subtleties in taste and texture between the many species available are to the Japanese what fine wines are to the Western connoisseur. Yet the chef's real genius has gone into the careful cutting and display of the fish. The red back meat of the tuna must be cut into thick slices because of its tenderness, but the fatty pink meat from the belly can be cut into thin strips. The size of the slices governs how they are displayed. The display and garnishing of the sashimi is an important testing ground for the chef's artistic originality. After all, the fish are raw, and beyond making sure that they are fresh and of high quality, there is little to be done about the flavor. Therefore the chef must become an artist if the sashimi are to be memorable.