a part of the Zen discipline and every least action must be done
absolutely perfectly. Thus many a weighty discussion ensued
while weeding the garden, paring a turnip, or serving tea.
The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of
greatness in the smallest incidents of life. Taoism furnished the
basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical.



IV. The Tea-Room


To European architects brought up on the traditions of stone and
brick construction, our Japanese method of building with wood
and bamboo seems scarcely worthy to be ranked as architecture.
It is but quite recently that a competent student of Western
architecture has recognised and paid tribute to the remarkable
perfection of our great temples. Such being the case as regards
our classic architecture, we could hardly expect the outsider to
appreciate the subtle beauty of the tea-room, its principles of
construction and decoration being entirely different from those
of the West.

The tea-room (the Sukiya) does not pretend to be other than a
mere cottage--a straw hut, as we call it. The original ideographs
for Sukiya mean the Abode of Fancy. Latterly the various
tea-masters substituted various Chinese characters according to
their conception of the tea-room, and the term Sukiya may
signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical.
It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure