Japanese Nagtional Tea Ceremony
Treasures Displayed in L.A.

THE 92-year-old Daisosho (Grand Master) Dr. Genshitsu Sen XV visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on May 24, 2015 to showcase the museum’s March 29 – June 7 exhibition Raku: The Cosmos in a Tea Bowl. The exhibition of 100 ceramic tea ceremony objects spanning five centuries was the first of its kind in the U.S. free of the items were Japanese national treasures, two of which were tea bowls made by the earliest Raku potter Chojiro and lent to LACMA by the Daisosho out of the Urasenke Foundation’s collection.

Nearly 600 people silently watched as the Daisosho solemnly prepared a tea offering dedicated to continuing harmonious Japan-U.S. relations and world peace. The Daisosho gave a lecture on his experiences with Raku tea bowls that began with his first chanoyu ( Japanese tea ceremony) lesson when he was six years old. He explained how Sen no Rikyu, his ancestor who lived 500 years ago, formulated the concepts behind chado (the way of tea). He ended his lecture by inviting the audience to a room arranged specially by the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Los Angeles Association so that they could “experience the cosmos in a bowl of tea.”

The exhibition traveled to Russia where it was to be on view in St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum from July 11 to September 6 and Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts from September 22 to November 15, 2015. tj

The complete article can be found in Issue #277 of the Tokyo Journal. Click here to order from Amazon.