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Ceremonial Teahouse: Sunkaraku (Evanescent Joys)
Tokyo, c. 1917
This ceremonial teahouse was built in about 1917 by the Japanese architect Ogi Rodo. Designed in the rustic tradition or "artistic style" of the fifteenth-century artist Ogari Sotan, it also incorporates eighteenth-century elements. The Sunkaraku teahouse originally stood on the grounds of Rodo's private residence in Tokyo. He sold it to the Museum in 1928, and in 1957 it was installed at the Museum, making it the only work by Rodo outside Japan. The garden setting you see now was planned by one of Japan's foremost contemporary garden designers, Matsunosuke Tatsui.
The apparent artlessness of the teahouse in fact conceals acute attention to detail and to aesthetic pleasure. The architecture of both the waiting room and the tearoom reveals a special delight in natural materials such as cypress shingles (for the roof) and bamboo. Proximity to nature is also emphasized by the garden, visible from both buildings. Everything inside the tearoom has been planned to stimulate the mind and to delight the eye. Rough, unfinished vertical posts remind guests of their imperfections and their oneness with nature; the monochrome scroll of calligraphy admonishes them to "Look to where you stand;" and the tea utensils enhance their sensitivity to natural textures and artistic creativity.
The tea ceremony offers a temporary respite from the complexities of daily life. This mood perhaps inspired a famous devotee of the tea cult, Lord Fumai Matsudaira (1750-1818), when he autographed the tablet over the teahouse with the inscription "Sun Ka Raku," or Evanescent Joy. |