The Glocal Book:"The Book of Tea" by Okakura Kakuzou(Tenshin)-No.73

In the Tea-Room; Uniformity of Design:

Fatal to the Freshness of Imagination

「The Virility of the life and art lay in its possibilities for growth.

In the tea-room it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself.

Since Zennism has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the extreme Orient has purposely avoid the symmetrical as expressing not only completion, but repetition.

Uniformity of design was considered as fatal to the freshness of imagination.

Thus, landscapes, birds, and flowers became thr favourite subjects for depiction rather than the human figure, the latter being present in the person of the beholder himself.

We are often too much in evidence as it is, and in spite of our vanity even self-regard is apt to became monotonous. 」 (From the Book of Tea-the Rea-Room, pp.70-71, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Rutland, Vermont, Tokyo, Japan)

The art must lay in the immortality for growth.

In its sence, uniformity of design is fatal to the freshness of immagination.

Now, I think youll' be able to understand the beauties ," the Abode of the Unsymmetrical & Incomplete".

Click Please！！

Picture: Striped Porgy by Katashi Oyama
Image Designer: Izumi Mori