Irregularity by Soetsu Yanagi

 

Being founded on nature, the quality of beauty inculcated by the early masters in the Tea-rooms of Japan was a release into healthy normality, into a freedom without the overtones of willful artistry. The implements of Tea had no overstressed individualism about them. In that respect they were utterly different from objects made today by artists-craftsmen in search of self-expression, although there is a superficial likeness. They are different, too, from the things favored by the later men of Tea, who had lost their freedom in the search for formulas. Such deformations as they contain were born, not made, unlike the kind of deliberate distortion that is current today. Their oddness was unplanned. Contemporary ‘free form’ is willful and unfree. In fact it can be said that the pursuit of freedom has led to the prison gates – the prison of self.

Perhaps the best way of explaining this is by a comparison of the early and later implements of Tea. The former came from either China or, more particularly, Korea. They had an enormous influence upon Japanese taste, and Japanese craftsmen began to imitate them, mainly under the patronage of the later masters. Art historians have praised and still praise these Japanese crafts; I cannot agree. The implements of Tea made in Japan in this way cannot compare to those made abroad. The irregularity apparent in both is in fact quite different. They  are entirely different in motivation. The difference is between things born and things made. A comparison between the Korean Ido bowls and the Japanese Raku Tea-bowls is sufficient to make this quite clear. The Raku bowls were made with deliberate effort, the Korean bowls were effortless products of daily living and were not even intended for Tea. In theory the Japanese bowls might have been expected to be better, but in actuality the Korean bowls are far better. The reason for this is clear if one considers which follows more faithfully the Zen warning to ‘Avoid the artificial’. Even in one of the most renowned Raku Tea-bowls, the famous ‘Fuji’ of Honami Keotsu, this forced quality of taste is not entirely eradicated. Although things made with the motive of taste may charm for a time, one gets tired of them. Raku is not really freedom but captivity, not really ‘absence of conceptualization’ but its result.

The approach to the making of better Raku Tea bowls would necessitate a complete reversal of thinking. Really good artists and craftsmen are aware of this dilemma, but even they have not escaped from it. To do so is immensely difficult so long as one  follows the path of jiriki (salvation through one’s efforts) rather than the tariki (abandonment of attempts at self-reliance; reliance on ‘grace’) that produced the Korean bowls. This is the only way, hard though it may be, for the artist, or for the craftsman who is also an artist. In his greater range and awareness he has to strive and strive to the very end to achieve that real freedom where his path joins that of the simple, natural traditional craftsman of whom I have written so much. ‘Free Form’ activity is the equivalent of the deformed Raku Tea –bowl; both suffered the same sickness, which has to be cured by a complete reversal of thinking. I believe that the early concept of Tea, if properly understood, contains force and truth enough to bring about this transformation. The beauty of irregularity (born, not made)-which in its true form is actually liberated from both regularity and irregularity- the asymmetrical principle contains the seed of the highest form of beauty known to man.