In the same way that Sun Tzu’s classic Chinese military treatise, ‘The Art of War’, has come to be widely seen as a useful manual for a surprising range of non-military activities (everything ranging from business strategy to NFL football sports), there are oriental traditions with followers who make similarly bold claims: namely, that their tradition has a usefulness far beyond the cultural niche that it has occupied for centuries. One such Japanese tradition is the Art of the Tea Ceremony, which is purported to be beneficial not just for the well-being of the individuals who participate in it, but also for realizing lasting international peace between nations.

Is this just a quirky claim made by an art which is eager to promote itself to a wider audience? Perhaps. Undeniably, it is difficult to take these pronouncements too literally or too seriously. But this topic can nevertheless be a useful jumping-off point for political analysis. At the very least, the history of the tea ceremony can be examined for clues as to why this art form might aspire to political relevance, and additionally, we can explore how it has fared in political circles in practice.

Of the three “Schools of Tea” existing today in Japan, Urasenke – which sponsors training programs with an international reach – is the most well-known outside of Japan, more so than the Omotesenke school or the Mushakōjisenke school. Urasenke (裏千家) is oldest and arguably most important school of the Japanese tea ceremony.

Of the three schools, Urasenke promotes its tea traditions most forthrightly, from saying that chadō (Way of Tea, 茶道) is a good way to introduce Japanese culture to foreigners, to claims that it can function as a benign influence on political and economic affairs. Urasenke describes its art as one that “…concerns the creation of the proper setting for that moment of enjoyment of a perfect bowl of tea. Everything that goes into that serving of tea, even the quality of the air and the space where it is served, becomes a part of its flavor.”

The former head of the school, the 15th of that lineage, is Sen Genshitsu, who was enlisted as a Kamikaze pilot early in life. He underwent the training for suicide pilots but was never called up before World War II ended. In the post-war era he became the head of the School and decided to take the whole show on the road, holding his school’s tea ceremony in 60 countries, in the process meeting with a long list of heads of state and other dignitaries (including Deng Xiaoping and Bobby Kennedy). Currently he is a goodwill ambassador of the United Nations as well as UNESCO.

His prolific amateur diplomacy has caused him to be nicknamed “a one-man foreign ministry” (Hitori-Gaimusho, 一人外務省). His somewhat perplexing advice for diplomats starts off with the recommendation to ambush their foreign counterparts with a cup of tea. “First of all,” he said in an interview with the Asahi newspaper, ““you should offer a bowl of tea to your counterpart. Your counterpart will be surprised. After that, you should start the meeting.” These days he regards his mission of spreading peace in the world using the power of tea as more needed than ever, in light of all the international tensions such as the territorial rows over the Senkaku islands.

Sen Genshitsu and other proponents of chadō appear to be united in their unswerving faith in their art’s ability to bring about peace in the world. They are also united in their criticisms of western culture, and more specifically, what they perceive as the failure of non-Japanese to understand and appreciate the finer points of Japanese aesthetics.

Coming as it does from a conservative cultural tradition, such criticisms of other cultures are perhaps unsurprising, but there is more to it than this surface reading. The scholar Mara Miller has posited that traditional Japanese arts such as the tea ceremony, due to the aesthetic principles that underpin them and which have been carefully developed for centuries, might function as a kind of “cognitive prostheses,” which is to say that they might extend human cognitive capabilities through artificial means (see Miller, 2014). Therefore, in the thinking of proponents, a failure to appreciate the finer points of the aesthetic also renders the transformative qualities of chadō null and void. It’s a boldly drawn link between artistic subtlety and the ability to remake the world. In other words, Sen Genshitsu can be said to be critical of Western culture primarily because he perceives it as lacking any of these inherently transformative qualities.

While the tea ceremony by definition presents a place of interaction – in other words, a public sphere – at first sight it appears to be a deeply apolitical kind of public sphere. But scholars like Etsuko Kato point out that while chadō has certainly been de-politicized over time, it was far from apolitical in its origins; that the art came into being because wealthy merchants needed an aristocratic, intellectual tradition of their own, in order to get a leg up on the (politically more powerful) samurai caste (see Kato, 2009). In this view, the art was then adopted for similar reasons by samurai with a lowly background, who came from families that were not socially prominent yet. One such samurai from humble beginnings was Oda Nobunaga, who came virtually out of nowhere to become the leader who came so close to uniting Japan. Both merchants and socially advancing samurai thus, in the words of Kato, “used this new, pseudo-artistocratic art of the tea ceremony to demonstrate their sophistication and political power.”. Moreover, the ceremony functioned as a neutral space for these different social castes to exchange sensitive political messages to each other.

Being an art form that functions as a conduit for political relations has not been without risks to its practitioners. The founder of the Urasenke school, Sen no Rikyū (千利休, 1522-1591) actually met his demise because he had too many political disagreements with his patron, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the other general besides Oda Nobunaga who was instrumental in unifying medieval Japan. As a result of their falling out over the issues, Hideyoshi ordered Sen no Rikyū to commit seppuku.

In addition to being a place of interaction for political actors, the tea ceremony can also be framed as an instrument of symbolic power and cultural nationalism. The very “Japanese-ness” of the tea ceremony and its status in society suggest that the art grew to become a receptacle of various national meanings; a concentrated container for what it means to be Japanese (see Surak, 2011). From the beginning, the leaders of Schools of Tea have actively aspired to be such bearers of cultural nationalism. As a result, their relationship to the politicians in power became a symbiotic one, with the state seeing the art as a useful conduit for state power, and the art aspiring to be a cultural manifestation of the state. And this aspect of cultural nationalism would certainly help explain why Sen Genshitsu and his fellow practitioners are critical of non-Japanese culture.

When asked by the Asahi newspaper in which political arena the tea ceremony can be most useful today, Sen Genshitsu answers forthrightly that he would like to concentrate its peace-making powers on the often strained diplomatic relations between Japan and its Eastasian neighbours. While recognizing that repairing strained relations with China and South Korea is most difficult for the players involved, he reiterates that the power of tea can help:

As Japan and the two neighbors jostle, they cannot take a step back. Such a situation is really sad. An executive of the Communist Party of China I met late last year told me, “If Japan finds a clue (to break the deadlock), we can adjust ourselves to it.” I want to help with the power of tea.

“A small contribution,” he then adds. And a bowl of tea.