Chigusa

A stoneware jar, where dried tea leaves are kept. It has a name. The name is Chigusa. In Japanese it means, it seems, Plants in Abundance (or Variety in Abundance, depending on the alphabet we use).

It is now on view at the Freer Gallery in Washington, it has a fabulous story. It was made in China, sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It came soon to the Nippon archipelago, shipped as a commercial container.

And it was in Japan that this jar acquired, throughout several centuries, a noble pedigree. From the fifteenth to the twentieth century it stepped by several masters, great tea connoisseurs. Some of them were tea collectors, some were powerful rulers. It was displayed in famous tearooms, and sometimes it served as a diplomatic agent: during long and complicated negotiations between political rivals, in order to stop long periods of conflict and to achieve precarious periods of peace, this jar was given as a gift.

The jar got a name at a certain moment, Chigusa, and due to its name it was possible to find all written testimonies about it and to track its history. Because there were many writings dedicated to Chigusa, the tea jar made in China and living its fame in Japan. There were diaries and records. As I read yesterday about Chigusa, one eyewitness, who saw it at a gathering in 1586, admired the large size and the reddish color and noted that this jar was a meibutsu, a celebrated tea object.

And so this jar, with all that was written about it, is in a way a time capsule, that traveled throughout centuries. Is it possible that Chigusa keeps hidden a small Kami? A small demon, playful and capricious like a kid, that you can persuade with small gifts? But you should be aware: a Kami is like a Jinn, you never know. If he is befriending you, as he is knowing you better and better he might become your enemy. Or even remaining a friend of you he still can play very bad tricks, as he likes such games. The other day, as I was passing by a church, an old woman asked me for some change. I looked at her, she was poorly dressed and rather old. She could very well be a Kami or a Jinn, trying to see my ways. So I gave her all the change I had in my pocket and I asked her whether she was not a Jinn or something. She looked at me, do you think you are the smart one?

And I'm coming back to Chigusa, the stoneware jar with amber glaze: does it keep also, stacked among the dried tea leaves, pages from Japan's history? Oh yes, of course it does: a repository of times that passed, an icon.

I am dedicating these lines to the people who made the history of Chigusa possible, a nation shaken yesterday by the terrible tragedy of earthquake and tsunami.


(Smithsonian Castle)