Praising Pure, Primal Partiality: Senchado at Houan in Kitakamakura & The Hiroshima Native Juke Tea Afters
In which I contemplate my first Senchado workshop, heap more praise on Tea Factory Gen & recommend a tea sesh with Rick Rubin & Richard Rudd.
To partially paraphrase 03 Greedo, I’m back from Belgrade (un)like I never left.
Before the jet lag burns off, I put this Hiroshima Native Cultivar Pure Tea in my kyusu in Kamakura. At least that’s how you could translate 広島在来清茶 but another way would be to call it a juke tea. A tea that’s processed partially like a sencha but also a little like a Taiwanese oolong—where Gen San studied tea production for a time—only to then juke us back to a green tea. Or is it?
Better I just let the package explain it:
“The tea manufacturing concept is "Japanese tea, but not Japanese tea". ” After that, the tea was made without using rough rolling machines or fine rolling machines, which are always required in the manufacturing process. Therefore, although it is steamed, it is not called sencha, but rather ``seicha,'' which means “pure tea.” If the tea is roasted here, it will be similar to oolong tea. Oolong tea can also be made in Taiwan, so I didn't roast it because I was conscious of being Japanese. However, since most of the manufacturing process of Japanese tea is omitted, the result is closer to oolong tea in terms of shape. The reason why we did not use the traditional sencha manufacturing method was because we assumed that the water content in the tea leaves had already decreased by more than 30% during the withering process, and that the more the tea leaves were rolled, the more the flowery scent would disappear. It looks quite large and there is no way to evaluate it, but when you pour hot water into it, the indescribable and complex floral scent is on another level.”
Which is all to say, it’s a rather wavy swoon through the tea fields of Hiroshima, an area not well-known as a tea producing region but one I’ve been keen on since visiting Gen San’s tea stand in Onomichi in 2021. He’s also got a new tea space elsewhere in town. But I’m two steeps into this juke-cha and it has all the makings of a great trick move, where you think it’s one thing only to become another. It’s wild and mangy when it hits the tongue but leaves a soft and supple aftermath. It’d got an edge without any snaggy toothed jaggedness that sometimes accompanies Japanese green teas when you introduce them to boiling water (as recommended for this tea’s second steep). There is no gruesome sawing as the tea plummets toward easy, peaceful depths. It is a sharp death by gentle lullaby.
Teas as paradoxes. These are teas for mees.
But speaking of paradoxes and speaking of speaking, yesterday I was privileged to take part in my first Senchado workshop, taught by Karaki Sensei at Houan Tea Room behind the beautiful Jochi-Ji temple in Kitakamkura (a part of the expansive Takarano Niwa complex that includes gardens and a pottery kiln, offering any array of cultural experiences under the banner of Kamakura Mind).
In the most basic terms, Senchado is a type of Japanese tea ceremony for the preparation of loose-leaf teas (as opposed to Sado or Chanoyu, which is for the preparation of matcha). It is rooted in the smallest of the three main Zen sects, Obaku, and grew out of Manpuku-Ji in Uji. From what I understand, it’s also modeled, in part after the famous Old Tea Seller Baisao, who used to wonder around Kyoto in the 18th century, writing rather excellent tea poetry* and selling tea to passersby.
In addition to giving us some basic temae (movements) for preparing sencha, Karaki Sensei spoke rather eloquently and at length about Senchado’s history and its connection to Obaku and Baisao. I jotted what notes I could as we mixed gyokuro and sencha leaves (a first for me) and prepared a couple rounds of tea before Karaki San prepared a final tea for us using a porcelain kyusu burner combo I had never seen before. That final sencha was Midorinonagomi from Taisyouen (緑の和) and it was exquisite.
The two-hour workshop was conducted entirely in Japanese. Which meant, of course, I only understood about half of what was said. Sometimes, in situations like these, my (former) inner critic might howl and wring hands over why my Japanese isn’t better yet. I would rue all the concepts I was missing, all the details passing through my fingers like so many grains of sand. Lost forever.
This time, though, something about Karaki San’s even-keeled manner—where he was neither overly excited that a bearded foreigner was taking his workshop nor annoyed about the same fact (I’ve experienced both reactions in the past)—allowed me to sit without being especially catered too. I was allowed to just be a student and have my experience and take what I could, verbally and non-verbally. There was an acceptance of the partiality of my understanding. I was impartially able be partial. A part was allowed to be the whole.
It reminded me of listening to Rick Rubin have seven cups of tea with Richard Rudd, who wrote The Gene Keys, as I waited for my flight to depart Belgrade. On a recent episode of the Tetragrammaton pod, they drink a 90-year-aged Oolong and lacking any tea in my cup at the time, I closed my eyes a drank in what they had to share. Rudd actually references Baisao at the 2 hour and 8 minute and 30 second mark of the episode. He also points out that he considers himself a novice and points to his teacher’s teacher, Tea Drunk Po, who I’ve wanted to drink with for some time. I highly recommend the whole episode (the pod itself is worth subscribing to):
But even in Rudd’s professed partiality of understanding tea, I feel he understands the whole in how sincerely he embraces those parts. Just like his Gene Keys profess to only give a partial glimpse into each of our cosmic journeying, they might be said to give the whole in their sincere aim. Just as I could only understand part of Karaki San’s words, I listened with my whole self, even the part that thought about Baisao and wrote this poem during the lesson.
Bridge To Senchado
Ice blue veins
Of the tea leaf tray
Thawed the winters
Of my burnt-out heart
Torching the records
Of where I came
And where I'm headed
Oh, snowball sweet
Kindling
You are the hush puppy
Gag for all the mees
That argue being
Heard
Thumps
Being
Felt
Praise these leaves
Having sat so long
In seiza
They no longer need
The buzzsaw bitter
Amputation
Only to be mixed
And blended and
Bettered off.
*And, not to be outdone, here is a bonus poem from the great Old Tea Seller himself, Baisao:
Tasting Some New Tea from Ekkei
…
It doesn’t take seven cups like Master Lu says3
My guests get old Chao-chou’s one cup tea;4
And whoever can grasp the taste in that cup
Whether stranger or friend, knows my true mind.
Sake fuels the vital spirits, works like courage,
Tea works benevolently, purifying the soul.
Courageous feats that put the world in your debt
Couldn’t match the benefit benevolence brings.
A tea unsurpassed for color, flavor, and scent,
Attributes that Buddhists refer to as “dusts,”5
But only through them is the true taste known,
They are the Dharma body. Primal suchness.