The Tea-Room Summary and Analysis

To Westerners brought up to admire stone and brick architecture, it is hard to appreciate the Japanese tradition of wood and bamboo architecture, and so it is hard to appreciate the tea room itself.

The tea room, or Sukiya, is a simple cottage. Sukiya can mean Abode of Fancy, Abode of Vacancy, and Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It eschews ornamentation, and leaves meaning to the imagination; it is the "vacuum" in which great things may be contained. It may seem quite barren to a Westerner.

Early tea rooms were connected to homes. Only with the innovations of Rikyu in the 16th century, the greatest of tea-masters, was the independent tea room created. The Sukiya consists of a small room, built to accommodate no more than five people, an anteroom where tea utensils are kept, a portico where guests wait...