Tea ceremony tools
Let’s get familiar with Tea ceremony tools
Hi. I’m Yukako who lives in the northern part of Europe, and teaches and tells people about Japanese traditional culture such as tea ceremony, kimono, etc. offline and online.
I’m sure that many of you have seen or attended tea ceremony performance, but do you know what tools they actually use? Even you’ve seen tea performance, I’m sure that not many people know about name of tools. So, today I’d like to introduce some basic tools for tea ceremony.
Fukusa (服紗)
Fukusa is a silk square cloth that you use it for purifying each tool. You usually see it carrying around someone’s wrest on obi. When we use it, we always fold it in one manner. It’s called “Fukusa sabaki”.
This is a tea caddy. “Natsume” means dates (fruit) in Japanese. It was named because its small and round shape.
Chashaku (茶杓) & Chasen (茶筅)
“Chashaku” is a tea spoon and “chasen” is a tea whisk. When making a tea, we scoop tea powder from natsume with a chashaku, and put tea powder and hot water in a tea bowl and whisk it until it gets mild foam.
When we say these names, we usually add “o-” at the head. So, natsume is called “o-natsume”, chashaku is “o-chashaku”, but we don’t use same manner for fukusa and chasen. Hmmmm…. I don’t know the reason. Sorry!!
I hope you found new knowledge about tea ceremony goods here. See you soon!!