,
at Nikko and in the Nijo castle in Kyoto, we see structural beauty
sacrificed to a wealth of ornamentation which in colour and exquisite
detail equals the utmost gorgeousness of Arabian or Moorish effort.

The simplicity and purism of the tea-room resulted from emulation of
the Zen monastery. A Zen monastery differs from those of other Buddhist
sects inasmuch as it is meant only to be a dwelling place for the monks.
Its chapel is not a place of worship or pilgrimage, but a college
room where the students congregate for discussion and the practice
of meditation. The room is bare except for a central alcove in which,
behind the altar, is a statue of Bodhi Dharma, the founder of the sect,
or of Sakyamuni attended by Kashiapa and Ananda, the two earliest Zen
patriarchs. On the altar, flowers and incense are offered up in the
memory of the great contributions which these sages made to Zen. We
have already said that it was the ritual instituted by the Zen monks
of successively drinking tea out of a bowl before the image of Bodhi
Dharma, which laid the foundations of the tea-ceremony. We might
add here that the altar of the Zen chapel was the prototype of the
Tokonoma,--the place of honour in a Japanese room where paintings and
flowers are placed for the edification of the guests.

All our great tea-masters were students of Zen and attempted to
introduce the spirit of Zennism into the actualities of life. Thus the
room, like the other equipments of the tea-ceremony, reflects many of
the Zen doctrines. The size of the orthodox tea-room, which is four mats
and a half, or ten feet square, is determined by a passage in the Sutra
of Vikramadytia. In that interesting work, Vikramadytia welcomes the
Saint Manjushiri and eighty-four thousand disciples of Buddha in a room
of this size,--an allegory based on the theory of the non-existence of
space to the truly enlightened. Again the roji, the garden path which
leads from the machiai to the tea-room, signified the first stage of
meditation,--the passage into self-illumination. The roji was intended
to break connection with the outside world, and produce a fresh
sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in the
tea-room itself. One who has trodden this garden path cannot fail to
remember how his spirit, as he walked in the twilight of evergreens over
the regular irregularities of the stepping stones, beneath which lay
dried pine needles, and passed beside the moss-cover