Sencha

Tea tempers the spirit, calms and harmonizes the mind

Mention tea ceremony and most Japanese will think of chanoyu, the way of tea based on a ritual for drinking the powdered green tea called matcha, which was formalized by Rikyu Sen in the sixteenth century. Much closer to everyday life yet unknown to a surprising number of Japanese is the way of tea for sencha, or leaf green tea.

The kissa, or tea, first brought to Japan from China in the 7th century was in the form of black tea leaves pressed together and shaped into small balls, which were used to make infusions. For Tang Chinese, drinking tea was a part of a carefully cultivated atmosphere which embraced writing or reciting poetry, doing calligraphy, and looking at art.

The Heian aristocrats of Japan, in their rush to embrace all things new and Chinese, adopted both tea and its attendant cultural atmosphere. It was during the Ming Dynasty (14-17th century) that tea leaves, as we know them, were first used to make tea. The resulting brew was so popular that, in China, powdered tea all but disappeared, and tea at last became the drink of the common person.

Priest Ingen, who brought the Obaku Zen sect to Japan, is said to have introduced leaf green tea, or sencha, coming as he did from an area of China famous for its tea. By the middle of the Edo period (1603-1868), an elegant ceremony, reminiscent of the refined tea rituals indulged in by the Heian aristocrats, had become popular in Japan.

Zen was the background to chanoyu; art and literature, with an underlay of Taoism, to sencha. Both ceremonies originated in China but were transmuted into something Japanese when they crossed the waters. There was a time when the sencha ceremony was in the ascendant in the Japanese tea world. At the end of the Edo period, sencha was the choice of the National Learning (Kokugaku) School and of other political leaders pushing for the overthrow of the military rulers, still associated with matcha and chanoyu.

Both the chanoyu and sencha ceremonies might strike the average non-Japanese as stiff and formal, but, without doubt, sencha is on the loose and easy side, and a typical ceremony resounds with banter and laughter. Then, too, the tea used is delicious.

The green tea leaves, which have been dried but not fermented, are brewed in a small pot according to a process designed to bring out their best flavor. Once brewed the tea is served in tiny cups. In the first brewing, a minute amount of tea, enough drops to cover the bottom of the cup, is served. In the second brewing, slightly more tea is served. After the second cup, a sweet is served, followed by a cup of hot water, which both cleans the palate and allows the guests to taste the water used in brewing the tea.

During the preparation and serving of the successive rounds of tea, sweets, and water, the guests chat with each other and the server. Although the person preparing the tea is bound by certain rules of preparation, the guests need not follow a prescribed ritual for drinking, as in chanoyu, so the atmosphere is lighter and more relaxed than in the better-known tea ceremony.

Tiny as the servings are, the taste is deliciously in accord with the ancient Chinese belief that one drinks tea to refresh one’s soul and water to quench one’s thirst. The first cup of sencha is a distilled elixir, with a taste bordering on ambrosial. The second tasting brings one back to the world, in the best sense of the words.

As La Yu, author of the eighth century Chinese classic Cha Ching, or Book of Tea, wrote, “Tea tempers the spirit, calms and harmonizes the mind, it arouses thoughts and prevents drowsiness, lightens and refreshens the body and cleans the perceptive faculties.” All that and it tastes good, too!