stone and brick
construction, our Japanese method of building with wood and bamboo seems
scarcely worthy to be ranked as architecture. It is but quite recently
that a competent student of Western architecture has recognised and paid
tribute to the remarkable perfection of our great temples. Such being
the case as regards our classic architecture, we could hardly expect the
outsider to appreciate the subtle beauty of the tea-room, its principles
of construction and decoration being entirely different from those of
the West.

The tea-room (the Sukiya) does not pretend to be other than a mere
cottage--a straw hut, as we call it. The original ideographs for Sukiya
mean the Abode of Fancy. Latterly the various tea-masters substituted
various Chinese characters according to their conception of the
tea-room, and the term Sukiya may signify the Abode of Vacancy or the
Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an
ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of
Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may
be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment. It is an
Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated to the worship
of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some thing unfinished for the play
of the imagination to complete. The ideals of Teaism have since the
sixteenth century influenced our architecture to such degree that the
ordinary Japanese interior of the present day, on account of the extreme
simplicity and chasteness of its scheme of decoration, appears to
foreigners almost barren.

The first independent tea-room was the creation of Senno-Soyeki,
commonly known by his later name of Rikiu, the greatest of all
tea-masters, who, in the sixteenth century, under the patronage of
Taiko-Hideyoshi, instituted and brought to a high state of perfection
the formalities of the Tea-ceremony. The proportions of the tea-room had
been previously determined by Jowo--a famous tea-master of the fifteenth
century. The early tea-room consisted merely of a portion of the
ordinary drawing-room partitioned off by screens for the purpose of
the tea-gathering. The portion partitioned off was called the Kakoi
(enclosure), a name still applied to those tea-rooms which are built
into a house and are not independent constructions. The Sukiya consists
of the tea-room proper, designed to accommodate not more than five
persons, a number suggestive of the