In tea ceremony we use a bamboo scoop (chashaku) to measure
the powdered tea into the bowl before adding hot water and whisking it into a
foam. The chashaku is an important part of tea ceremony. Although they may all
look the same at first glance, there are small variations in shape, weight, and
balance that add up to make each one unique.
If a chashaku has a particularly good character, it might be
given a poetic name (mei). Usually the name is based—as you might have guessed
from the translation!—on an image from Japanese poetry. My sensei told me about
one classic mei that’s especially appropriate for this time of year: morai
mizu.
Like most mei based on a poem, this phrase is tough to
translate. This particular one is from a haiku by Chiyojo (1703-1785). The
Japanese version is:
Asago ni
Tsurube toraete
Morai mizu
Here’s a translation from an anthology of Japanese poetry:
With the well bucket
Taken over by morning glories
I go begging water
But although it’s very evocative, the translation doesn’t
capture the full meaning of the original. Let’s break it down.
Asago is easy; it
means morning glory. Tsurube is a
well bucket. Ni . . . toraete is
a little bit trickier. The literal translation would be “is taken,” but in
Japanese, that particular verb form gives the action a negative feeling – a
sense of being inconvenienced by the action. That’s reinforced by the use of
the verb toru, “to take,” which
can also mean “to steal.” So you could interpret the first part of the poem as
“a morning glory has taken my well bucket” or, more indignantly, as “that
morning glory stole my well bucket!”
Now we come to the crucial line of the poem: morai mizu. Mizu
is easy enough; it means water. Morai is a form of the verb morau,
which is usually translated “to receive,” but it suggests gratitude for having
been given something.
So a more literal translation might be something like:
A morning glory
Has taken my bucket
A gift of water
But to fully understand the meaning, especially in the
context of tea ceremony, we need to visualize the story behind it. The poet
woke one morning and went out to draw some water from her well, but discovered
that a morning glory had wound its way around the bucket. Unwilling to disturb
the flower, she went to her neighbor’s house and asked to borrow some water.
What a great image for summer! When you’re preparing tea
during a tea ceremony, you want to give your guests a psychological feeling of
coolness, and in this one phrase you’re evoking a fresh morning, water, and delicate
flowers that will fade in the heat of high noon.
Although it’s not a literal translation, I like using “borrowed
water” for morai mizu because it also
brings up the image of going to a neighbor to “borrow a cup of sugar” – a
visit, a chat, a little gift that makes someone’s day a bit brighter. Just like
a good tea ceremony!
