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The Birmingham Museum of At explored Japanese culture on Jan. 19 at the Japanese Heritage Festival.
Festivities at the free event included tours of the Japanese gallery, screenings of Anime and traditional tea ceremony demonstrations. Members of the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Birmingham Association led the tea demonstrations.
“Tea is so, such a multifaceted discipline,” said Asano Ritsuko. She was born in Yokohama, Japan, and grew up in Tokyo. She moved to Alabama the summer of 1996.
She said the tea ceremony embraces almost every aspect of Japanese culture, such as calligraphy, flowers, fabric, gardening and cooking.
“So that’s why I always consider myself not as a teacher, but just a student,” she said. “So for the rest of my life, I keep learning about this very inclusive culture, which is the way of tea.”
Josh Haynes, who is also a member of the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Birmingham Association, has been practicing the way of tea for 20 years. He led one of the ceremonies at the museum.
“It’s really not a ceremony,” he told the audience during the ceremony. “It’s not a ritual. It’s full of prescribed movements. Things are done in a certain order. In a certain way.”
Because Haynes has been practicing the way of tea for two decades now, he said it is hard for him to think of Japanese as a culture different from his own.
“But it’s always been an area of interest to look into other cultures and learn things and study things,” he said. “And I think that often, when you do that, you are better able to connect with other people. You find valuable things in other peoples cultures that can enhance your own life. And you find what’s really valuable in the culture you were raised. So you can then have a very decided, intentional way of living and interacting with other people based on those experiences.”
To see upcoming events at the museum, visit the Birmingham Museum of Art website.
