Copyright (c) 2014 Smithsonian Institution
And Sho’usetsu runs for 15 days from about November 23.
The sun’s rays are getting weaker, and the chill in the air deepens. But the dead of winter is still sometime off. This season is called Sho’usetsu (小雪)(“little snow”) because even when it snows, it doesn’t amount to much.
In the chanoyu world, November has been the time for tea jars full of tea leaves, which had been freshly picked in early summer, to start arriving from tea fields of Uji. “Kuchikiri no chaji” was a tea event for braking the seal of a tea jar, taking out the tea leaves, grinding them with a mill, and tasting the freshly ground tea. Fresh tea leaves, after the harvest, were kept in jars and stored in cool places high up in the mountains to pass the summer. Tea jars let just enough air to pass through, which aided the fermentation of the leaves.
November marks “kuchikiri” and “robiraki.” It is an important month with meaningful events.
Originally published November 4, 2015