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A Japanese tea house for inside your house? Tokyo company wants to offer micro chashitsu overseas

Casey Baseel Aug 28, 2022
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Asakusa tea ceremony school creates a sanctuary you can build inside your living room.

In a perfect world, we’d all have our own secluded teahouse, a cabin in the middle of a bamboo grove where we could sip a bowl of freshly brewed matcha while freeing ourselves from the stress of modern society and quietly contemplating the true essence of existence, either alone or with a close, trusted companion.

Of course, most of us don’t own a parcel of land in a forest, and you may even live in a country with no bamboo groves to be found. That doesn’t mean you have to be denied your teahouse sanctuary, though, thanks to Tokyo tea ceremony school and cultural event venue Senshin-an.

Senshin-an is located in Asakusa, Tokyo’s most traditionally cultural neighborhood. People interested in Japanese tea customs aren’t limited to those who live in the district, though, or even Japan, so to help facilitate a participative interest in tea culture Senshin-an has come up with the Chashitsu ZerO, a compact teahouse that you assemble inside your home.

As with full-size Japanese tea cottages, entry is through a rectangular door called a nijiriguchi. The unorthodox portal is meant to mentally remind you that you’re entering a space separate from your daily life, where tranquility and balance are the foremost priorities.

▼ The Chashitsu ZerO with its roof and front wall removed in order to show the interior.

Once inside, you’ll sit or kneel on a pair of tatami reed flooring panels. While the tea kettle, cups, and other brewing equipment shown in the above photo isn’t part of the package, each Chashitsu ZerO does include a kakejiku hanging scroll made of washi paper from craftsmen in Japan’s Echizen (Fukui) region. The calligraphy is handwritten by Soken Danjo, abbot of Saikozenji, a Buddhist temple founded in Hiroshima over 500 years ago.

▼ The characters read Honrai mu ichimotsu, a Zen proverb that translates as “All things come from nothingness” and is interpreted as a reminder to free yourself from unnecessary burdens and attachments.

The exterior dimensions of the Chashitsu ZerO are 160 centimeters (63 inches) in length by 120 in width and 150 in height. Since the walls and ceiling are made of sturdy cardboard paneling, the total weight is just 38 kilograms (83.8 pounds), so with someone to help, it shouldn’t be too hard to move around even when fully assembled.

The Chashitsu ZerO is currently available for purchase in Japan here for 180,000 yen (US$1,340), which includes shipping. Senshin-an is also interested in offering its teahouse-for-inside-the-house to overseas buyers as well, and to gauge whether or not there’s sufficient demand they’ve started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter here.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a way for your pets to enjoy traditional Japanese architectural design too, this should do the trick.

Source: Senshin-an via IT Media
Top image: Senshin-an
Insert images: YouTube/茶室ZerO, Senshin-an (1, 2)
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