/lounge/ - sushi social

If you want a "light" introduction to the development of tea ceremony and the wabi-sabi aesthetic in Japan, Hyouge Mono provides a good overview. It's historical fiction set in the Sengoku era so it's got the usual warlords and battles you'd expect in that kind of story, but the focus is more on tea ceremony and the influence of the tea master Sen no Rikyuu (also known as Sen no Soueki) on promoting wabi-sabi aesthetics among the ruling class.

Perhaps it was successful because of the scarcity introduced by the wars, but I think it's interesting how tea ceremony shifted from shows of wealth to simply drinking tea with common but aesthetically pleasing tools and decorations.

I am usually the odd one out in these sites because I am a China weeb and I'm not that interested in Japan.
Most recently I had been reading about the debates between taoists and buddhists for state favour in the time of the Six Dynasties, aka the Northern and Southern Dynasties (220 bce - 589 ad). It was during this time when daoism began it's life as a religious movement, not from the "philosophical" kind usually associated with the Daodejing 道德經, but with a religious sect of a deified Laozi 老子 with it's primary scripture being the Taiping Jing 太平經.
During this era, daoism and buddhism, just being introduced from india, entered in contact with one another and transformed each other through competition in the absence of an imperial philosophy such as had been Confucianism for the past 400 years with the Han 漢 dynasty.
Not a lot of people discuss much chinese culture about these places.

>>22135
Maybe it wasn't just scarcity but the fact you could suddenly loose everything? Thanks for the recc. I've only known Okakura Tenshin's book which is modern but was still enjoyable. I heard Heidegger plagiarized it.

>>22138
Where's a good place to start with Chinese metaphysics? I feel like the language barrier is a huge issue with Chinese culture. Where do you even begin? I wonder what a full classical education was like in old China. What would have been the essential reads and essential stuff to learn?

>>22139
>Where's a good place to start with Chinese metaphysics?
To begin I would always recommend the daodejing. My own interest is with the yijing 易經, which is probably the richest in cosmological interpretations, but it's a very difficult text (not a book but a divnination manual). If I can suggest a book, Robin Wang's book Yinyang is imo a good introduction to a fundamental concept in chinese cosmology.
>I wonder what a full classical education was like in old China. What would have been the essential reads and essential stuff to learn?
Confucianism was, for the most part of Chinese history, the official imperial doctrine, as such there was a Confucian csushi roll that is now known as the Four Books and Five Classics 四書五經, I don't remember all of them, but they include Confucius's 孔子 Analects 論語, the Book of Poetry 詩經， which is a compilation of 300 poems from all over what was then the middle kingdom, that is the yellow river and yangzi drain basins.
In the imperial examination exams, people had to make a "thesis" of sort, which could be, for example, some exegesis on the analects or the yijing, or write poetry in the style of the shijing.

Are there any good books on the Ikko Ikki?