Of all the things I learned in my tea ceremony lessons, from antique ceramics to flower arrangement, it was the practice of incense which was most reminiscent today’s wine tastings.
In the world’s oldest novel, The Tale of Genji, for example, aristocrats of a thousand years ago played a game called takimono-awase (薫物合わせ). The competition involved the comparison of rare types of incense. Some versions of the game demanded merely identifying types of rare incense (like identifying a pinot or a nebbiolo). There was aloeswood, camphor, and sandalwood from Southeast Asia; cinnamon and musk from Vietnam and Frankincense from Somaliland. These aromatics were used to treat both body and spirit as they affected the totality of the person: body, mind and soul.
Incense is also an important part of the tea ceremony, and students were encouraged to recognize different types and to be able to make refined comments about them. To recognize what the incense is is not unlike a blind tasting in wine.
In other versions of takimono-awase, players compare the fragrance of the incense to a poem. Sometimes engaging in group poetry contests to evoke the perfume in words.
Wine Tasting Competitions
These can begin with blind tastings and comparisons 合わせ
Or you can jump straight into the competitions:
--Comparing wine to poetry, paintings, seasons, specific places, galaxies
Principles:
1. Anyone who mentions a food analogy loses game anyone who assigns a point system has their wine glass removed.
2) After the best image is selected, go around the table as people add to the images or poem.
This is a form of collaborative composition
(Players can keep in mind terms like 'allure (en) and profundity (yūgen)
3) Keep going around till people feel the wine has been reproduced in poetry or paintings or a galaxy
4) Winner chooses topic and wine for next time
This is a form of Uta-awase (歌合 or 歌合せ)
From Wikipedia:
Elements common to uta-awase were a sponsor; two sides of contestants (方人, kataudo), the Left and the Right, the former having precedence, and usually the poets;[clarification needed] a series of rounds (番, ban) in which a poem from each side was matched; a judge (判者, hanja) who declared a victory (勝, katsu) or a draw (持, ji), and might add comments (判詞, hanshi); and the provision of set topics (題, dai), whether handed out at the beginning or distributed in advance. In general, anything that might introduce a discordant tone was avoided, while the evolving rules were 'largely prohibitive rather than prescriptive', admissible vocabulary largely limited to that of the Kokinshū, with words from the Man'yōshū liable to be judged archaism. Use of a phrase such as harugasumi, 'in the spring haze', when the topic was the autumnal 'first geese' could provoke much hilarity.The number of rounds varied by the occasion; The Poetry Contest in 1500 Rounds (千五百番歌合) of 1201 was the longest of all recorded uta-awase.
Judgement
The judge was usually a poet of renown. During the Teijiin Poetry Contest the former emperor served as judge, and when one of his own offerings was matched against a superior poem by Ki no Tsurayuki, commented 'how can an imperial poem lose?', awarding himself a draw.[1] Fujiwara Shunzei served as judge some twenty-one times.During the Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds (六百番歌合) of 1192, he awarded victory to a poem with the line 'fields of grass', observing its reference to a previous work and commenting 'it is shocking for anyone to write poetry without knowing Genji'. Judging another contest he wrote how, upon recital, there must be 'allure (en) and profundity (yūgen) ... an aura of its own that hovers about the poem much as a veil of haze among cherry blossoms, the belling of a stag before the autumn moon, the scent of springtime in the plum blossom, or the autumn rain in the crimson leaves upon the peak'.
Utaawase-e
Early fourteenth-century emaki Tōhoku'in Poetry Contest among Persons of Various Occupations (1214); Important Cultural Property; Tokyo National Museum
Utaawase-e (歌合絵) are illustrated records of actual poetry contests or depictions of imaginary contests such as between the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals. The fourteenth-century emaki Tōhoku'in Poetry Contest among Persons of Various Occupations (東北院職人歌合絵巻) depicts a group of craftsmen who held a poetry contest in emulation of those of the nobility. With a sutra transcriber as judge, a physician, blacksmith, sword polisher, shrine maiden and fisherman competed against a master of Yin and Yang, court carpenter, founder, gambler and merchant, each composing two poems on the themes of the moon and love
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