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Coffee, Tea, or What?
--The Role of "Stimulants" in Human Communication--Publication Date:199203
Book title: MEDIA, CULTURE, AND EDUCATION IN JAPAN [A COLLECTION OF PAPERS]
Publisher : National Institute of Multimedia Education
According to a Chinese legend, tea was first tried by the Emperor Shen Nung sometime around 2000 B.C. The tea that he drank was allegedly brought to him by a group of explorers who had gone to a mountain area of Yunnan, close to the Chinese border with Assam. The fragrance, taste, and the refreshing effects of tea attracted Chinese nobles in the court, and thus it became a favorite drinking beverage among Chinese.
Tea was especially well received by Buddhist monks, who were prohibited from taking alcohol and found tea a worthy substitute because it contained caffeine and tannin and had a comfortably stimulating and awakening effect. Another story tells of Darma, a legendary Buddhist patriarch who devoted himself to seven years of sleepless meditation, and who was the first person to use tea in order to keep himself awake.
Tea at this early stage, however, was not served in the way we are familiar with. A Chinese document of the 3rd century A.D. says that the tea leaves were pressed like a brick; when it was served, it had to be crushed and mixed with onion, ginger, orange, and other spices, and then hot water was poured over the mixture. Tea was used at this stage as a medicine rather than as an ordinary beverage.
No matter who the discoverer was, there is no doubt that the Chinese were the tea drinkers who first started this habit thousands of years ago. Moreover, in the following centuries, tea became a necessary accompaniment to social gatherings of literati as a medium of better and more sophisticated intellectual discussions. Scholars, highranking officials, and monks sat together with a cup of tea, enjoying the most philosophical discourse for hours. The Emperor during the 5th century owned the best tea garden in the country, and drinking a good cup of tea became an obvious status symbol.
It is no wonder then that tea itself became a subject of intellectual inquiry in China. In 780 A.D., a scholar by the name of Lu Yu wrote a classic three-volume treatise on tea titled "Ch'a Ching." He described the wisdom of growing and manufacturing tea, and at the same time he gave instructions on the proper manner of drinking tea, including twenty-four instruments essential to fine brewing. These volumes marked the beginning of the worldwide diffusion of tea drinking.
Japan probably was the first country to import the tea drinking habit from China. As early as the 5th century, when Japanese monks were sent to China to learn Buddhism, they accepted tea as a part of their new "life style." But as was the case in China at that time, tea was regarded as a special beverage for use only by the holy occupation who took it as a medicine. Thus tea was not known to the public. Centuries passed and in the middle of the 13th century, a revolution took place. Eizai, a Japanese monk who brought Zen Buddhism from China to Japan, was summoned by the Shogun who greatly appreciated Eizai's prescription, and started drinking tea habitually. Encouraged by the event, Eizai wrote a look titled "Kissa Yojo ki" (Tea for Health; after that, tea drinking became fashionable among the upper-class elites.
Because of the good climate for tea growing, the speed of diffusion of tea drinking in Japan was almost miraculous. By the end of the 14th century, even the poor peasants grew their own tea shrubs and were drinking tea.
The Arabs knew tea as a beverage in the 9th century. In central Asia, tea was brought from China during the Tang Dynasty (7th century); for the nomads of Tibet and Mongolia, tea was the most valuable source of Vitamin C, as they were unable to get green vegetables in the steppes of central Asia. As a matter of fact, the Chinese government during the Ming and Ching dynasties was able to manipulate these threatening "barbarians" by trading tea with them.
In comparison with the Asians, from Arabs to Japanese, westerners learned to appreciate tea much later.
The first record of tea in the West is found in the writings of Giambattista Ramusio, who found this new beverage called "Chai Catai" upon his visit to the Near East. In his volume, "Navigationi e Viaggi," published in 1559, he notes, "They take of that herb, whether dry or fresh, and boil it well in water. One or two cups of this decoction taken on an empty stomach removes fever, headache, stomach-ache, pain in the side or in joints, and it should be taken as hot as you can bear it."
Like their eastern counterparts, the Buddhist monks, the Jesuits also became very fond of tea as a substitute for alcohol. It is worthwhile to note that the 15th to 16th century was the period when Europe began to learn about Asia by way of the Arabs (indeed, the outer sea navigation know-how was brought by Arabs), and the "East-West Center" of that period existed in Baghdad. Tea was, in this sense, one of the earliest and the most important medium of intercultural communication; in Denys Forrest's phrasing it was "a regular East-West article of commerce."
The first tea export from China to Europe took place in 1606 in Bantam, Java where traders brought tea from China to be shipped to Holland by the Dutch East India Company.
Like all new products and novelties, it took some time for tea to become popular in Europe. By the middle of the 17th century, however, tea was the most fashionable item in Paris. Racine, for instance, was a tea addict. But, of course, the people who showed the greatest enthusiasm for tea were the British. The first advertisement of tea (then called Tcha, Tay, or Tee) appeared in a British weekly magazine "Mercurius Politicus" in September 1658. The advertisement said that this new import from China was excellent and was approved by "all physicians"; that marked the beginning of the tea craze in that country. Especially after her colonial expansion to India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Great Britain became successful in establishing tea plantations, and London became the center of the tea trade from the turn of the 19th century on. As a matter of fact, in order to facilitate quick tea transportation from China to London, Britons built "tea clippers" and competed with each other in speed. According to the detailed investigation of "tea clippers" by David R. MacGregor, after the Napoleonic wars, ships with better sailing abilities were designed and built. The first of such new boats was the Scottish Maid, built in Aberdeen in 1839, followed by the Stornoway and other schooners.
Tea was thus a great spur to shipbuilders' technology, which continually advanced since that time. In 1885, a ship called the Eagle Wing succeeded in shortening her voyage time from Hong Kong to London to 83 days. This was a remarkable speed in comparison with the average of 120 days in the 1830s. The tea trade undoubtedly accelerated the incredible technological innovations of the mid-19th century. The races became a matter of British national pride, with Blue Ribbon Prizes being given to the fastest ships. What the tea clippers did in the 19th century can be compared to what NASA's space program did in the U.S.A. approximately one hundred years later. (Ironically enough, it should be added that the finest tea clippers were designed by Americans who had been prejudiced against tea since their famous rebellion against the British in 1773--the Boston Tea Party.)
Russians also became very fond of tea. The first export of tea from China to Russia can be traced back to the middle of the 17th century, but after the treaties of 1689 and 1727, the transport of tea by land began regularly. A caravan of 300 camels, each loaded with 600 pounds of tea, made a desperately slow 40 kilometers per day on the 16 months' journey from China to St. Petersburg. As in most of the countries in Europe, tea was first used only among aristocrats, but by the middle of the 19th century the Russian public were tea-lovers like the Britons, and the samovar (meaning "self service") had become a necessary part of Russian literature and drama.
In a word, the 19th century was the age in which the diffusion of the tea drinking habit extended all over the old continent. Even Americans, who pretended to be non-tea drinkers, were looking for tea by direct trade with China (bypassing London), and when the American Navy fleet came to Japan in 1853, they sought to buy tea from Japan. Indeed, the capital accumulation necessary for the modernization of Japan was made possible through her tea and silk trade with the United States.
With the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) and the Siberian Railroad (1891), the transport of tea from the East to the West was greatly eased. The people of the world, with almost no exception, came to use tea as a part of their everyday life before the end of the 19th century. According to the statistical data of the United Nations, the total production of tea in the 1950s was approximately 500,000 tons, and it increased to 740,000 tons in the 1960s. More than 90 percent of the production was, of course, in Asia, especially in India and Sri Lanka.
The most important function that tea has performed in the past several thousand years, especially the most recent few hundred years, was as a medium of interpersonal communication and it opened a new horizon in social interaction.
As was discussed earlier, the great Chinese scholars of ancient and medieval times enjoyed intellectual discourses over a cup of tea, and surely they never could have had such a leisurely exchange of ideas without tea. Dynasties changed one after another, and political systems have changed in China, but tea drinking as a cultural institution has not changed. As a matter of fact, tea is a necessary item in any social occasion in the People's Republic of China today. (A cup of tea was the proper beginning of such important talks as the Kissinger-Mao meeting.)
Tea in Japan followed a similar development. After Eizai publicized the benefits of tea in the 13th century, it became a means of sociability among the elites.
Historical documents reveal that in the early 14th century, there were "tea parties" among the nobles, where they invited each other and with Buddhist ritual, served tea along with delicacies. The Japanese tea parties of the 14th century evolved into what is now known as the "tea ceremony" during the 15th century after Hideyoshi Toyotomi succeeded in unifying Japan and establishing his centralized government. Hideyoshi himself was very fond of inviting his subordinates to tea parties, and for the high-ranking samurai of the day, it was the greatest honor to be invited. Sen Soeki (more commonly known as Rikyu) came onto the scene at the tea parties of Hideyoshi. He developed philosophical justifications for tea and the tea party and established "Cha-do" (The Way of Tea) as a discipline. He appraised the values of simplicity, quietness, and intimacy that the tea party created, and he also developed standard instructions for the proper manner for drinking tea and specified the appropriate accoutrements for the tea parties. Good tea cups became treasures;in an extreme case, a Daimyo (feudal lord) was glad to exchange his huge estate for a tea cup imported from China.
The most important social aspect of tea parties in Japan, however, was that they were instrumental in breaking the class lines of the feudal system. Rikyu strongly emphasized in his philosophy of tea that, regardless of one's social status, once he was in the "tea room" he was equal to everyone who shared tea in that room. The militant samurai, who carried their swords with them at all times, were asked to leave the weapons outside the tea room. The room had to be a sacred and clean place where people met without their secular attributes. A millionaire and a poor peasant, different in wealth and social status in their secular lives where they might never see each other, were as equals once they were in the same tea party. They were simply human beings sharing the same time and space in the tea room, and the tea served on such occasions was the medium that connected all these persons with otherwise quite heterogeneous backgrounds.
Indeed, a small tea party in a small tea room was a good place for such a dominant figure as Hideyoshi to meet his subordinates informally and privately. In a "formal organization," a subordinate had the role of merely receiving orders from his master. Communication was heavily one-way. But in the tea room, by definition, there was no master-subordinate relationship. A subordinate was able to speak to his master as an equal human being, and the master had an opportunity to listen to his subordinates. It might be a secret meeting for administration; the "tea party" justified everything. In a word, "tea party" was a great device to solve the communication problems of the feudal period.
As a matter of fact, Hideyoshi, who was very publicity-minded and knew the importance of public opinion, held an historically famous "great tea party" in 1595 where "...everybody, including youth, m(a)rchants, and farmers who are interested in tea, if he does have a cup..." were invited. According to records, several hundred people joined the party, and Hideyoshi tried to converse with everybody. In this sense, a tea party had a liberating effect by providing "free" time and peace in the rigidly structured feudal society.
The farmers too began holding tea parties to justify their secret meetings. The feudal lords of Japan were very cautious, for obvious reasons, of the possibility of agrarian revolts and petitions, and they prohibited the farmers from gathering at any time under any circumstance. But because the "tea party" had been so encouraged by Hideyoshi and other elites, even the farmers were permitted to invite each other for tea parties. Such parties were, naturally, a good excuse and disguise for conspiracy, and according to historical accounts, tea parties in rural Japan during the medieval period were hotbeds of agrarian revolt.
It is interesting and important to note that this "class-line breaking" effect that accompanied the growing popularity of tea in Japan also occurred in England, with the acceptance of coffee in the 17th century. In his book, Tea and Coffee, Edward Bramah examined the origin of coffee drinking in Britain:
Oxford lays claim not only to being the place where coffee was first drunk in England but also possessing the first English coffee house. The former claim is substantiated by a reference in Evelyn's diary of 1637, where we learn of its being taken by a member of Balliol College. The coffee house, which was called the Angel, was opened thirteen years later by a Lebanese named Jacob.
From that time, the "coffee house" became very popular among Britons, and hundreds of coffee houses were opened, especially in urban areas; these establishments assumed a new social function that had been unknown. "The coffee houses," J.M. Scott says, "where all classes met in an otherwise most class-conscious age, were ideal for conversation. Coffee and tea were both available, with pipes and tobacco to go with them. Clear brains were prompted to exchange ideas freely and on any subject."
At their peak, it is said that there were some 2,000 coffee houses in London alone, and people belonging to different social classes and with diversified backgrounds could meet and exchange ideas. Unlike his Japanese counterpart, Hideyoshi, who was in favor of tea parties, Charles II, the ruler of England, decided in 1675 to suppress coffee houses, because for him, these new establishments were "nurseries of idleness and pragmaticalness." But in spite of his efforts to suppress them, the establishments continued to exist and flourish.
The situation grew worse for the conservatives (or for the most conservative) of England, because the public invented a more sophisticated institution--the "tea-garden"--an outdoor tea-drinking place. The tea-gardens with their flowered paths, and tables and chairs for tea service, were found mostly in the Chelsea and Bayswater suburbs of London. J.M. Scott describes the scene.
The gardens were open from May to September. In the evenings they were gaily lit with thousands of lanterns. There were concerts and fireworks displays. Tea-gardens catered for every stratum of society from royalty to the kitchen maid and her young man. As with coffee houses, there was little or no class distinction here. Tea-gardens were not expensive. The inclusive charge was generally six pence or a shilling.
Clearly, the tea-garden broke not only the class-line but also the sex-line. For certain mysterious reasons, tea has been associated with the female; at least, there has been a firm belief that it had to be poured by women, never by men. Even today, in English usage, the person who is in charge of pouring tea at a gathering is called the "Mother" although the party is exclusively for men. Because of this socio-psychological association of tea with things feminine, women were permitted to go to the tea-garden. Moreover, once in the tea-garden, a lady could take the initiative in approaching a man by asking "Will you treat me to a dish of tea?"
Tea-gardens in England(imitated by New Yorkers for a period of time), in this context, can be seen as a prototype of amusement parks, and at the same time, as one of the places where the emancipation of women began. Coffee houses and tea-gardens were places where people gathered and mixed freely across class, status, sex, age, and other social lines. They were, to exaggerate, the "liberated sections" of modern urban life in western Europe, where people could talk with each other and express themselves freely. Indeed, the whole French Revolution started in 1789 as an outgrowth of cafe society. Considering the role of tea in the American Revolution of the 1770s, it is safe to say that tea was responsible for two major revolutions of the 18th century.
Feudal Japan in the 18th century was less developed and less liberated, but as in London and Paris, "tea houses" were very prosperous. At this time the metaphysics of the "Way of Tea" was still appreciated by elites, but the common people preferred not to be bothered by the complicated rituals, and they looked upon tea as a casual and social drink. An incredible number of Cha-ya (tea houses) were established after the middle of the 18th century. According to tax revenue records (each establishment had to pay a fixed annual rate of tax), there were about 20,000 tea houses in the old city of Edo(Tokyo) and its environs. The population of the city at that period is estimated at approximately two million, and the number of tea houses implies that there was a tea house for every 100 people. An essayist of the time said "at tea houses, hot water is boiling in a kettle all the time, and when you enter, you are served a cup of tea. The tea houses are under the management of ladies, and the ladies compete, through their beauty, to attract more patrons, and patrons emulated each other to attract more attention from their favorite hostesses." The size of the tea house varied from a very small one that could accommodate only two or three people to an establishment that served 50 people. The smaller ones were "portable," that is, the whole shop could be folded into a package so that the owner could move to another place (a fore-runner of mobile ice cream vendors). The larger ones were permanent buildings, and the owner-hostesses of such reputable tea houses not only made a huge amount of money but also were listed in a "catalogue of beauties"; the wood-block prints of these ladies were sold to the public. It is safe to say that the hostesses of 18th century Japan were the forerunners of the beauty contestants of the 20th century.
An important parallel should be noted here. As was discussed earlier, tea has been associated with things feminine (if not feminism) in England, and in Japan, too, tea in the public tea houses had to be served by women. Furthermore, it is quite probable that the "tea house" was the first business institution in Japan that women were permitted to own and run. Here again, tea had a liberating effect on sex discrimination.
The tea houses in Japan were a multi-purpose communication media. "Regulars" could leave messages for their friends with the hostess; young people could assemble at their favorite tea house for casual conversation; retired people could spend hours at their leisure. Moreover, the philosophy of "The Way of Tea" in its secularized version existed, and the people belonging to different social classes met at the tea house for appointments. This aspect was extremely important because the samurai class of the 18th century were not warriors any more, and they often had to be good bureaucrats, able to make transactions and contracts with the merchant class. For business negotiation, the offices of both samurai and merchants were inappropriate; a status distinction was clearly defined therein. But in the tea house, where the atmosphere was informal, a samurai could meet and conduct business with a merchant as an equal and vice versa. In other words, the tea house was the place where the "strip tease of status" was possible and desirable.
The discovery of the socio-cultural convenience of the tea house accelerated the evolution of the establishment. Because the tea house was the ideal meeting place for everybody, it lacked privacy. Consequently, for the purpose of business negotiation, the merchants began to seek a separate room in the tea house; such a demand produced a new type of tea house--one with several separate rooms for privacy. The name of "tea house" was retained, but functionally, this new type of tea house was quite different. At the request of the patrons, alcohol and food were served, thus "tea house" evolved into a restaurant. The prototype of Japanese sociability in the past two hundreds years can be found in this new institution, and even today, it is customary for Japanese business executives to use "tea houses" (still called Cha-ya) for their "informally formal" business talks.
As can be easily imagined, the "tea house" also served as a place for dating. A young couple could get together at a tea house; there were striking similarities in social function with the tea-gardens of England. Tea, in a word, was the medium of liberation and social relaxation in many ways in the East and in the West.
Tea became a medium of social interaction for several noteworthy reasons. In the beginning, in both East and West, tea was used by the people belonging to holy occupations as a substitute for alcohol. Of course, tea is much milder in comparison, but the caffeine and tannin contained in tea were stimulating enough to keep a person awake.
Physiologically speaking, tea is a stimulant that comfortably refreshes and excites the brain. Or, to exaggerate, tea can change the "ordinary" state of mind to something special, as most other "stimulants" do.
Alcohol is an extreme example of a substance that alters the ordinary state. When a certain amount of alcohol is taken, both physiological and psychological changes take place. The heart beat becomes faster, physical movements get slower, mental judgment becomes obscure, the brain is stirred up; the more a person drinks, the more he becomes"intoxicated." An alcoholic sees strange visions and images, and he loses his "ordinary" intellect and judgment. We know that people become more talkative and more cheerful when they drink a certain amount of scotch or whatever. Indeed, an individual often appears as a different "persona" (if not personality) when he is intoxicated.
As may be true in many other cultures, the ancient Japanese regarded alcohol as something "sacred" and a person who acquired a different "persona" as the result of drinking alcohol was thought to be under the special influence caused by the "magical" power attributed to alcohol. They thought that the person with that special "persona" was temporarily the medium of messages transmitted from the gods to human beings. In a word, a person who was under the influence of alcohol was a shaman, and therefore the use of alcohol was, initially, limited only to shamans. Alcohol was a necessary raw-material by which a shaman could be a medium between the "sacred" and the "profane" world, to use the Durkheim-Eliade dichotomy.
It may be worthwhile, at this point, to look at the origin and diffusion of tobacco, another stimulant whose cultural and religious function was originally very similar to that of alcohol. It has been said that it was Columbus who "discovered" tobacco, but the honor of the first discovery must be attributed to the people of ancient Maya. Like many other societies, in Maya, the dominant holy figure was the Sun, and in its Sun-cult both fire and smoke were associated with the sacred sun. The monks of this isolated great civilization discovered tobacco as a medium of communication between the Sun-god and the people of the Empire. They dried tobacco leaves and made smoke on the alter; after inhaling the smoke, they exhaled it toward the Sun and toward the four holy directions--North, South, East, West.
They believed that the spirit of fire was contained in the holy smoke, and that this inhaling and exhaling of smoke was a process of communication with the "Sacred" world. In his voluminous book, Shamanism. Eliade suggests that the smoke of Maya had essentially a shamanistic effect. Like alcohol, tobacco stimulates the nervous system, and by inhaling the smoke, a smoker experiences a certain physio-nervous excitement that creates a state of mind different from the "ordinary" experience.
The minimum requirement for becoming a shaman is to be obsessed by something and to become a different "self"; to achieve that "transformation," there are several means. According to comparative shamanism dancing is one of the most popular means to be detached from the "ordinary" world; the practice of shamanistic dancing is found among American Indians, tribes in Siberia, Korea, Japan, and many other Mongoloid cultures. Drinking alcohol and inhaling tobacco smoke also were means to achieve the same goal. By taking such stimulants, a person can easily be under a different "persona." Ancient Maya can be seen as the place where tobacco use of as a shamanistic medium was initiated.
The monks of Maya used the holy smoke of tobacco as a medicine, and the smoke was sprayed over the body of the sick. Today, in many cultures in Asia, including Japan, it is believed that holy smoke of incense on the alter of certain Buddhist temples can cure almost all illnesses. In the center of Tokyo, in such a popular temple as Sensoji, hundreds of people come daily to take the smoke of incense in the palm and rub it on the painful areas of their body.
The mysterious Empire of Maya disappeared in an earthquake in the middle of the 7th century, but the smoking habit had been transmitted to the Aztec. When the Aztec civilization came to its peak in the 15th century, it had built the Kingdom of Montezuma with pyramids for the worship of the Sun-god. To express their gratitude to the Sun-god, the Aztec burned tobacco leaves continuously at their shrines, and the smoking of tobacco in thin pipes was practiced by the general public before the 15th century. Tobacco smoking was known not only to the Aztec, but also was apparent in most parts of the American continent; in the middle of the 15th century, the tobacco smoking habit was transmitted to greater North America as far as to the tribes along the St.Lawrence River.
One important aspect of tobacco smoking was related to sociability. Native North Americans exchanged a puff of pipe tobacco as a token of friendship (as we know from John Wayne movies), and sharing the same pipe of tobacco became a symbol of social intimacy in many cultures, including the Japanese. In many countries, until the cancer warning came in the early 1960s, it was customary among gentlemen to offer a cigar or cigarette at the beginning of all social occasions. With a puff of smoke a conversation began.
The first non-American tobacco smokers were the sailors who landed on the new continent with Columbus. But when they carried tobacco seeds back home, tobacco was appreciated as an exotic plant rather than as a smoking material. It was in Lisbon in the middle of the 16th century that tobacco smoking started. In 1561, tobacco came to be recognized by the holy stratum of European societies when the seeds were accepted by the Pope as a medicine.
Tobacco was taken to France in 1559 by Jean Nico, the French ambassador to Lisbon, (the name "nicotine" came from Nico's name), and the leaves of the new plant were first used in the French royal family as a remedy for headache. As the smoking habit spread to the French public, Luis XIII saw a great potential tax revenue from the sale of tobacco. The rebels of the 18th century, who gathered at the Cafe for the political intrigue that led to the French Revolution, were smokers; their first act after the Revolution of 1789 was to eliminate the monopoly sales of tobacco and to abolish the hated tobacco tax. Here again is a significant relationship between stimulants and socio-cultural revolution.
The point, however, is the historical fact that, like alcohol, tobacco also has been considered a special material that could transform a person's "ordinary" self into a different self. And as was discussed relative to tea, both alcohol and tobacco were associated originally with, and monopolized by, the people of the holy occupation--shamans, priests, monks, and bishops. The "stimulants" were the materials by which the holy occupation could justify their special status, as the "stimulants" could make them "different".
The "self-transformation" effects of "stimulants" continued even after the use of such materials was "secularized." A good example is the use of alcohol in Japan. The use of alcohol ceased to be under the monopoly of shamans, and became diffused among the public in a very early period, but yet, as far as Japan is concerned, until the beginning of the 20th century, people did not drink alcohol except on special occasions, such as festivals and ceremonies. Moreover, alcohol drinking was limited to the late evenings which were regarded as the "holy hours." (Indeed, even today, one of the culture shocks that Japanese visitors to the western cultures usually experience is the fact that in the United States and in Europe, people start drinking during the day.)
According to the writings of Kunio Yanagita, founder of Japanese folklore studies, it was only one hundred years ago that drinking Sake became a part of everyday life. Furthermore, the Japanese people today regard a person's "self" when drinking alcohol (or drunk) as different from his "self" of ordinary circumstances. It is for this reason that the Japanese are, more or less, permissive with each other for conduct while drinking that would otherwise be inexcusable. It often happens in Japan, for instance, at a banquet, that a lower-ranking employee may tease or even insult his (or her, but usually his) boss in intolerable words, but nobody cares what he says simply because he is intoxicated. Next morning, the man may go to see his superior and apologize for his speech, but the boss usually says, "never mind, that was an affair with Sake."
In other words, the level, or even the quality of social tolerance can be changed with the aid of alcohol. The world where people share alcohol is different from the ordinary world. The organization, moral structure, ethics, and the whole value system is transformed. An "ordinary person" cannot blame a person under the influence of alcohol. From the viewpoint of social engineering, a banquet in Japan is a safely valve by which formal organizational frustrations can be released.
Though the situation is not that extreme, many societies, including the "country of Freedom," the United States, share a certain social view of alcohol. At least, the level of tolerance at cocktail parties (especially "wild" ones) is usually mach higher than in "ordinary" institutionalized situations.
One of the contributions of Japanese folklore to the other disciplines of social science and the humanities may be the dichotomy of Hare and Ke. Hare means "special occasions" and Ke means "everyday life." It may seem to be another version of the "sacred" and "profane" dichotomy of which French sociologists are very fond, but Hare is not necessarily "sacred." It includes, of course, "sacred," but in the usage of Japanese folklore, Hare can include more things and events. For example, travel, a vacation, a party, going out for shopping, and many other areas and behaviors that do not belong to "everyday life" are called Hare. It simply means "special(non-everyday) life occasions." As the "sacred" and "profane" dichotomy, in spite of its seemingly clear definition, is often ambiguous, the discussion of this paper so far may fit more into a Hare and Ke dichotomy as a part of Japanese enthnomethodology.
On Hare occasions, one observable characteristic is the change in people's clothing. When people travel, they usually pick up better clothes. On vacation, they may feel happier and take more informal outfits. These are not "sacred" occasions, but "different" occasions, and as the token of being "different," people wear the costume which they do not wear in Ke or "everyday life" situations.
In Hawaii, every Friday is "Aloha Friday," and people are expected to be in Hawaiian attire. At least, Aloha shirts or muumuus are permissible and encouraged in the office where more formal dress is required on other weekdays. From the viewpoint of Japanese folklore, apparently "Aloha Friday" is a Hare occasion. Hare is a change or detachment from everyday life, or Ke.
In contrast to, and often complementary to, the changes in clothing on Hare occasions, the "stimulants" (tobacco, alcohol, coffee, tea, etc., if not "drugs") are the means by which a person can change his inner "self." Many of us can share many experiences of this sort. In a formal organization, a business executive wears grey flannel suits (not in Hawaii, of course) and he works diligently at his desk. It is a Ke situation--a very ordinary, usual, and routine business day. But over the weekend, when he "changes" from business suit to sports jacket and takes some scotch, he experiences a "different" self. His external look is different and his internal self-image is different with the aid of stimulants. Thus, a Hare experience is completed. A person has become different from his ordinary "self".
It may be worthwhile, in this context, to refer to one of the most obsolete yet most popular themes of Science Fiction--the metamorphosis of "self." In its most popular version, we have children's naive TV programs such as "Kikaida" (made in Japan) in which the hero, usually a common and ordinary fellow, changes himself, at a critical moment, into a super-human creature with the aid of a magical ritual. The prototype of this genre, of course, was "Superman," who, in daily life, was Clark Kent, mild-mannered newspaper reporter. But when something beyond human control occurs, such as a boy hanging from the top of a skyscraper (no explanation given as to how he got there), this ordinary reporter, after a few minutes' black-box process in his bathroom, becomes Superman--"able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, more powerful than a locomotive, and faster than a speeding bullet." He comes out with a strange costume that was conspicuously recognizable. "Kikaida" and others are variations of "Superman."
The psychological implications of "Superman" and others, however, are serious, because there seems to be within each of us an inherent need or desire to change one's self. Even those intellectuals who despise "Superman" as a cheap, vulgar product of commercialism cannot resist the theme of Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis." As far as their basic philosophy is concerned, the distance between Kafka and "Superman" is not too great. All of us want to change and to see and experience our different "self" or "selves."
It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the history of the philosophy of "self" from G.H. Mead to Irving Goffman, but as A. Strauss brilliantly discussed in his book, Mirror and Masks, a person is multi-faced. The same person appears wearing different masks (or "persona") under different circumstances. And if one looks into social interaction and sociability, we must admit that some "change," both external, and internal, takes place on many occasions. The problem of the multi-faced-ness of our being brings up another obsolete question, that of "identity crisis"; it should be stressed here that, quite contrary to the common assumption that the "crisis" is a product of an over-organized society, people have a true desire to change and to have several self-images. Sociability is an interaction among masked people (in its extreme, we have masquerade!) and masks may have positive value as well as negative. One may appreciate the diversity of one's "selves" and by doing so, may find new alternatives and possibilities.
Indeed, the ideal of Karl Marx was, as he wrote in The Critic of Political Economy, the social condition where "the same individual can be a farmer in the morning, a fisherman in the afternoon, and a poet in the evening." Does this communist ideal involve "identity crisis"? The brighter side of "identity crisis" may be connected with the concept and ideal of "whole man," another German philosophical tradition. Probably, "stimulants" are the medium by which people can change and appear under different masks to enjoy social interaction.
It is probably for this reason that repeating the toast of Vodka is a necessary part in establishing a Hare occasion in the Soviet Union, a cocktail party in the United States, Kava among Pacific Islanders, and tea in China and Japan.
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