Two years ago, with Mr. Yokota, I was fortunate to attend for the first time the omizutori (shuni-e) ceremony held at Nigatsu-dō Hall in Todai-ji Temple. The inner sanctuary and its flickering flames, where no photography or video are allowed, are seared into my memory. Yet in my vague memory where dream and reality mingle, what remains most vividly are the resounding footsteps of the monks wearing wooden clogs called sashikake.

Attending the shuni-e naturally provided us with the theme for the second installment of Tenen. Since the event was to be held in March—the season of the shuni-e—and the venue was set to be a tea room, the arrangement of the tokonoma and of the tea utensils logically came to mind. Upon crawling through the tea room entrance, we faced an oil painting by Tomoharu Murakami, illuminated by the flames of Japanese candles, and a shoe-shaped Oribe black bowl used as the main tea bowl. When I first hung Murakami's painting on the tokonoma, as I gazed into the bottom of the deep Oribe black bowl, I felt as though the memory of the sound of the sashikake resonating in the Nigatsudō in the middle of the night was welling up inside me.

In the entrance room, we exhibited a yakekyō scroll (a burnt sutra from Nigatsu-dō). Preserved in its original form of a scroll rather than mounted, the yakekyō is not intended for appreciation by future generations, but rather it remains as it was initially, when it was still a receptacle for prayers. The upper portion, charred in the fire of 1667, seems to defy the orderly rows of the sutra text, revealing the trails of flames on the indigo-colored paper. These undulating burn marks, while bearing the traces of destruction, seem rather to speak of the enduring nature of human prayers. It is as if time itself were reading up every letter of the sutra. In the entrance hall where visitors are first welcomed, this burnt sutra was set to resonate with Murakami's series of prints inspired by the shuni-e.

For the main sweets, we prepared a kuzu manjū, in which yellow and red bean paste seem to float faintly beneath a transparent layer of kuzu starch. We named it gentō ("phantom light"). This name came to symbolize our tea gathering, as the shadows of ascetic monks moving back and forth projected on the inner sanctuary's curtain evoked the image of a magic lantern.

The tea room was imbued with a unique tension between stillness and movement. In stark contrast to the black tea bowl that blended into the darkness, the lustrous lacquered surface of the bucket-shaped fresh water vessel reflected the space like a mirror, capturing the flames, the steam, and even the presence of people to create a tranquil microcosm within the room. The vermilion-colored Chinese tea caddy and the Negoro rinse-water basin carried the lingering atmosphere of the shuni-e, exuding a strong presence distinct from that of ordinary tea gatherings. Here, we arranged the tea utensils so that our guests could sense when the emotional experience of an encounter transcending time and place—that is, the time of prayer—and the temporality of being present here and now, overlap into a single moment.

This publication is illustrated not with still photography, but with images extracted from a film capturing the atmosphere of the tea gathering. It is edited so that, with the tactile sensation of turning the pages, you may sense the passage of time and the atmosphere emanating from the second installment of Tenen. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the participants, as well as to all those who offered their cooperation.

Nigatsu-dō Hall at Todai-ji Temple, awaiting the arrival of spring. The sound of footsteps echoes within the hall plunged into darkness.

After our first attempt at creating a "space"—with our gallery set as a garden complementing our gathering—we ventured out to various locations, and for our second attempt, we headed to the tea room. Tenen is a tentative, through a shared moment provided by tea, to open our senses to the space between heaven and earth. As if tracing a circle, we are replenished by a single cup of tea. The painter Tomoharu Murakami, despite having converted to Christianity, took part in the Buddhist ritual of shuni-e, also known as omizutori, for six years.

As Mr. Toda and I started to conceive the second installment of Tenen, our desire to experience the work of an artist who has continually sought to express the forms of prayer grew stronger, and we were given the opportunity to immerse ourselves in it. We thus got to glimpse the shadows of the monks undergoing rigorous ascetic practices in the inner sanctuary through the night. And the shuni-e proved to be far harsher than the traditional image of pine torches burning might suggest, with the resonance of Buddhist chanting and ritual implements, the sound of wooden clogs striking the floor, the monks' prostrations, and the flames of repentance threatening to burn the hall. Finding myself within a space-time where sound and light intersects, I felt a sense of awe for this unbroken lineage of rituals, and approached new depths in interpreting the artist's creations.

Carrying that impression with us, we welcomed guests at the entrance area leading to the tea room. There, we showed the yakekyō scroll from Nigatsu-dō alongside the series of prints entitled Tōdai-ji Shuni-e. On the one hand the sutra scroll, written in silver ink on an indigo background bearing scorch marks, and on the other, the red-and-black prints echoing the rituals at six different times. These prints, arranged as if capturing the light and darkness of the ritual as it progresses, are made from the same washi paper used in the norikoboshi, the paper objects in the form of camellia flowers made during the ritual by the monks since the Heian period.

Then, crawling through the entrance door, we enter the dimly lit tea room. Illuminated by the light of Japanese candles, the tokonoma was adorned with a norikoboshi and a red oil painting. In this work by an artist known for his black tones, a quiet flame dwells deep within the canvas, tinged with a profound red. Bathing in the light of candles, it exuded an aura that could be described as majestic.

Superposing the fire in the hearth and the sound of water simmering in the kettle with the lingering echoes of the sound of flames and footsteps that resonated within the Nigatsu-dō, we entrusted the image of the dawn light and the sashikake clogs of the shuni-e to the black, shoe-shaped tea bowl named Ariake ("dawn").

In the dimly lit tea room woven from fire and water, the tea utensils imbued with a sense of stillness, and the spirit of an artist who had continually sought prayer, quietly intersected. It seemed as though, with the passage of time, the space was gradually filling up—transforming from a hazy world into a place where we could perceive with all five senses what had been entrusted to us at that particular moment. Etching in our hearts the light Murakami infused into the red canvas, as well as the sense of briskness of dawn breaking into day, we shared the arrival of spring over a cup of tea. It was an unforgettable moment.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who attended this tea gathering, as well as to the friends who accompanied us through our reflections and shared the experience of the shuni-e. I am delighted to be able to share this publication as a small token of that experience.