Rakugo Tea Ceremony

It's not good to act like you know everything, not just about etiquette.

There is a Rakugo story called "Tea Ceremony."

The moral of this rakugo story is that if you continue to pretend to know everything, you will get into trouble, but what is humorous is that the surrounding townspeople are unable to point it out and end up swallowing it (their matcha and opinions).

In the first place, it was a mistake for someone who had never attended a tea ceremony to think that detergent was added to foamy matcha. Even today, there is probably no one who would think that matcha foam is detergent.
Those with strong preconceived ideas will expand their horizons to include everything from homemade matcha to homemade buns.

Ignorance may be inevitable, but showing off is not good.
The only word people hear is that "retirement tea parties = delicious sweets." Only those who are forced to drink the sweets will experience hell in this comedy of "intimate misfortune."


After handing over his large merchant house to his son, the retired man moved to Negishi in the suburbs with his young monk Sadakichi. However, he found himself bored and had nothing to do every day. To kill time, the retired man decided to try performing a tea ceremony using the tea room and tea utensils that had been left abandoned in the mansion. Although he had no knowledge of the tea ceremony, he acted proudly towards Sadakichi, telling him, "If you have that blue powder (matcha), you should be able to get started," and sending him off to buy some.

However, what Sadakichi bought from the dried goods store was not matcha but green soybean flour. The retired man thought it was matcha and exclaimed, "That's it, that's it," and prepared the tools. While he talked nonchalantly about the etiquette of tea making, he put a mountain of charcoal in the furnace, boiled water, threw the green soybean flour into the kettle, poured it into a bowl and stirred it with a tea whisk -- but no bubbles formed. "That's it, we needed something to create bubbles!" he said, and this time he had someone buy soap and put it into the kettle. It looked like the right kind of bubbles, but as soon as they drank it, he got an upset stomach and had to go back and forth between the toilet and his futon.

Still undeterred, the retired man decided to hold a tea ceremony to show off to people, and sent invitations to the tofu maker and the foreman of construction workers who lived in his tenement house, as well as his calligraphy teacher. The tofu maker and the foreman of construction workers hated the formality of the tea ceremony and even considered running away in the middle of the night, so they went to the house of the master, who seemed to know a lot about etiquette, for advice, but the master was in the middle of packing his things. In the end, the three men made up their minds and headed to the retired man's house.

The retired man made the usual "green soybean powder + bark tea" and passed it around in bowls to the three of them. The three were surprised to taste the detergent-like liquid, but they got away with it by spitting it out and "pretending to drink it." Soon, as the tea ceremonies were held many times, it gained a reputation that "only the sweets were top-notch and delicious." People from the town flocked to attend, and everyone pretended to drink tea but only ate the sweets, until they began stuffing them into their pockets to take home.

The retired man, troubled by the mounting expense of sweets, decided to make his own sweets. Without knowing how to make them, he steamed and mashed a large amount of sweet potatoes, mixed them with molasses, and shaped them into sake cups and teacups. However, they were too sticky to remove from the molds. After much deliberation, he successfully removed them by coating them in lantern oil beforehand, and served them to his guests, naming them "Rikyu Manju". Eventually, no one accepted his invitations.

At that time, his old friend Kanebee, who lives in retirement far away, comes to visit and offers him the tea and manju. Not knowing the situation, Kanebee is at a loss and waits for an opportunity to at least throw away the manju, but there is nowhere to throw it away in the well-cleaned garden. He has no choice but to hide it in his pocket, go to the toilet, and throw it into the field he can see through the window. The manju hits the face of a farmer who is working and sticks to it, causing the farmer to mutter in surprise.

"Another tea ceremony..."

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