[KS] Korean Tea Ceremony and other wonders

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear Werner, dear All:

Thank you Werner for taking the time and effort to respond in detail.

While some themes and issues can just be discussed by stating facts 
with additional interpretation (see e.g. Kenneth Robinson's reply to 
Lauren's request), I think this "garden culture" issue does require a 
different approach in replying. We otherwise just end up in some A says 
YES and B says NO thread that might not be all too educational.

I think that all Werner wrote in his posting is correct, and I really 
do not have to stretch myself to say so. While all these observations 
are very likely to the point, this still does not change anything with 
the problem I have as regards to "garden culture" in Korea. Allow me 
therefore to explain what the problem is, as short as I can. 

The starting point **for me** in looking at such themes is always what 
we may call the "discourse situation" (or simply the existing 
discourse). The discourse can never be ignored, and whatever arguments 
are made are always within an existing discourse, are always reacting 
to an existing discourse. Someone can certainly claim not to care about 
the existing discourse, but that would then just be another tactic of 
reacting to the existing discourse (e.g. to provoke in order to 
stimulate new approaches), or it is done out of pure ignorance. By the 
1990s we were in a situation were the discourse on Japanese tea 
ceremony and garden culture had reached a highly sophisticated stage. I 
would say that the 1990s up until the early 2000s were all over the 
most important time for theoretical approaches on East Asian art, a 
time where just everything came finally together. [I could explain this 
in much detail, but not now, it would mean to side-track, and it would 
take several pages.] In this situation, with the continuous discussion 
and research activities on Japanese garden culture, that was by then on 
a really sophisticated stage (I already mentioned the book by Guth as 
one example), with a lot of available textual sources and textual 
analysis done, and with an amazing number of publications--yes, indeed 
a 'hype' already in that area, within this discourse situation I now 
saw KOREA suddenly raising its middle finger to say "oh well, never 
mind, we have all this as well. We have almost no textual evidence, we 
have almost no gardens, hardly anyone has a green finger in Korea and 
knows what to do around the house, there are no sort of traditional 
aesthetic treatises by Korean scholars on gardening and on the 
relationship of garden and philosophy (Buddhist or otherwise), but 
never mind, we have what you have anyway." Okay, yes, this is somewhat 
ironic. The problem there is that all these people, media, publications 
do not just try to say, "see, we also have gardens" but that from the 
very beginning the talk was about "garden culture"--AND there is a very 
vibrant discourse and a hype going on about this in neighboring Japan, 
and as for Japan, garden culture played without doubt a very central 
role for art and aesthetics. And OF COURSE does that discourse matter 
to Korea AND for anyone else seeing a book on Korean garden culture, 
and of course was everyone in Korea quite aware (but possibly not well 
informed) about that discourse. (NOTE: To be perfectly clear about 
this, I personally do not at all like Japanese gardens with their 
miniature landscapes, sense of artificiality, and the philosophy that 
they relate to.)

Now, nobody please get me any naiivité flash card as a response at 
this point, I urge you. We do talk high up cultural politics and 
well-crafted, government-sponsored manipulation beyond believe here. 
Garden culture is a big one, and my example of Rubens' "Man in Korean 
cloth" that becomes a "Korean man in Korean costume" in the National 
Museum's exhibit is a smaller example of this. Factual evidence and 
historical truth is secondary, is shaped in whatever way seems 
opportune to propagate national culture--for what, with what aim? Now, 
I sure do not want to make this a finger-pointing statement. As 
Professor Best might or might not agree with, Japanese organizations 
and scholars followed very similar tactics, and much earlier than 
Korea, and also with and about e.g. tea ceremony and garden 
culture--which makes it really a complex topic to discuss. Basically, 
what I am saying is that Korea is taking a bath in its neighbor's pond 
while it has its own, but that is not called garden culture; it is, 
intentionally so, hopping onto an existing discourse by simply 
replacing a country name: these are tested corporate marketing 
strategies applied to culture--Honda becomes Hyundai, and other 
corner-cutting approaches to sell. 

The 'hype' about Korean garden culture is thus build upon the 
pre-existing discourse on Japanese garden culture, there is no doubt 
about that. But now that we have it, can we actually fill that easily 
achieved 'hype' with some real historical, material and textual 
contents? (Zero points from me if you reply that this is a question of 
having the same "right" than Japan has to this. What I want to know is 
what there actually existed in historic times.) THAT is my question, 
and that is where I do have various doubts. I have a lot of doubts 
about the archaeological "evidence"--at least what I have seen in 
Korean journals a few years ago in Korea ….I copied two such articles 
exactly because they looked so traumatizingly odd to me, but 
unfortunately I do not have those at hand here in Italy. I also noted 
(and sorry, I have again to pass when it comes to references, nothing 
is here with me) that some the book publications seemed to fill in for 
the absence of concrete, verifiable historic information and textual or 
material evidence with what I consider weird and abstruse, completely 
made-up aesthetic theories. Such wide-spread and in Korean officially 
propagated explanations are also reflected in Werner's description
below (referring to the part "build in a way that they looked natural"):
   
> Studying Soswaewon it sometimes was not easy to 
> distinguish between some feature which has been added and features 
> which were simply cleaned spots left in the original state but in 
> connection with other areas given aesthetic meaning. And some of the 
> walls building terrasses were build in a way that they looked 
> natural, and you had to give a second look to see they were man made. 

Sounds somehow mystic and very "Oriental" to my ears, and of course, we 
see this being repeated over and over in lots of Korean magazines, but 
was that so? In short, I think this is not the case. We really should 
be awake and careful not to confuse today's journalistic explanations 
with historic reality. When Rapunzel lets her hair down, then that 
indicates that key to the tower is unavailable. But we do not have to 
climb up. We can instead search for the key. If people have no clue how 
to explain a certain artistic object, as they miss sufficient 
historical information that allows them to make connections explaining 
how the object was used, how it was made, who owned it, and so forth, 
then we do often end up hearing these made-up "appreciation of nature" 
aesthetics as a simple replacement for actual information. (Korea and 
Korean garden culture is by far not the only such example. In the 70s, 
for example, whatever book you read about South American culture, Inka 
etc., you would always read about this "appreciation or nature" 
aesthetics--by now, with much more information at our hands, that has 
disappeared, now we have much better information on how objects were 
used, how gardens were utilized, and for what purposes by whom, etc. 
"Appreciation of nature" is nothing but an emergency place-holder.) A 
much simpler explanation could be that Koreans were not concerned about 
gardens and garden culture, that the emphasis was on quite different 
issues. Why, for example, do Germans care so much about perfectly well 
build double-glass windows in their houses, and why is this by no means 
one of the top priorities for Americans, even on the cold East coast, 
how tightly their windows close? Well, Germans stay (at least until 
recently) a life time in one place and Americans move on after two 
three years, on average. There are always explanations for cultural and 
stylistic and all other choices. When we discuss traditional Korean 
landscape architecture and gardening, we should of course look to and 
compare that to China (and Japan), as we do with all otherwise also. 
For a Sino-centric country like Korea that is a must. Why would we 
suddenly make some sort of exclusion from the rule when it comes to 
garden culture? And if we do this, then we will see that there is no 
explanation for a possible absence of a bulk of textual sources, major 
sources, if there ever was anything like garden culture in Korea. 
Garden culture is high culture, we do not talk about "shaman" practices 
in the countryside here. If there was a vibrant garden culture in Korea 
(same applies to tea culture) we would find plenty (!) of texts about 
it and all the details, same as we have on e.g. traditional painting, 
both Korean and imported Chinese texts. We would see the usual 
patterns, the variations, discussions, schools of opinions, etc. And 
*if* indeed there would have been anything like an "appreciation of 
nature" approach that would have been strong enough to cause a garden 
culture with all that belongs to it (being expressed the way you 
describe it in above quoted passage), then we sure would find 
*extensive* sources about exactly this--letters between scholars 
discussing gardens, proof of exchanges of art objects that relate to 
garden culture, extended philosophical treatises in gardens, etc. 
However, the only more scholastic and in-depth philosophic-aesthetic 
approaches into that direction (quite apart from garden culture, just 
to an "appreciation of nature" approach alone), the only schools of 
thought that followed such path--sorry if that sounds once again like 
'Korea-bashing'--come from early 20th century Japan, and there also 
with KOREA as its 'object' here, as a kind of experimental sample case. 
As you see we are right back on track to the theme pre-existing 
discourse: key phrase "Yanagi Muneyoshi and colonial aesthetics (Korean 
porcelain for Japanese tea ceremony, etc.)" Anyway, Harry Harootunian 
and others have in recent years written a lot about such nature 
aesthetics/philosophies, how that relates to Fascism, and more. I am 
not aware of any such (historical) Korean approach, not before the late 
colonial period at least, and there it was again directly influenced by 
contemporary Japanese models.

I have no doubts that everything else you say and describe in the 
posting is right on. That, however, does by no means constitute proof 
of the existence of a "garden culture" in the way the term "garden 
culture" is otherwise used. It means Koreans had gardens, yes, at least 
the aristocracy had. It does not mean gardens played any sort of 
central, important role in overall traditional Korean culture. 

Still, some of what you describe, e.g. ….
  > Lots of prose literature and poems about it, too, including 
  > a map with references (middle 18th c.)
makes me curious. Could you describe in more detail? I am not yet 
understanding what poetry you are referring to.


Best,
Frank

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws