Tea Ceremony at the Eiffel Tower 2024

November 19, 2024 — Salon Gustave Eiffel, First Floor of the Eiffel Tower

On November 19, 2024, I held the second tea gathering at the Salon Gustave Eiffel on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, marking the first such gathering there since 2018.

The event was held to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Tokyo Tower, the 130th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower, and the 250th anniversary of the birth of King Louis-Philippe I, the last King of the French.

We were deeply honored by the presence of Ambassador Takehiro Kano and his wife, representing the Permanent Delegation of Japan to UNESCO; the Ambassador of Guinea to France; Minister Yamatani and his wife from the Embassy of Japan in France; Mr. Labourdette, President of the Château de Fontainebleau, France’s largest château, and Mr. Meny-Ollon, its Deputy Director; Mr. Suzuki, Director of the Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, and his wife; Mr. Kanaya, Director of the Japan House at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris; and the Director of Canada House.

We were also honored by the presence of senior representatives from many of Paris’s leading museums, including the Louvre Museum, the Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, the Sèvres National Museum of Ceramics, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, making it a truly distinguished and memorable occasion.

This gathering was not conceived simply as a celebration of the history and cultural ties between Japan and France.

In 2018, I held a tea gathering using Japanese traditional arts and crafts that left a strong impression on many people in France. By recreating that tea gathering, my intention this time was to revive those memories and, once again, allow people to encounter the beauty and excellence of Japanese traditional craftsmanship.

Whether or not that intention was fully achieved, I would simply be grateful if our guests came away with a renewed appreciation for the beauty of Japanese craftsmanship.

It has now been nearly eighty years since Hōunsai Daisōshō of Urasenke, carrying a complete set of tea utensils across the sea immediately after the end of the war, first introduced the Way of Tea overseas.

The fact that he opened the way for people outside Japan to discover the beauty of tea and its true nature is, for me, as one of the many tea practitioners who have followed in his footsteps, an example that will remain forever.

Fortunately, France has a particularly high level of awareness and appreciation of matcha compared with many other countries.

There is no doubt that this is also thanks to the efforts of the many tea masters who, while living and working overseas, devoted themselves to introducing the Way of Tea—not in any religious sense, but in the sense of sharing and transmitting it.

Given this high level of interest, I wanted people to experience something very simple:

To drink matcha.
To see the traditional crafts created for drinking matcha.
To hear directly from the artists who made them.
And then to drink tea from those very tea bowls.

I hoped this would create a special experience—one quite different from the tea gatherings held in Japan, where precious tea utensils and carefully arranged shitsurai create an exquisite setting.

Of course, such tea gatherings are wonderful in their own right. But for someone encountering the Way of Tea for the first time, they can also seem like a rather difficult and unfamiliar world.

For this gathering, we were honored to receive a letter from His Royal Highness Prince Jean IV of the House of Orléans, a great-great-grandson of the French king. In the absence of Ambassador Shimokawa, who was traveling outside France, Minister Yamatani kindly read a message on his behalf.

We also received congratulatory messages from Patrick Branco Ruivo, President of the Eiffel Tower, and Mr. Hisakichi Maeda, President of Tokyo Tower.

We were further honored to receive forewords for the exhibition catalogue from Mr. Masahito Moriyama, former Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and from Mr. and Mrs. Savin of the Eiffel family.

For the tea gathering itself, I was privileged to receive the support of:

• Hōunsai Daisōshō
• Mr. Naomasa Tokugawa of the Mito Tokugawa family
• Mr. Taro Aso, former Prime Minister of Japan

At the same time, this tea gathering was by far the most difficult to bring to fruition during my nearly thirty years as a practitioner of tea.

There were countless issues arising from differences between Japan and France, together with the need to find solutions to them. Negotiations with French companies were particularly challenging, and in the end the project was made possible only through the support of many people, including those at Université Grenoble Alpes, the Embassy of Japan, the family of my longtime friend Mr. Shūdo, and the Eiffel family.

For coordination, I received invaluable support from Mr. Yamanaka of @shobi_select, Secretary-General Fujii of our French office, and Valérie of @neotparis, one of our greatest supporters. David of the French Ministry of the Interior also assisted us, particularly with legal matters.

Members of the Young Members’ Association, my senior and junior fellow practitioners, and students from both of my practice locations all flew to Paris to take part.

In total, more than thirty people came together and helped make this event possible.

We also received generous support from Tokugawa Museum, Tokyo Daijingu Shrine, Ohta’s Isan, Mitsui Fudosan, Takenaka Corporation, Bizen City, Kimitsu City, our crowdfunding supporters, and many others.

I record these names here with heartfelt gratitude.

To every person and organization who supported this gathering, I offer my deepest and most sincere thanks.