visit a Korean potter's shed may notice that the wheel used for
throwing pots is never exactly true. Sometimes it is so crudely
mounted that it is not even horizontal. The asymmetrical nature

of Korean pots results in part, therefore, from the uneven movement
of the wheel. But we must understand that Koreans do not make
such wheels because they like unevenness and dislike evenness,
Rather they simply construct their wheels in a happy-go-lucky way.
This unevenness, then, is but a natural outcome of the untrammel-
ed state of their minds, They live just as circumstances permit,
without any conception of artificiality. Of course if the wheel is
canted too much, they may correct it to some extent, but even then
it will not be precise. They are scarcely troubled by accuracy or
inaccuracy, for in their world these qualities are not yet differen-
tiated. This state of mind is the source from which flows the
beauty of Korean pots. Why did our tea-masters, men of keen eyes,
prefer Korean pots to all others? The asymmetrical beauty, free
from all pretension, was immensely attractive to their aesthetic
eyes. They so ardently loved to gaze upon those Korean pots that
they finally tried to analyze the beauty expressed inthem, They
enumerated ten virtues as the elements of which their beauty con-
sisted, It is quite remarkable that the eyes of our tea-masters
penetrated so deeply into the beauty of these pots. Paradoxically
however, their very analysis initiated the history of an erroneous
attitude which has poisoned nearly all the later tea-potters in
Japan, They imagined that they could make good pots by isolating
the indispensable elements of beauty which characterized Korean
tea utensils. But what was the result? In spite of their careful
craftsmanship and passionate love of beauty, their analytical self-
consciousness has never been able to produce pots as beautiful

as the original Korean ware, Why? The reason is obvious: they
did not understand that the Korean pots were not the result of
intellectual analysis but of a natural and spontaneous condition of
the mind, If our tea-masters had told the Korean potters about the
ten virtues, the Koreans would not have known what to say. The
Koreans simply made pots, while the Japanese proceeded from
thought to action. We have made nice things, but they are
different. We proceed upon a conscious differentiation of the
beautiful and the ugly, while the Korean's work is done before such
differentiation takes place. Which is better? I do not say that the
4,