japanese terms for ceramic drinking vessels
In response to the question: "What is the difference between the following terms: yunomi, guinomi, chawan, senchawan, banchawan, and matchawan?"
The basic problem is that three separate tea drinking traditions exist in contemporary Japan, and they do not employ the same labels for ceramics. This causes a great deal of confusion among foreign collectors and potters.
The most common tea tradition in Japan is not really a codified, organized tradition at all: the daily consumption of tea in almost every household in the country. On a daily basis, most Japanese drink steeped green tea (sencha), course tea (bancha), or some form of roasted tea (hojicha) or stem tea (kukicha). More and more also drink coffee, black tea with milk or lemon, or Chinese fermented tea such as Oolong tea. These distinctions are described in more detail in the introduction of my book Japanese Tea Culture. The point is, although most people drink these teas out of what we would call a “cup” in English, a variety of Japanese terms are used to describe these vessels, and they are not standardized in any way. The best term is probably “yunomi,” which basically means tea cup.
The second most important tea tradition in Japan is chanoyu, also referred to (particularly by practitioners) as Chado or Sado (homophones meaning “the way of tea”). This ritualized, performative tradition is the one most potters know something about, because it is the source of so many of the styles and aesthetic innovations that influence American and global ceramics today. Chanoyu practitioners drink powdered green tea from a medium to large bowl. These are NOT cups: they are distinctly shaped liked bowls.
The third tea tradition in Japan is sencha or “steeped tea.” This tradition became popular in the 18th century, when a small group of Japanese artists and intellectuals appropriated literati customs from China and invented a tea-drinking ritual to rival chanoyu. The vessels in this tradition are called “chawan” or “meiwan,” but are often smaller than chanoyu’s tea bowls and look more like cups.
Yunomi (literally “[for] drinking hot water”): tea cup, usually taller than wide and smaller in diameter than the smallest of tea bowls. Often mistakenly called “tea bowl” by American potters.
Guinomi (literally one gulp): a small cup, often wide with a narrow base, used exclusively for drinking sake. Sometimes imitates the shape of a tea bowl.
Chawan (literally tea bowl): a small to medium sized bowl used for drinking hot tea (usually powdered green tea or “matcha”). Historically, shapes were limited to the following forms: conical (like temmoku tea bowls imported to Japan from China, and their Japanese reproductions); half-cylindrical (the vertical walls are not as tall as the bowl’s diameter); and cylindrical (the vertical walls are taller than the diameter of the bowl).
In Japanese, tea practitioners frequently refer to more than 26 different shapes of tea bowls, but these are difficult to translate into English and not very meaningful in a non-chanoyu cultural context.
The important fact to note is that historically, most tea bowls were not smaller than 9 cm and not larger than 14 cm in the diameter of the mouth.
Senchawan (bowl for steeped tea): Chinese literati-style steeped tea drinking became very popular in Japan in the 18th century and continues to have a small following in contemporary Japan. To learn more about Sencha, see Pat Graham’s book Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha.
Matchawan (bowl for powdered tea): The term “chawan” almost always refers to a tea bowl to be used to consume powdered green tea or “matcha,” so I have always found the term “matchawan” to be highly redundant.
Banchawan (bowl for coarse tea): Course tea (bancha) is usually drunk out of a tea cup (yunomi) rather than a tea bowl, so this term also seems a bit strange. I have noticed that some potters in Japan use this term to describe their tea bowls, but the difference escapes me.
