Washington Times condemns Pearl Harbor Tea Ceremony

Sen Genshitsu offers tea to Pearl Harbor victims.

In an "Analysis/Opinion" piece titled "Crashing the Party at Pearl Harbor" in right-wing "propaganda sheet" The Washington Times on Friday, former editor Wesley Pruden condemns a historic tea ceremony conducted by Dr. Sen Genshitsu, who served in the Japanese naval air force during World War II, (though not at Pearl Harbor), the 15th generation grand master of the  Urasenke school, as "political correctness run amok" and "misplaced sentiment."

In a short piece throbbing with ignorance and barely disguised racism, Pruden writes:

"The grand tea master of something called the Urasenke School of Tea in Japan brewed up a pot of ceremonial green tea and presented two bowls of it to the ghosts of the 1,177 men whose names are engraved in marble above their ship as 'the gallant men here entombed and their shipmates who gave their lives in action on December 7, 1941.' Genshitsu Sen XV, now 88, was a Japanese airman during World War II, though not at Pearl, and said his tea ceremony was a gesture of respect toward the dead, an attempt to make sure sacrifice was not forgotten, as well as a few words of ritual blah blah about world peace, mutual understanding, reconciliation and all that good stuff. Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii went all starry-eyed and applied more goo-goo in response . . . The governor thinks the tea pots even hold a lesson for 'other people and countries warring with as much enmity and mutual misunderstanding as we once experienced ourselves.' Maybe it does, though to expect such an example to make friends of radical Muslims in the Middle East is to expect a lot from a little tea and sympathy."

The Urasenke school, which dates to the 16th century, is the largest school of traditional Japanese tea ceremony on Earth.  The current grand master is the 16th hereditary head of the school, which has branches all over the world, and also runs two accredited universities. 

In Japanese tea ceremony, tea is not "brewed" in a pot, as Pruden would have learned had he bothered to do 30 seconds of research; instead, it is prepared ceremonially by whisking powdered tea and water, in this case in a ceremony over a millennium and a half old, specifically for honouring the dead.  "Ceremonial tea-sipping at the USS Arizona" (had it actually taken place; sources indicate that it did not: bowls of tea were presented to the dead and for world peace) is not, therefore, "akin to crashing the funeral, as Pruden writes; instead, it is performing a memorial.  Not one the painfully parochial Pruden bothered to try to understand, evidently, but no less appropriate, symbolic, and heartfelt for it.

Pruden then goes compare the ceremony to Ronald Reagan's remarks about "another old foe now friendly, sort of," invoking that president's remarks about German soldiers:

"The SS troopers were human, perhaps, but [Reagan] was more than a few inches over the top to mourn storm troopers. They were the crushers working for the 'vicious ideology,' not the crushees [sic] . . . The Japanese tea master said his ceremony was meant to 'heal,' invoking the favorite soothing syrup of the therapeutic age, and no doubt it was. (Cue applause.) But some wounds can't be healed by a pot of tea, hot or iced. A tea party aboard the remains of the USS Arizona, however well-meant, is sentiment misplaced, and a little bit creepy. To think otherwise demeans the sacrifice of the men at the bottom of Pearl Harbor."

Pruden is known for his racism.  On November 17, 2009, he published an opinion piece titled "Obama bows, the nation cringes," in which he railed about what he claimed were President Obama's breaches of etiquette committed on his tour of Asia, such as bowing to Emperor Akihito of Japan.  Since Obama was "sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii," Pruden wrote, he "has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what [America] is about."