ABSTRACT
A paradigm of how architecture and landscape can be used to produce a state of enlightenment can be found in the ritual environment of the tea garden, as developed for the Japanese tea ceremony. The tea ceremony, chanoyu, is intricately connected with its setting, and this relationship is fundamental to the understanding of the way of tea. The elements within the tea ceremony and its ritual environment are embedded with symbolic devices that impact upon the ritual body. The fundamental feature that achieves this is the transitional route, or roji. In Japanese Gardens: Right angle and natural form, Gunter Nitschke suggests that, 'the more barriers that have to be passed on the way to the soan, the tea arbour, the more sacred the site appears'. A defining element for the ritual environment of the tea ceremony is the emphasis placed upon the threshold.
