"I have been learning and enjoying cha-no-yu for more than half a century.

It teaches me to behave myself and be sincere to people. At the same time, it has cultivated my sensitivity to nature and art. In short, the tea ceremony has taught me how to live my life right and happily," said Takeya Yamasaki, director of Cha-no-yu International.

This international association was brought into being after the war by Japan's major tea ceremony organizations "to introduce the tea ceremony to the people who came from overseas," Yamasaki said. "If you know the tea ceremony, you know the Japanese mentality, you can get the essence of the Japanese spirit."

An only child whose father died during the war, Yamasaki grew up in Shimane Prefecture. He began to attend tea ceremony classes with his mother when she was studying it. "Mother told me it was good to learn something traditionally Japanese, but probably I had no clear idea of what I was going to do," he said.

"But I have profited a lot from my knowledge. Superficially it helped me greatly in my business work with Japanese and non-Japanese clients. Internally it helped me as I was doing what the tea ceremony taught me, and that is a kind of religion."

A law graduate of Tokyo University, Yamasaki is a linguist whose English is superior and who with a little practice can call upon five other languages. Ater graduation he joined a Japanese trading company. Two years later, as the company's financial accountant, he went to New York. "I couldn't speak English at all," Yamasaki said. "I could speak some Spanish, so I could communicate with one of my secretaries who was from Puerto Rico." He went to school every night of the week to study, surprisingly, fashion.

"Fashion marketing, copy writing -- I was interested in those fields," Yamasaki said. "And at the Fashion Institute of Technology there was the attraction of more female than male students. I also attended the New York School of Interior Design, and learned conversational English as I went along."

Yamasaki stayed six years in New York. After a period back in Tokyo, he established himself as an independent business consultant, with his chief work in the field of fashion.

Yamasaki stayed independent throughout his working life, and thinks he probably is "individualistic." He traveled widely on business that moved away from fashion.

Since 2001 his main business has been writing books. "I have been publishing about six new books each year."

In 1992 he published an English-language version, entitled "The Quality Person," of his best-selling, Japanese-language trilogy. That book presented, with considerable wit, some of his views on life, and some of his ideas on how to handle living by developing into a first-class person. Since 1992, he said, "I have written about 55 new books. Most of them are on businesss-related matters.

If I include re-edited ones, the total number of books that I have produced since 1980 will be about 90. Fortunately, some of those books were and are on best-sellers' lists. Nine translations of my books have been published in Korea and Taiwan."

At base are his strong principles taught by cha-no-yu. "The tea ceremony has many aspects. You have to learn etiquette, to be considerate of others, to prepare utensils and care for them, to appreciate objects of art and gardens.

"Wearing the kimono teaches the value of tradition. Even modern young girls when they wear kimono begin to behave decorously. We have four principles of harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity. Since I have been practicing for years, even when I was furious at a negotiating table I could produce harmony. The tea ceremony teaches us in an innocent and compact way how to live our lives."

Cha-no-yu International nowadays is owned and supported by the Urasenke School. Twice a year the organization holds major functions to which it invites interested nonmembers. The winter year-end function includes, as well as the ceremony itself, a traditional artistic performance and is a charity event.

Yamasaki considers himself still a cha-no-yu student, "learning the same thing, but still there is a lot of learning. The more mature I become, the more things I learn, since I become keener and more attentive to whatever I see, hear, feel, taste or smell."