Feast by the meandering stream: wine-drinking ritual in the culture of East Asian peoples

Interdisciplinary studies of ancient rituals provide interesting ethnographic information once associated with gaming practices. There is an interesting phenomenon of the traditional cultures of East Asia to be described as a sequence of ritual manipulations with wine beverages which follow along the entertainment session of intellectual nature. Wine-drinking in traditional societies is very much often a consolidating cultural component as to tightening of social bonds. To this effect, the past of East Asia for many centuries is abundant in peculiar practices and effective techniques which allow ethnologists and anthropologists to treat wine-drinking not only as a remarkable sociocultural experience, but also as a kind of artifact that can be examined in coalescence of various art forms. The national features of the ceremonial behavior in the ethnic cultures of China, Korea and Japan are being analyzed in the context of the traditional ritual called Feast by the Meandering Stream, accompanied by the ritual of wine-drinking and impromptu declamation of poetry. The comparative analyses of historical artifacts preserved from the early Middle Ages in the gardens and parks around the territory of the temples of China, Korea and Japan helps interpret particularity of several types of traditional meetings that used to be held in the countryside nearby a stream or in covered pavilions in parks, the latter being supported with stone foundations and water troughs of various configurations. As the ceremonies assumed composition and impromptu declamation of poetry followed by their calligraphic design (often involving musical accompaniment), we can talk about the development of the special genre in the art of China, Korea and Japan. It combined the properties of different types of creative activities from literature, calligraphy, music, architecture to landscape gardening and engineering art. At the same time, the clue to the reconstruction of many ritual practices in the mainland China and Korea, now almost neglected from old times, can contribute to the comprehensive analysis of gaming traditions of the Japanese archipelago, where Feast by the Meandering in accordance with the various natural seasons is well preserved until now. The spiritual potential of these rituals may be seen through the number of their most important sociocultural functions related to ceremonial activities, religious and magical practices, and social life. It allows identifying patterns of intercultural interaction of ethnic cultures of East Asia far back in the past as well as in our days. Many of the plots and characters of the above rituals are now widely used in applied art and design, which allows to consider this phenomenon not only in the context of ethnographic and anthropological oriental studies, but also in the aspect of the development of modern art.