Drinking Matcha: An Example of Synesthesia

(An excerpt from "Building Japan")

At first, a picture provides you with shape and colour of the depicted objects. But that's not everything: it also gives an impression of texture, which is something visible on the one hand, but on the other hand fundamentally connected to touch. When seeing a structured surface, we don't visually analyse the change in light and colour that creates the pattern, but, from past experience with similar surfaces, have an idea of what it would feel like if we touched it and what it sounds like when the foam is slowly dissolving (or being stirred until it dissolves).

The way Matcha leaves traces in the bowl further betrays its consistence. The powdery marks show that it is not a completely homogenous mass, but part watery, part pulverulent. Someone who already knows Matcha can even reevoke the bitter, earthy taste by seeing the liquid's rather specific colour or remember the smell when viewing its uneven texture.

As David Sutton recognises in his work, Synesthesia depends a whole lot on memories [1]. Someone who has never tasted, seen, heard, smelled and felt matcha will propably not be reminded of the same sensual experience as someone who, when seeing a picture, automatically draws on the last time he drank this special kind of tea. Thus, Synesthesia itself is an example for the subjectivity of the Senses, which not only draw from each other, but also from past experiences unique to every single person. A methodological use of synesthesia is therefore limited in such as it is hard for the communicator to predict the recipient's associations. On the other hand, a shared cultural background can be a reference point for what a recipient can know, which inductive conclusions he might automatically draw: Even if someone has never heard the sizzling of Matcha foam, a photograph can evoke memories of sizzling milk foam or the touch of crema on coffee. In this case, both comparisons are pretty accurate and thus a good way of describing the sensual experience to someone unfamiliar with it.

This transfer from one food to the other bears a mentionable similarity to Sutton's description of the Kalmynian discourse on that matter, where metaphors ("the prickly pear today...it was honey" [2]) use the same ability to imagine something (new) through analogies on a linguistic level.

[1] Sutton 2005, 314

[2] Sutton 2005, 313

Sutton, David E. 2005. "Synthesia, Memory, and the Taste of Home." In The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink, edited by Carolyn Korsmeyer, English ed. Sensory Formations. Oxford ; New York: Berg.