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The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura is a deeply beautiful book does which, in addition to teaching the history of tea and its preparation, provides an eloquent introduction to Teaism and other aspects of Japanese culture. Okakura's words linger long after the reader has finished, and tea, once an ordinary beverage, acquires a soul. Okakura was born in a Japan that had seen Commodore Perry but had not yet renounced the Shogunate. By the end of his life he had seen the Great War and Japan's first imperialistic military adventures in Korea and Manchuria that would culminate in the tragedy of the Second World War. The scion of Japanese aristocracy, Okakura chose to spend the latter half of his life as an expatriate living in Boston, Massachusetts, where he befriended the Brahmins of that city. The Book of Tea, which was written in this period, eloquently introduced the American audience to an idealized vision of Japan-- the Japan of cherry blossoms, kakemono, and Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony. In The Book of Tea, Kakuzo explains the Japanese tea ceremony to a non-Japanese audience. Laying out the history of tea and the Zen esthetic in which cha-do ( the way of tea ) makes sense, Kakuzo describes the place in which the ceremony is held and some of the tools used. In its simplicity and its elegance, the Tea Ceremony is a form of Zen practice. Kakuzo refrains from describing the actual service in The Book of Tea, saying that it's not the tea that matters-but the effect that the ritual has on the people who perform it.

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9781611041057

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Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) was a Japanese scholar who contributed to the development of arts in Japan. Outside of Japan, he is chiefly remembered today as the author of The Book of Tea. Okakura was a high-profile urbanite who had an international sense of self. In the Meiji period he was the first dean of the Tokyo Fine Arts School (now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music). He wrote all of his main works in English. Okakura researched Japan's traditional art and traveled to Europe, the United States, China and India. He gave the world an image of Japan as a member of the East, in the face of a massive onslaught of Western culture. His book, The Ideals of the East (1904), published on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, is famous for its opening line, Asia is one. He argued that Asia is one in its humiliation, of falling behind in achieving modernization, and thus being colonized by the Western powers. This was an early expression of Pan-Asianism. Later Okakura felt compelled to protest against a Japan that tried to catch up with the Western powers, but by sacrificing other Asian countries in the Russo-Japanese War. In Japan, Okakura, along with Fenollosa, is credited with saving Nihonga, or painting done with traditional Japanese technique, as it was threatened with replacement by Western-style painting, or Yoga, whose chief advocate was artist Kuroda Seiki. Beyond this, he was instrumental in modernizing Japanese aesthetics, having recognized the need to preserve Japan's cultural heritage, and thus was one of the major reformers during Japan's period of modernization beginning with the Meiji Restoration. Outside of Japan, Okakura had an impact on a number of important figures, directly or indirectly, who include philosopher Martin Heidegger, poet Ezra Pound, and especially poet Rabindranath Tagore and heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner, who were close personal friends of his.

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