Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Book of Tea: Illustrated
    The Book of Tea: Illustrated
    The Book of Tea: Illustrated
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    The Book of Tea: Illustrated

    By Kakuzo Okakura

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Book of Tea: Illustrated, by Okakura Kakuzo was first published in 1919.

    A Japanese Harmony of Art Culture & The Simple Life. - Containing many illustrations in colour and in black and white.

    This little book is illuminating in its revelation of the old world of Japanese thought and culture, with its reaction on Japanese daily life. It is not a translation, but was written in English.

    The author, the late Okakura Kakuzo, was one of theleaders in the movement which a generation ago set itself to stem the western invasion, spreading like a malaria over every field of intellectual activity and threatening to submerge entirely the ancient beautiful Japanese civilisation.

    The illustrations are chosen from our own National collections, and in the appendix will be found further details as to the Tea Ceremony and its various accessories.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOkakura Kakuzo
    Release dateDec 16, 2015
    ISBN9788892529694
    The Book of Tea: Illustrated
    Author

    Kakuzo Okakura

    Okakura Kakuzo was born in 1862, the son of a merchant. He learnt English as a child and went on to study languages at Tokyo University. There, he started a movement to preserve Japanese culture from the rise of modernism and westernization. At the age of only twenty-nine he was made principle of the National Art School and many of his students went on to become famous artists. In 1898 he resigned to found a dissident school of art. To raise funds, he travelled to America where he found a wealthy and interested patron in Mrs Isabella Gardner, ‘Queen of Boston’. Now a successful artist, he was also appointed curator of Chinese and Japanese art at the Boston Museum. A dramatic and extrovert character, he wrote The Book of Tea in 1906 and died seven years later, in 1913.

    Read more from Kakuzo Okakura

    Related to The Book of Tea

    Related ebooks

    Buddhism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Easy Japanese

      Jul 8, 2020

      Easy Japanese
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of… Hospitality

      May 23, 2021

      The Art Of… Hospitality
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sofu Teshigahara

      Mar 1, 2020

      Sofu Teshigahara
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ramen Secrets

      Apr 23, 2023

      Ramen Secrets
      4 min read

    • Article

      Seeds of Perversion

      Feb 22, 2018

      We Brits are blithely accepting of our national beverage. We consume tea at 60.2 billion cups a year, but don’t give a thought to how it came to be so embedded in our society and national identity. ’Great’ Britain’s rapacious colonialism; the ruthles

      11 min read

    • Article

      Find your Zen

      Jun 24, 2020

      Find your Zen
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tea Lady

      Jun 3, 2021

      Tea Lady
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Mysterious Middle Ages

      Jul 7, 2023

      The Mysterious Middle Ages
      4 min read

    • Article

      If It Weren't for Tea

      Aug 3, 2023

      If It Weren't for Tea
      8 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Sep 2, 2021

      Michael Wood On…
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Original Philosophy of Flow

      Jun 3, 2020

      We have stopped. A pandemic encircles the world. Many of us are either partially or entirely isolated, keeping our distances. The planes are mostly grounded, the non-essential stores are closed. The hospitals are filled with people who are sick and d

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Poet’s Craft

      Jan 1, 2020

      To begin with a definition: A poem is a text structurally constrained by the repetition of any language element(s). The continuum of poetic constraint is extensive, stretching from operations that a reader will find completely imperceptible to overwh

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Way Of Flowers

      Nov 22, 2022

      The Way Of Flowers
      4 min read

    • Article

      Pious Pioneers

      Jul 6, 2023

      Pious Pioneers
      4 min read

    • Article

      Brave And Barmy New Worlds

      Jun 24, 2021

      Brave And Barmy New Worlds
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Stories We Tell

      Nov 2, 2023

      The Stories We Tell
      8 min read

    • Article

      Such Sweet Sorrow

      Apr 1, 2022

      NOW THAT NOTHING is much fun any more, what better moment for a proper revival of the “English malady”? No, not sodomy, flagellation, or any of those traditional pastimes, I mean the inclination to melancholy which for centuries was the thing that fo

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Book of Tea

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Book of Tea - Kakuzo Okakura

      The Book of Tea:

      Illustrated

      By Okakura Kakuzo

      THE BOOK OF TEA

      By Kakuzo Okakura

      T.N.FOULIS

      Edinburgh & London

      1919

      Contents

      I. The Cup of Humanity

      II. The Schools of Tea.

      III. Taoism and Zennism

      IV. The Tea-Room

      V. Art Appreciation

      VI. Flowers

      VII. Tea-Masters

      CONTENTS

      PAOS

      Chapter I. The Cup of Humanity

      Tea ennobled into Teaism, a religion of

      aestheticism, the adoration of the beautiful

      among everyday facts — Teaism developed

      among both nobles and peasants — The mutual

      misunderstanding of the New World and the

      Old— The Worship of Tea in the West —

      Early records of Tea in European writing —

      The Taoists' version of the combat between

      Spirit and Matter — The modern struggle for

      wealth and power 3

      Chapter II. The Schools of Tea

      The three stages of the evolution of Tea — The

      Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped

      Tea, representative of the Tang, the Sung, and

      the Ming dynasties of China — Luwuh, the

      first apostle of Tea— The Tea-ideals of the

      three dynasties — To the latter-day Chinese Tea

      is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal — In

      Japan Tea is a religion of the art of life • . 25

      Chapter III. Taoism and Zennism

      The connection of Zennism with Tea — Taoism,

      and its successor Zennism, represent the indi-

      vidualistic trend of the Southern Chinese mind

      — Taoism accepts the mundane and tries to

      find beauty in our world of woe and worry —

      Zennism emphasizes the teachings of Taoism —

      Through consecrated meditation may be at-

      tained supreme self-realisation — Zennism, like

      Taoism, is the worship of Relativity — Ideal of

      Teaism a result of the Zen conception of great-

      ness in the smallest incidents of life — Taoism

      furnished the basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism

      made them practical 47

      Chapter IV. The Tea-Room

      The tea-room does not pretend to be other than

      a mere cottage — The simplicity and purism of

      the tea-room — Symbolism in the construction

      of the tea-room — The system of its decoration

      — A sanctuary from the vexations of the outer

      world 7S

      Chapter V. Art Appreciation

      Sympathetic communion of minds necessary

      for art appreciation — The secret understand-

      ing between the master and ourselves — The

      value of suggestion — Art is of value only to

      the extent that it speaks to us — No real feel-

      ing in much of the apparent enthusiasm to-day

      — Confusion of art with archaeology — ^We are

      destroying art in destroying the beautiful in

      life lOS

      Chapter VI. Flowers

      Flowers our constant friends — The Master of

      Flowers — The waste of Flowers^ among West-

      ern conmiunities — The art of floriculture in

      the East— The Tea-Masters and the Cult of

      Flowers — The Art of Flower Arrangement —

      The adoration of the Flower for its own sake

      — The Flower-Masters — Two main branches of

      the schools of Flower Arrangement, the For-

      malistic and the Naturalesque 123

      Chapter VII. _Tea-Masters

      Real appreciation of art only possible to those

      who make of it a living influence — Contribu-

      tions of the Tea-Masters to art — Their influence

      on the conduct of life— The Last Tea of Rikiu 151

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      Frontispiece Coloured stones by Korin

      Dharuma by Soami

      The three tasters - Morikuni

      Landscape - Sansetsu

      Bamboos in the wind

      Lotus and white heron

      Water-jar - Kettle

      Plan of tea-room

      Tea-jars and tea-bowls

      Tea-bowls and flower vase

      Tailpieces - Flower studies

      I. The Cup of Humanity

      Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism—Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.

      The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.

      The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature—all have been subject to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance we speak of the man with no tea in him, when he is insusceptible to the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1