Kakuzo Okakura

The Book of Tea Kakuzo Okakura

The Book of Tea: Illustrated, by Okakura Kakuzo (1919). A Japanese Harmony of Art Culture & The Simple Life. - Containing many illustrations 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. The author, the late Okakura Kakuzo, was one of the leaders 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. The Book of Tea has served for more than a century as one of the most perceptive introductions to Asian life and thought in English. Publication of the book was a pioneering effort in the cultural bridge-building between East and West. Kakuzo Okakura perceived chanoyu-literally, "the way of tea"-as a form of spiritual culture, a discipline that transforms itself into the Art of Life. In writing of chanoyu, his concern was the broad current of Asian culture flowing eastward from India, and its potential contribution to the culture of all humankind. Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and Chinese and Japanese aesthetics are discussed, giving voice to traditional Asian values and ideals that had been little recognized in the West. Thus, he sought to convey the spirit of chanoyu as a crystallization of the cultural life of the East. 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.