{"id":659,"date":"2013-06-23T22:26:29","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T21:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/?p=659"},"modified":"2013-06-25T05:32:13","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T04:32:13","slug":"the-book-of-tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2013\/the-book-of-tea","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Tea"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of my decluttering effort, I’m trying to read books that I’ve wanted to read for a while but haven’t managed to.\u00c2\u00a0 One of these, a likely candidate due to its brevity, was the Book of Tea<\/a> by Kakuzo Okakura.<\/p>\n

Okakura’s premise is that “teaism” is Taoism, encapsulated in a single ritual.\u00c2\u00a0 His book is an interesting look at the worldview of an enlightened Japanese at the outset of the 20th century.\u00c2\u00a0 Although Okakura can be commended for preserving a good amount of Japanese art forms, his elevation of Japanese culture above everything else sometimes feels dated.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s clear he’s preaching against a current evil of his time, though a number of statements still ring true today.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll summarize the book with a few quotes and some fun facts.<\/p>\n

Fun facts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Tea wasn’t always infused.\u00c2\u00a0 From the fourth to eighth century, the Chinese prepared tea by steaming the leaves, pestling them, and boiling them with spices and even rice and milk.\u00c2\u00a0 Okakura calls this a primitive way of drinking tea and suspects the Russians learned their customs from that time (he probably wouldn’t have thought too highly of Earl Grey, either).\u00c2\u00a0 From the eighth century on, the T’ang Dynasty<\/a> refined this approach to where every ingredient but salt was disallowed, but it wasn’t until the Song Dynasty<\/a> that the preparation changed from boiling to whisking a fine powder with a bamboo whisk (what the Japanese tea ceremony still practices, as an offshoot of a Zen ritual).\u00c2\u00a0 This practice was lost in China due to inner unrest and Mongolian invasions, and already the Ming Dynasty<\/a>, but especially those barbarian Manchu of the Qing Dynasty<\/a> knew nothing of whisking tea, and Europeans took to infusing their tea because they only learned about tea at the end of the Ming Dynasty.<\/li>\n
  2. Okakura calls H\u00c5\u008dj\u00c5\u008d Tokiyori<\/a> the Japanese Harun al-Rashid.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a shame the English wikipedia article is so brief: it would be interesting to know more about him.<\/li>\n
  3. Okakura calls Yoshitsune<\/a> the Japanese King Arthur, and as befits a warrior, the wikipedia entry is longer and there’s an entire subsection in wikipedia on Yoshitsune in popular culture<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Quotes:<\/p>\n

    On the Chinese culture of his time:<\/p>\n

    To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal. The long woes of his country have robbed him of the zest for the meaning of life. He has become modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted. He has lost that sublime faith in illusions which constitutes the eternal youth and vigour of the poets and ancients. He is an eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of the universe. He toys with Nature, but does not condescend to conquer or worship her. His Leaf-tea is often wonderful with its flower-like aroma, but the romance of the Tang and Sung ceremonials are not to be found in his cup.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On Japan’s contribution:<\/p>\n

    It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination of tea-ideals. Our successful resistance of the Mongol invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers could meet to drink from the common spring of art-appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a colour to disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and naturally–such were the aims of the tea-ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On the Zen influence:<\/p>\n

    We have already said that it was the ritual instituted by the Zen monks of successively drinking tea out of a bowl before the image of Bodhi Dharma, which laid the foundations of the tea-ceremony. We might add here that the altar of the Zen chapel was the prototype of the Tokonoma,–the place of honour in a Japanese room where paintings and flowers are placed for the edification of the guests. All our great tea-masters were students of Zen and attempted to introduce the spirit of Zennism into the actualities of life. Thus the room, like the other equipments of the tea-ceremony, reflects many of the Zen doctrines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On art and Western culture:<\/p>\n

    We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On perfection and beauty:<\/p>\n

    The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection, however, was different. The dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea-room it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On vanity and art:<\/p>\n

    In art vanity is equally fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist or the public.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself.\u00c2\u00a0 […] \u00c2\u00a0We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On art critique:<\/p>\n

    It is much to be regretted that so much of the apparent enthusiasm for art at the present day has no foundation in real feeling. In this democratic age of ours men clamour for what is popularly considered the best, regardless of their feelings. They want the costly, not the refined; the fashionable, not the beautiful. To the masses, contemplation of illustrated periodicals, the worthy product of their own industrialism, would give more digestible food for artistic enjoyment than the early Italians or the Ashikaga masters, whom they pretend to admire. The name of the artist is more important to them than the quality of the work. As a Chinese critic complained many centuries ago, “People criticise a picture by their ear.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    On flowers and the use of the useless:<\/p>\n

    The primeval man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended the brute. He became human in thus rising above the crude necessities of nature. He entered the realm of art when he perceived the subtle use of the useless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As part of my decluttering effort, I’m trying to read books that I’ve wanted to read for a while but haven’t managed to.\u00c2\u00a0 One of these, a likely candidate due to its brevity, was the Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura. Okakura’s premise is that “teaism” is Taoism, encapsulated in a single ritual.\u00c2\u00a0 His book is an interesting look at the worldview of an enlightened Japanese at the outset of the 20th century.\u00c2\u00a0 Although Okakura can be commended for preserving a good amount of Japanese art forms, his elevation of Japanese culture above everything else sometimes feels dated.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s clear he’s preaching against a current evil of his time, though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":661,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions\/661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}