The Book of Tea is a long essay connecting the role of tea (teaism) to the artistic and cultural aspects of Japanese life. Nothing is as quintessentially Japanese as the tea ceremony – or – "the way of tea."
Teaism is founded on the love of the beautiful among the distasteful facts of everyday existence. It is the worship of the imperfect – trying to accomplish something possible in this impossible dance we call life.
Created for a western audience, it was originally written in English and is classed as one of the great English tea classics. Okakura Kakuzō was schooled in English and was proficient at communicating his thoughts to the Western mind. In this book, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the material aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzō argues that this tea-induced simplicity affected culture, literature, cuisine, clothing, and art.
The book is written in a very poetic and philosophical way, and has some quite surprising facts. Did you know that at one time onions were added to tea? Also, at one point, tea-drinking was considered to be an occupation of depraved people.
Highlights of this edition are:
• 14 illustrations.
• 7 free online audio files.
• It is formatted for ease of use and enjoyment on your kindle reader.
• An active (easy to use) Table of Contents listing every chapter accessible from the kindle "go to" feature.
• Perfect formatting in rich text compatible with Kindle's Text-to-Speech features.
• Plus a short About the Author section.
• 101 pages in the kindle format.
Chapters include:
1. The Cup of Humanity
2. The Schools of Tea
3. Taoism and Zennism
4. The Tea-Room
5. Art Appreciation
6. Flowers
7. Tea-Masters
This book is unabridged, and appears as it was first intended. First published in 1902.