Examines the importance of Japanese tea culture and the ways in which it has evolved over the centuries, with photographs and detailed explanations of the Tea Culture of Japan exhibit organized by the Yale University Art Gallery.

The tea ceremony persists as one of the most evocative symbols of Japan. Originally a pastime of elite warriors in premodern society, it was later recast as an emblem of the modern Japanese state, only to be transformed again into its current incarnation, largely the hobby of middle-class housewives. How does the cultural practice of a few come to represent a nation as a whole? Although few non-Japanese scholars have peered behind the walls of a tea room, sociologist Kristin Surak came to know the inner workings of the tea world over the course of ten years of tea training. Here she offers the first comprehensive analysis of the practice that includes new material on its historical changes, a detailed excavation of its institutional organization, and a careful examination of what she terms "nation-work"—the labor that connects the national meanings of a cultural practice and the actual experience and enactment of it. She concludes by placing tea ceremony in comparative perspective, drawing on other expressions of nation-work, such as gymnastics and music, in Europe and Asia. Taking readers on a rare journey into the elusive world of tea ceremony, Surak offers an insightful account of the fundamental processes of modernity—the work of making nations.

From its origins as a distinct set of ritualised practices in the sixteenth century to its international expansion in the twentieth, tea culture has had a major impact on artistic production, connoisseurship, etiquette, food, design and more recently, on notions of Japaneseness. The authors dispel the myths around the development of tea practice, dispute the fiction of the dominance of aesthetics over politics in tea, and demonstrate that writing history has always been an integral part of tea culture.

The overwhelming majority of tea practitioners in contemporary Japan are women, but there has been little discussion on their historical role in tea culture (chanoyu). In Cultivating Femininity, Rebecca Corbett writes women back into this history and shows how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted in the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods. Viewing chanoyu from the lens of feminist and gender theory, she sheds new light on tea’s undeniable influence on the formation of modern understandings of femininity in Japan. Corbett overturns the iemoto tea school’s carefully constructed orthodox narrative by employing underused primary sources and closely examining existing tea histories. She incorporates Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of social and cultural capital and Norbert Elias’s “civilizing process” to explore the economic and social incentives for women taking part in chanoyu. Although the iemoto system sought to increase its control over every aspect of tea, including book production, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular texts aimed specifically at women evidence the spread of tea culture beyond parameters set by the schools. The expansion of chanoyu to new social groups cascaded from commoner men to elite then commoner women. Shifting the focus away from male tea masters complicates the history of tea in Japan and shows how women of different social backgrounds worked within and without traditionally accepted paradigms of tea practice. The direct socioeconomic impact of the spread of tea is ultimately revealed in subsequent advances in women’s labor opportunities and an increase in female social mobility. Through their participation in chanoyu, commoner women were able to blur and lessen the status gap between themselves and women of aristocratic and samurai status. Cultivating Femininity offers a new perspective on the prevalence of tea practice among women in modern Japan. It presents a fresh, much-needed approach, one that will be appreciated by students and scholars of Japanese history, gender, and culture, as well as by tea practitioners. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.

A unique exploration of Japanese tea culture, featuring the personal narratives of individuals whose lives are deeply rooted in the world of tea. Tea Stories: Japan is a unique exploration of tea culture in Japan, documenting personal narratives of individuals whose lives are deeply rooted in the world of tea. It captures an esoteric aspect of Japanese tea that is not readily discovered. Interest in Japanese tea and tea culture has grown considerably in recent years, and although Japan is known throughout the world for its long-standing traditions and ritualized customs, there are still many aspects of tea culture that little is known about. Stories include the experiences and daily lives of individuals, mostly based around the Kyoto and Shizuoka prefectures, which are both important regions for tea production. Included in the various aspects of the tea industry is the farmer who looks after the tea bushes and harvests the tea, the factory worker who processes the leaves, several highly skilled artisans in ceramics and a wagashi sweet maker. Information and imagery, photography and illustrations highlight details on Japanese tea ware, the evolution and uses, rare Japanese types and regional specialty teas, and various schools of the Japanese tea ceremony. Modern uses of tea are explored, including tea recipes. This book provides an insight into how tea is an integral part of life in Japan, providing an intimate examination of customs and processes. This book will appeal to readers who have an interest in Japan and its culture and to those curious about specialty tea--whether they know very little about Japanese tea and want to learn more or would like to dig deeper into the subject.

The Book of Tea is a brief but classic essay on tea drinking, its history, restorative powers, and rich connection to Japanese culture. Okakura felt that "Teaism" was at the very center of Japanese life and helped shape everything from art, aesthetics, and an appreciation for the ephemeral to architecture, design, gardens, and painting. In tea could be found one source of what Okakura felt was Japan's and, by extension, Asia's unique power to influence the world. Containing both a history of tea in Japan and lucid, wide-ranging comments on the schools of tea, Zen, Taoism, flower arranging, and the tea ceremony and its tea-masters, this book is deservedly a timeless classic and will be of interest to anyone interested in the Japanese arts and ways. Book jacket.

The Japanese tea ceremony is generally identified with chanoyu and its bowls of whipped, powdered green tea served in surroundings influenced by the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Tea of the Sages is the first English language study of the alternate tea tradition of sencha. At sencha tea gatherings, steeped green leaf tea is prepared in an atmosphere indebted to the humanistic values of the Chinese sages and the materialistic culture of elite Chinese society during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Although sencha once surpassed chanoyu in popularity, it is now overshadowed by chanoyu, despite the existence of more than a hundred sencha schools throughout Japan. This exceptionally well-illustrated volume explores sencha's philosophy and arts from the seventeenth century to the present. Introduced by Chinese merchants and scholar-monks, sencha first gained favor in Japan among devotees of the Chinese literati. By the early nineteenth century, it had become popular with a wide spectrum of urban and rural residents. Some took up sencha as a subversive activity in opposition to the mandated protocol of chanoyu. Others enjoyed sencha because of its connections with elite Chinese culture, knowledge of which indicated intellectual and cultural refinement. Still others relished it simply as a fine tasting beverage. Sencha inspired painters and poets and fostered major advances within craft industries from ceramics to metalwork and basketry. Sencha aficionados, many of whom became serious connoisseurs of Chinese art and antiquities, hosted some of the earliest public art exhibitions. Tea of the Sages opens with a chronological overview of tea in China and its transmission to Japan before situating sencha within the rich milieu of Chinese material culture available in early modern Japan. Subsequent chapters outline the multifaceted history of the formalization of the sencha tea ceremony, drawing upon sources such as treatises and less formal writings as well as analysis of tea gathering records, utensils and their prescribed arrangements, paintings, prints, and sencha architecture.

This classic of Japanese cultural studies explains the famous Japanese tea ceremony or cha-no-yu with great scholarship and clarity. In 1933, when A. L. Sadler's imposing book on the Japanese tea ceremony first appeared, there was no other work on the subject in English that even remotely approached it in comprehensiveness or detail. Having attained something of the stature of a classic among studies of Japanese esthetics, it has remained one of the most sought-after of books in this field. It is therefore both a pleasure and a privilege to make it available once again in a complete and unabridged digital version The tea culture book is abundantly illustrated with drawings of tea ceremony furniture and utensils, tearoom architecture and garden design, floor and ground plans, and numerous other features of the cha-no-yu. A number of photographic plates picture famous tea bowls, teahouses, and gardens.

"Represents a major advance over previous publications.... Students will find this volume especially useful as an introduction to the primary sources, terminology, and dominant themes in the history of chanoyu." --Journal of Japanese Studies "Tea in Japan illuminates in depth and detail chanoyu's cultural connections and evolution from the early Kamakura period... It is the quality of seeing the familiar and not so familiar elements of tea emerge as a dynamic saga of human invention and cultural intervention that makes this book exhilarating and the details that the authors provide that make these essays fascinating." --Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese

By combining anthropological observation with historical examination of the tea ceremony, this book radically revises mainstream discourses surrounding women and the tea ceremony in Japan.