The Book of Tea
by Kakuzo Okakura
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kakuzo OkakuraEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1964-06-01
ISBN: 0486200701
Number of pages: 76
Publisher: Dover Publications
Book Reviews of The Book of Tea
Book Review: Tea Culture
Summary: 4 Stars
At its best this book provides an interesting look at tea. On the downside, Okakura Kakuzo, gets several of his facts wrong by not proofreading. All the facts are corrected in a brilliant afterward by E. F. Bleiler. Also, Okakura, has several comparisons to the West and how Japan is different. This is to show his Japanese uniqueness and it borders on nihonjinron.
However, Okakura does make a clear connection between the consumption of tea and aesthetics. He explains the background of the tea ceremony and the Zen influence. It is interesting of how he first talks about Taoism and its relationship to Zen, which I knew about but haven't really read anything on it.
I like the chapter on the Tea House. It explains a lot of how the Japanese view the tea house experience. It starts with certain objects placed inside the tea house such as flowers and maybe one painting or poem. It is this simple refined use of space that the interior of the tea house is to be best appreciated and enjoyed. He also shows how the tea house is a way to experience Zen. From the walk down the path, to the washing of utensils, to putting it all together and consuming tea this reflects how a Zen monk will break from the world, as he enters the tea house, and begins meditation.
If you have any interest in Japanese culture or just like a good hot cup of tea, this can be an entertaining book.
Summary of The Book of Tea
Minor classic of the Orient. Perhaps the most entertaining, most charming explanation and interpretation of traditional Japanese culture in terms of the tea ceremony. Introduction, notes by E. F. Bleiler. "Provocative and entertaining, this edition is particularly pleasing in format."-Guide to Asia Paperbacks.That a nation should construct one of its most resonant national ceremonies round a cup of tea will surely strike a chord of sympathy with at least some readers of this review. To many foreigners, nothing is so quintessentially Japanese as the tea ceremony--more properly, "the way of tea"--with its austerity, its extravagantly minimalist stylization, and its concentration of extreme subtleties of meaning into the simplest of actions. The Book of Tea is something of a curiosity: written in English by a Japanese scholar (and issued here in bilingual form), it was first published in 1906, in the wake of the naval victory over Russia with which Japan asserted its rapidly acquired status as a world-class military power. It was a peak moment of Westernization within Japan. Clearly, behind the publication was an agenda, or at least a mission to explain. Around its account of the ceremony, The Book of Tea folds an explication of the philosophy, first Taoist, later Zen Buddhist, that informs its oblique celebration of simplicity and directness--what Okakura calls, in a telling phrase, "moral geometry." And the ceremony itself? Its greatest practitioners have always been philosophers, but also artists, connoisseurs, collectors, gardeners, calligraphers, gourmets, flower arrangers. The greatest of them, Sen Rikyu, left a teasingly, maddeningly simple set of rules:
Make a delicious bowl of tea; lay the charcoal so that it heats the water; arrange the flowers as they are in the field; in summer suggest coolness; in winter, warmth; do everything ahead of time; prepare for rain; and give those with whom you find yourself every consideration.A disciple remarked that this seemed elementary. Rikyu replied, "Then if you can host a tea gathering without deviating from any of the rules I have just stated, I will become your disciple." A Zen reply. Fascinating. --Robin Davidson, Amazon.co.uk
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