The Book of Tea Classic Edition
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Now available in a gorgeous hardcover slipcase edition, this «object d'art» will be sure to add grace and elegance to tea shelves, coffee tables and bookshelves. A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.[/b]In 1906 in turn-of-the century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most famous socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty—and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was more than capable of expressing to Westerners the nuances of tea and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.In The Book of Tea Classic Edition he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that tea-induced simplicity affected the culture, art and architecture of Japan.Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's The Book of Tea Classic Edition is still beloved the world over, making it an essential part of any tea enthusiast's collection. Interwoven with a rich history of Japanese tea and its place in Japanese society is poignant commentary on Asian culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. The Book of Tea Classic Edition is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time.
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THE BOOK OF TEA
The Frontispiece is reproduced from a preliminary sketch for a portrait by Shimomura Kanzan, one of Okakura's outstanding pupils, and is used here by the kind permission of the Geijutsu University and Mr. Hidetoki Shimomura, Kanzan's grandson. The sketch, in Japanese ink and traces of water colors on paper, mounted as a hanging scroll, was formerly in the possession of Mr. Langdon Warner, of Harvard University, who returned it to Japan after the finished portrait was destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1923. The rather conspicuous errors in draftsmanship, particularly noticeable in the hand holding the cigarette, were corrected in the final painting, which was one of Kanzan's masterpieces.
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"The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and the childishness of the East to him...."
Yet the book continues to be passed from hand to hand, always with the previous reader's warm assurance that here is to be found a key to an understanding of Eastern ideas, a key that transcends the title of the book. Okakura's insight and compassion, his irony and his power of self-observation, and the piquant lyricism of his style have won the book a far greater audience than he could ever have imagined. His felicitous phrasing and dramatic presentation of his theme first arouse curiosity in the reader, then interest, and finally a desire for comprehension and participation. Later writings by other men may have presented the tea cult of Japan in a more objective light, but Okakura revealed to the West a unified concept of art and life, of nature and art blended into a harmony of daily living, which strikes a responsive chord in a world anxious to find a way out from the maze of complexities into which it has blundered.
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