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FOREWORD

by Elise Grilli

NOT ALWAYS does the fame of an author keep step with the fame of his books. Sometimes the man advances and his work recedes, as, for example, in the case of Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose personality continues to intrigue us today, just as much as it did his contemporaries; we can still see him vividly through the eyes of Boswell and other diarists and recorders, while much of his own writing has taken on an obsolescent tinge.

The opposite fate seems to have befallen Okakura Kakuzo and The Book of Tea. The book is just fifty years old, and in this half century its fame has grown steadily and continuously. Starting out as an esoteric morsel for a select few in the small aesthetic world of Boston at the turn of the century, it has been moving in ever-widening circles, propelled as by a natural movement across the waters that lap the shores of Asia and of Europe, always radiating from the modest little edition that first appeared in America in 1906. From this original publication in English, the book has been translated into innumerable languages including, as an ironical apogee of fame, its author's native tongue, Japanese. Its sales through the years and in many languages and editions reach certainly into the hundreds of thousands, and nothing bears more eloquent witness to its continuing appeal than that it should now be appearing in this present new and handsome edition.

Yet the name of the book's author is becoming dimmer with the years even in Japan —or, rather, especially in Japan, where today he merits only a short paragraph in the national biographical dictionary. As important as the book is, Okakura deserves much more than to be remembered merely as the author of The Book of Tea. For bis accomplishments were great and his stature large. Now, more than forty years after his death, his memory still remains vivid for his one-time students and collaborators. For them he was a Character, with a capital C, and a genius, at least with a small g. As one talks with those who remember him it becomes clear that his striking appearance and dramatic personality could not possibly be forgotten by anyone who came into contact with him.

As may be seen in the biographical sketch appended to this volume, his was not the old story of the prophet who had to be recognized by the world at large before he could be acknowledged in his own land. Quite the contrary. For some two decades, from 1880 to 1900, Okakura stood at the very center of Japan's art activities. He was a key figure in the gigantic effort to bring some order into the cataclysmic clash between Oriental tradition and Western innovation, which shook Japan to its very foundations. That very prominence, however, exposed some of the leaders to the inevitable series of attacks and intrigues of smaller men who were envious and quarrelsome and eager to topple the giants from their heights.

This situation was aggravated by Okakura's own pronouncements, for he possessed in no small measure "the gentle art of making enemies." In appearance, in speech, and in demeanor he was the grand seigneur, as well as the crusader imbued with the righteousness of his cause. Of such stuff were many of the men who stood by the Emperor Meiji in the early years of Japan's awakening after her long sleep of medievalism; but by the year 1900 the heroic was giving way to the picayune, and Okakura could not adjust himself to the smaller vision. He sought and found a response in the world beyond Japan's frontiers, traveling extensively in India, China, and Europe, and finally finding his niche as Curator of Oriental Art at the Boston Museum, where, as his star rose in the West, it declined in the East.

Okakura's literary works have, to some extent, been superceded by the later, more systematic approach to the study of Oriental art, for which he himself prepared the way. The same fate has overtaken the writings of Ernest Fenollosa, for both these men were pioneers who planned wide vistas and then left the minutiae to more scientific writers. It would be carping to follow in their footsteps today and point out errors here and there. The enthusiasm of these men was incendiary, and without their spark the whole chemical reaction might have remained dormant for many years—perhaps too late to make use of the fragile raw material. Their prime function was to preserve a whole body of art from possible extinction. If in addition, they had poetic insight and a contagious enthusiasm, the gods have been kind enough.

Okakura's writings range from historical enumeration to poetic fantasy, and from philosophic speculation to nationalistic apologia. For the Japanese periodical Kokka, which had been founded in 1889, he contributed numerous articles on art-historical themes. The Ideals of the East may seem a bit vaporous for today's taste, and The Awakening of Japan has also been replaced by more factual writing, though some of its thoughts are still being quoted and paraphrased by later writers. The poems which he dedicated directly to Mrs. Isabella Gardner have remained too personal for wider circulation, nor has that lady's enthusiasm for his fairy drama with music, entitled The White Fox, brought that work to life on the operatic stage. His Historical Notes on Japanese Temples and Their Treasures made a substantial contribution to this field and has survived emendations and revisions. But it is The Book of Tea that seems to be most richly endowed with an elixir of life, which has kept it youthful and vigorous for half a century.

Okakura wrote The Book of Tea soon after his arrival in America, and before publication he read it aloud in the artistic gatherings that centered around Mrs. Gardner, the "Queen of Boston," who ruled over an aesthetic kingdom in her palatial home at Fenway Court. Apparently the book was intended for a narrow elite, who might be expected to join in his protest against the spiritual misunderstandings that separated East and West. The rest of the world, the author seemed to think, would very likely consider his theme a sort of tempest in a teacup:

"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.

The past fifty years have removed some of the mutual ignorance between the continents that Okakura had observed with bitterness. There has been a decided decline in colonial paternalism and a rise in the respect with which the East and the West regard each other's cultural patterns and ancient wisdoms. It may be too presumptuous and too optimistic to attribute much of the rapprochement to a mild little volume like The Book of Tea or to the literature that has grown up after its publication; it may also be necessary to admit that the very wars which Okakura feared and detested have contributed in a horribly bloody way to a remarkable realization that East and West are not so far apart, after all. In any case, Okakura today would be astonished at the extent to which "humanity has met in a teacup."

Tokyo, July, 1956