ABSTRACT
[Kakuzo Okakura, Curator of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, published in 1906 a slim volume which has become a classic, The Book of Tea. We reprint here, from the original edition, a selection from the second and seventh chapters on the history of tea. Okakura’s account is marked, understandably, by his pride in the Japanese contributions to what he calls “Teaism”: his posture, as lawyers say, is that while Teaism first reached true greatness in China, today it is only in Japan that the true flame still burns. Later writers on tea have all taken Okakura’s much quoted book as their jumping off place. Yet only Okakuras fin-de-siècle prose, delicate to the point of affectation, captures the atmosphere of exquisite sensibility and almost painful refinement that truly characterizes Asian tea ceremonies. Our text is from the Fox, Duffield and Company first edition of 1906.—Editors.]
