September 2, 2025 • 36 mins
The Book of Tea, written by Okakura Kakuzo in the early 20th century, is a profound exploration of the art and philosophy surrounding tea in Japanese culture. First published in 1906, this timeless work has captivated readers across generations. Kakuzo introduces the concept of Teaism, illustrating how tea has permeated nearly every aspect of Japanese life, from thought to aesthetics. His unique background‚being born and raised in Japan yet fluent in English‚allows him to bridge cultural gaps, making the book accessible to Western readers. Within its pages, he delves into the intersections of Zen, Taoism, and the secular dimensions of tea culture, emphasizing the simplicity that Teaism imparts. This simplicity, he argues, has profoundly influenced Japanese art and architecture. The book culminates with insightful reflections on the Tea Masters, particularly Sen no Rikyu, and his pivotal role in shaping the Japanese Tea Ceremony. (Summary from Wikipedia)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. This reading by Mike Rosenloff. The
Book of Ta by Okakura Kakuzo, The Cup of Humanity.
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Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage
in China. In the eighth century, it entered the realm
of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth
century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of estheticism Teaism.
Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the
beautiful among the solid facts of everyday existence. It inculates
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purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism
of the social order. It is essentially a worship of
the imperfect. It is, as it is, a tender attempt
to accom puplish something possible in this impossible thing we
know as life. The philosophy of tea is not mere
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aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it
expresses conjointly with ethics and religion, our whole point of
view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it
enforces cleanliness. It is economics, for it shows comfort in
simplicity rather than in the complex and costly. It is
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moral geometry inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion
to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern
democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste. The
long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world,
so conducive to introspection, has been highly favorable to the
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development of teaism. Our home and habits costume and cuisine,
porcelain lacquer painting, our very literature all have been subject
to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever
ignore its presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble
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boudoirs and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants
have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest laborer to offer
his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance,
we speak of a man with no tea in him
when he is insusceptible to the serio comic interests of
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the personal drama. Again, we stigmatize the untamed aesthete who,
regardless of the mundane tragedy runs riot in the springtide
of emancipated emotions. As one with too much tea in him.
The outsider may indeed wonder at this, seeming much ado
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about nothing, What a tempest in a tea cup, he
will say. But when we consider how small, after all,
the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears,
how easily drained to the dregs of our quenchless thirst
for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so
much of the tea cup. Mankind has done worse. In
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the worship of Bacchus. We have sacrificed too freely, and
we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why
not consecrate ourselves to the Queen of the Camelias and
revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from
her altar. In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain,
the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the
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piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakumuni himself.
Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in
themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things
in others. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will
see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the
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thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and the
childishness of the East. To him, he was wont to
regard Japan as barbarous. While she indulged in the gentle
arts of peace. He calls her civilized since she began
to commit wholesale slaughter on the Manchurian battle fields. Much
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comment has been given lightly to the code of the Samurgai,
the art of death, which makes our soldiers exult in
self sacrifice, But scarcely any attention has been drawn to teaism,
which represents so much of our art of life. Fain
would we remain barbarians if our claim to civilization were
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to be based on the gruesome glory of war? Fain
would we await the time when due respect shall be
paid to our art and ideals? When will the West
understand or try to understand the East? We, Asiatics, are
often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies
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which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as
living on the perfume of the lotus. If not on
mice and cockroaches, it is either impotent fanaticism or else
abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese
sobriety is stupidity. Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism.
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It has been said that we are less sensible to
pain and wounds on account of the callousness of our
nervous organization. Why not amuse yourselves at our expense, Asia
returns the compliment. There would be further food for merriment
if you were to know all that we have imagined
and written about you. All the glamor of the perspective
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is there, all the unconscious homage of wonder, all the
silent resentment of the new and undefined. You have been
loaded with virtues too refined to be envied, and accused
of crimes too picturesque to be condemned. Our writers in
the past, the wise men who knew informed us that
you had bushy tails hidden somewhere in your garments, and
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often dined off a prickacy of newborn babies. Nay, we
had something worse against you. We used to think you
the most impracticable people on the earth, for you were
said to preach what you never practiced. Such misconceptions are
fast vanishing amongst us. Commerce has forced the European tongues
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on many an Eastern port. Asiatic youths are flocking to
Western colleges for the equipment of modern education. Our insight
does not penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we
are willing to learn. Some of my compatriots have adapted
too much of your customs and too much of your etiquette,
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in the delusion that the acquisition of stiff collars and
tall silk hats comprised the attainment of your civilization. Pathetic
and deplorable as such affectations are, they evince our willingness
to approach the West on our knees. Unfortunately, the Western
attitude is unfavorable to the understanding of the East. The
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Christian missionary goes to impart, but not receive. Your information
is based on the meager translations of our immense literature,
if not on the unreliable anecdotes of passing travelers. It
is rarely that the chivalrous pen of Lafcadio Herne or
that of the author of the web of Indian life,
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enlivens the Oriental darkness with the torch of our own sentiments.
Perhaps I betray my own ignorance of the tea cult
by being so outspoken its very spirit of politeness, exactly
that you say what you are expected to say, and
no more. But I am not to be a polite teaist.
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So much harm has been done already by the mutual
misunderstanding of the new world and the old that one
not need apologize for the contributing his tithe to the
furtherance of a better understanding. The beginning of the twentieth
century would have been spared the spectacle of sanguinary warfare
if Russia had condescended to know Japan better. What dire
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consequence to humanity lie in the contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems.
European imperialism, which does not disdain to rise the absurd
cry of the Yellow peril, fails to realize that Asia
may awaken to the cruel sense of the white disaster.
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You may laugh at us for having too much tea,
but may we not suspect that you of the West
have no tea in your constitution? Let us stop the
continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be sadder,
if not wiser, by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere.
We have developed along different lines, but there is no
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reason why one should not supplement the other. You have
gained expansion at the cost of restlessness. We have created
a harmony which is weak against aggression. Will you believe it?
The East is better off in some respects than the West.
Strangely enough, humanity has so far met in the teacup.
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It is the only Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal esteem.
The white man has scoffed at our religion in our morals,
but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon
tea is now an important function in Western society, in
the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft
rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream
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and sugar. We know so that the worship of tea
is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guests
to the fate awaiting him in the Dubious Decoction proclaims
that in this single instance, the Oriental spirit reigns Supreme.
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The earliest record of tea in European writing is said
to be found in the statement of an Arabian traveler
that after the year eight seventy nine, the main source
of revenue in Canton where the duties on salt and tea.
Marco Polo records the deposition of a Chinese minister of
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finance in twelve eighty five for his arbitrary augmentation of
the tea taxes. It was at the period of the
Great Discoveries that the European people began to know more
about the extreme orient. At the end of the sixteenth century,
the Hollanders brought the news that a pleasant drink was
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made in the East from the leaves of a bush.
The travelers Giovanni Battista Ramusio in fifteen fifty nine, l
Almeeda fifteen seventy six, Maffeno fifteen eighty eight, Tirea sixteen
ten also mentioned tea in the last named year. Ships
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of the Dutch East India Company brought the first tea
into Europe. It was known in France in sixteen thirty
six and reached Russia in sixteen thirty eight. England welcomed
it in sixteen fifty and spoke of it as that
excellent and by all physicians approved China drink called by
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the Chinians Cha and by other nations tay alias t.
Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of
tea met with opposition. Heretics like HENRYE. Seville sixteen seventy
eight denounced drinking it as a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway
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say On t seventeen fifty six said that men seemed
to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty through
the use of tea. Its cost at the start about
fifteen or sixteen shillings a pound forbade popular consumption, and
made it regalia for high treatments and entertainments, presents being
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made thereof to princes and grandees. Yet in spite of
such drawbacks, tea drinking spread with marvelous rapidity. The coffee
houses of London in the early half of the eighteenth
century became, in fact tea houses, the resort of wits
like Addison and Steel, who beguiled themselves over their dish
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of tea. The beverage soon became a necessity of life,
a taxable matter. We are reminded in this connection when
any important part it plays in modern history. Colonial America
resigned herself to oppression until human endurance gave way. Before
the heavy duties laid on tea. American independence dates from
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the throwing of tea chests into Boston Harbor. There is
a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes
it irresistible and capable of idealism. Western humorous were not
slow to mingle the fravrance of their thought with its aroma.
It has not the arrogance of wine, the self consciousness
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of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa. Already in
seventeen eleven, says the Spectator, I would therefore, in a
particular manner, recommend these my speculations to all well regulated
families that set apart an hour every morning for tea,
bread and butter, and would earnestly advise them for their
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good to or order this paper to be punctually served
up and to be looked upon as part of the
tea equipage. Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as a
hardened and shameless tea drinker who, for twenty years diluted
his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant, who,
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with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight,
and with tea welcomed the morning. Charles Lamb, a professed devotee,
sounded the true note of Teaism, when he wrote that
the greatest pleasure he knew was to do the good
action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
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For Teaism, it is the art of concealing beauty that
you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal.
It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly
yet thoroughly, and is thus humor itself the smile of philosophy.
All genuine humorousts may in this sense be called t philosophers. Thackeray,
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for instance, and of course Shakespeare. The poets of the Decadence,
when was not the world in decadence, in their protests
against materialism, have to a certain extent also opened the
way to Teaism. Perhaps nowadays it is in our demure
contemplation of the imperfect that the West and East can
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meet in mutual consolation. The Taois relate that at the
great beginning of the no beginning, Spirit and matter met
in mortal combat. At last, the Yellow Emperor, the son
of Heaven, triumphed over Shu Yung, the demon of darkness
and earth. The Titan, in his death agony, struck his
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head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome
of Jade into fragments. The stars lost their nests. The
moon wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the nights.
In despair, the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for
the repair of the heavens. He had not to search
in vain. Out of the Eastern Sea rose a queen,
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the divine Nyuka, horn crowned and dragon tailed, resplendent in
her armor of fire, she wielded the five colored rainbow
in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the Chinese sky. But
it is also told that Yuka forgot to fill two
tiny crevices in the blue firmament. Thus began the dualism
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of love, two souls rolling through space and never at
rest until they joined together. To complete the universe. Everyone
has to build a new his sky of hope and peace.
The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the
Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping
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in the shadow of egoism and vulgarity. Knowledge is bought
through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for the sake of utility.
The East and West, like two dragons tossed in a
sea of ferment in vain, strive to regain the jewel
of life. We need Anyuka again to repair the grand devastation.
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We await the great Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a
sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos,
The fountains are bubbling with delight. The sowing of the
pines is heard in the kettle. Let us dream of
evanescence and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things the
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schools of tea. Tea is a work of art and
needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities.
We have good and bad tea, as we have good
and bad paintings, generally the latter. There is no single
recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no
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rules for producing a titan nurse san Each preparation of
the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water
and heat, its hereditary memories to recall its own method
of telling a story, The truly beautiful must be always
in it. How much do we not suffer through the
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constant failure of society to recognize this simple and fundamental
law of art and life. Lee Chi Lai, a Sung poet,
has sadly remarked that there were three most deplorable things
in the world. The spoiling of fine youths through false education,
the degradation of fine paintings through vulgar admiration, and the
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utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation. Like art,
tea has its period in its schools. Its evolution may
be roughly divided into three main stages, the boiled tea,
the whipped tea, and the steeped tea. We moderns belong
to the last school. These several methods of appreciating the
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beverage are indicative of the spirit of the age in
which they prevailed. For life is an expression our unconscious actions,
the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Confucius said that
the man heighteth not. Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much
in small things, because we have so little of the
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great to conceal. The tiny incidents of daily routine are
as much a commentary of racial ideals as the highest
flight of philosophy or poetry. Even as the difference in
our favorite vintage marks the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods
and nationalities of Europe. So the tea ideals characterize the
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various moods of Oriental culture. The cake tea which was boiled,
the powdered tea which was whipped, the leaf tea which
was steeped marked the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang,
the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China. If we
were inclined to borrow the much abused terminology of art classification,
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we might designate them, respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and
the naturalistic schools of tea. The tea plant, a native
of southern China, was known from very early times to
Chinese botany and medicine. It is alluded to in the
classics under the various names of to Sei, Chung, Kha,
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and Ming, and was highly prized for possessing the virtues
of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening the will, and
repairing the eye sight. It was not only administered as
an an internal dose, but often applied externally in form
of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains. The Taoists claimed it
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as an important ingredient of the elixir of immortality. The
Buddhists used it extensively to prevent drowsiness during their long
hours of meditation. By the fourth and fifth centuries, tea
became the favorite beverage among the inhabitants of the yang
Si Kiang valley. But it was about this time that
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the modern idiograph cha was coined, evidently a corruption of
the classic to the poets of the Southern dynasties have
left some fragments of their fervent adoration of the froth
of the liquid jade. Then emperors used to bestow some
rare preparation of the leaves on their high ministers as
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a reward for their eminent services. Yet the method of
drinking tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme.
The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into
a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk,
and sometimes with onions. The custom obtains at the present
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day among the Tibetans and various Mongolian tribes who make
a curious syrup of these ingredients. The use of lemon
slices by the Russians, who learned to take tea from
the Chinese caravansaries, point to the survival of the ancient method.
It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate
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tea from its crude state and lead to its final idealization.
With lu Wu in the middle of the eighth century,
we have our first apostle of Tea. He was born
in an age when Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking
mutual sins synthesis. The pantheistic symbolism of the time was
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urging one to mirror the universal. In the particular, Liu Wu,
a poet, saw in the tea service the same harmony
and order which reigned through all things. In his celebrated worth,
the Choking, the Holy Scripture of Tea, he formulated the
Code of Tea. He has been worshiped as the tutelary
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god of the Chinese tea merchants. The Choking consists of
three volumes and ten chapters. In the first chapter, lou
Wu treats the nature of the tea plant in the
second of the implements for gathering the leaves, in the
third of the selection of the leaves. According to him,
the best quality of the leaves must have creases like
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the leathern boots of tartar horsemen, curl like the dow
lap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising
out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by
a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth
newly swept by rain. The fourth chapter is devoted to
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the enumeration and description of the twenty four members of
the tea equipage, beginning with the tripod brazier and ending
with the bamboo cabinet for containing all these utensils. Here
we notice lu Wu's predilection for Taoist symbolism. Also, it
is interesting to observe that in this connection the influence
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of the tea on Chinese ceramics. The celestial porcelain, as
it is well known, had its origin in an attempt
to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade, resulting in the
Tang dynasty in the bluest glaze of the South and
the white glaze of the north. Lou Wu considered the
blue as the ideal color for a tea cup, as
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it lent additional greenness to the beverage, whereas the white
made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because he
used cake tea. Later on, when the tea masters of
Sung took to powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue,
black and dark browns. The mings, with their steeped tea,
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rejoiced in light wear of white porcelain. In the fifth chapter,
lu Wu describes the method of making tea. He eliminates
all ingredients except salt. He dwells also on the much
discussed question of the choice of water and the degree
of boiling it. According to him, the mountain spring is best,
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and the river water and the spring water come next
in the order of excellence. There are three stages of boiling.
The first boil is when the little bubbles like the
eye of fishes, swim on the surface. The second boil
is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in
a fountain. The third boil is when the billows surge
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wildly in the kettle. The cake tea is roasted before
the fire until it becomes soft like a baby's arm,
and is shredded into powder between pieces of fine paper.
Salt is put in the first boil, the tea in
the second. At the third boil, a dipper full of
cold water is poured into the kettle to settle the
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tea and preserve the youth of the water. Then the
beverage was poured into cups and drunk oh nectar. The
filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky,
or floated like water lilies on emerald streams. It was
of such a beverage that L'ao Tung, a Tang poet wrote,
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The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second
cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrill,
but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration. All the wrong
of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth cup,
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I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the
realm of immortals. The seventh cup, ah, but I could
take no more. I only feel the breath of cool
wind that rises in my sleeves. Where is Horai San.
Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.
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The remaining chapters of the Choking treat of the Vulgarity
of the ordinary methods of tea, making a historical summary
of illustrous tea drinkers and the famous tea plantations of China,
the possible variations of the tea service, and illustrations of
the tea utensils. The last is unfortunately lost. The appearance
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of the Cha King must have created considerable sensation At
the time. Lu Wu was befriended by the Emperor Taisung
seven sixty three to seven seventy nine, and his fame
attracted many followers. Some exquisites were said to have been
able to detect the tea made by lu Wu from
that of his disciples. One Mandarin has his name immortalized
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by his failure to appreciate the tea of this great master.
In the Sung dynasty, the whipped tea came into fashion
and created the Second school of tea. The leaves were
ground to a fine powder and a small stone mill,
and the preparation was whipped in hot water by a
delicate whisk made of split bamboo. The new process led
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to some change in the tea equipage of Liu Wu,
as well as the choice of leaves salt was discarded forever.
The enthusiasm of the Sung people for tea knew no bounds.
Epicures vied with each other in discovering new varieties, and
regular tournaments were held to decide their superiority. The Emperor
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Kai Sung eleven o one to eleven twenty four, who
was too great an artist to be a well behaved monarch,
lavished his treasures on the attainment of rare species. He
himself wrote a dissertation on the twenty Kinds of Tea,
among which he prizes the white tea as of the
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rarest and finest quality. The tea ideal of the Sungs
differed from the Tangs, even as their notion of life differed.
They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried to symbolize.
To the neo Confucian mind, the cosmic law was not
reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was
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the cosmic law itself. Eons were but moments, nirvana always
within grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the
eternal change permeated all their modes of thought. It was
the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was
the completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man
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came thus at once face to face with nature. A
new meaning grew into the art of life. The tea
began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of
the methods of self realism. Wang Yu Cheng eulogized ta
as flooding his soul like a direct appeal, that its
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delicate bitterness reminded him of the aftertaste of a good counsel.
So Tumpa wrote of the strength of the immaculate purity
in tea, which defied corruption as a truly virtuous man.
Among the Buddhists, the Southern Zen sect, which incorporated so
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much Taois doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The
monks gathered before the image of Bodhai Dharma and drank
tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality
of a holy sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which
finally developed into the tea ceremony of Japan in the
fifteenth century. Unfortunately, the sudden outburst of the Mongol tribes
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in the thirteenth century, which resulted in the devastation and
conquest of China under the barbaric rule of the Yuen emperors,
destroyed all the fruits of Sun culture. The native dynasty
of the Mings, which attempted renationalism in the middle of
the fifteenth century, was harassed by internal troubles, and China
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again fell under the alien rule of the Manchus. In
the seventeenth century, manners and customs changed to leave no
vestige of the former times. The powdered tea is entirely forgotten.
We find a commentator at last to recall the shape
of the tea whisk mentioned in some of the Sun classics.
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Tea is now taken by steeping the leaves in hot
water in a bowl or cup. The reason why the
Western world is innocent of the older methods of drinking
tea is explained by the fact that europe knew it
only at the close of the Ming dynasty. To the
later day, Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not
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an ideal. The long woes of his country have drobbed
him of the zest for the meaning of life. He
has become modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted.
He has lost that sublime faith in illusions, which constitutes
the eternal youth and vigor of the poets and ancients.
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He is an eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of
the universe. He toys with nature, but does not condescend
to conquer or worship her. His leaf tea is often
wonderful with its flower like aroma, but the romance of
the Tang and Sung ceremonials are not to be found
in his cup. Japan, which followed closely on the footsteps
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of Chinese civilization, has known the tea in all three stages.
As early as the year seven twenty nine, we read
of the Emperor Shomu giving tea to one hundred monks
at his palace in Nada. The leaves were probably imported
by our ambassadors to the Tang court and prepared in
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the way then in fashion. In eight oh one, the
monk Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in
Yei San. Many tea gardens are heard in the succeeding centuries,
as well as the delight of the aristocracy and priesthood
in the beverage. The Sung tea reached us in eleven
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ninety one with the return of Ye Sai Zenji, who
went there to study the Southern Zen school. The new
seeds which he carried home were successfully planted in three places,
one of which the Uji district near Kyoto, bears still
the name of producing the best tea in the world.
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The Southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and with it
the tea ritual and the tea ideal of the Sung.
By the fifteenth century, under the patronage of the shogun
Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the tea ceremony is fully constituted and made
into an independent and secular performance. Since then, Teaism is
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fully established in Japan. The use of the steeped tea
of the latter China is comparatively recent among us, being
only known since the middle of the seventeenth century. It
has replaced the powdered tea in ordinary consumption, though the
latter still continues to hold its place as the tea
of teas. It is in the Japanese Ease tea ceremony
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that we see the culmination of tea ideals our successful
resistance of the Mongol invasion in twelve eighty one had
enabled us to carry on the Soux movement so disastrously
cut off in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea
with us became more than an idealization of the form
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of drinkage. It is a religion of the art of life.
The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship
of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the
host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the
utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea room was an
oasis in the dreary waste of existence, where weary travelers
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could meet to drink from the common spring of our depreciation.
The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven
about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a
colored disturb the tone of the room. Not a sound
to mar the rhythm of things, Not a gesture to
obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the
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unity of the surroundings. All movements to be performed simply
and naturally. Such were the aims of the tea ceremony
and strangely enough, it was often successful. A subtle philosophy
lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise. End
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of Part one of the Book of Ta by Okakuda
Kakuzo
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. This reading by Mike Rosenloff. The
Book of Ta by Okakura Kakuzo, The Cup of Humanity.
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Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage
in China. In the eighth century, it entered the realm
of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth
century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of estheticism Teaism.
Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the
beautiful among the solid facts of everyday existence. It inculates
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purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism
of the social order. It is essentially a worship of
the imperfect. It is, as it is, a tender attempt
to accom puplish something possible in this impossible thing we
know as life. The philosophy of tea is not mere
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aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it
expresses conjointly with ethics and religion, our whole point of
view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it
enforces cleanliness. It is economics, for it shows comfort in
simplicity rather than in the complex and costly. It is
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moral geometry inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion
to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern
democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste. The
long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world,
so conducive to introspection, has been highly favorable to the
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development of teaism. Our home and habits costume and cuisine,
porcelain lacquer painting, our very literature all have been subject
to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever
ignore its presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble
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boudoirs and entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants
have learned to arrange flowers, our meanest laborer to offer
his salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance,
we speak of a man with no tea in him
when he is insusceptible to the serio comic interests of
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the personal drama. Again, we stigmatize the untamed aesthete who,
regardless of the mundane tragedy runs riot in the springtide
of emancipated emotions. As one with too much tea in him.
The outsider may indeed wonder at this, seeming much ado
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about nothing, What a tempest in a tea cup, he
will say. But when we consider how small, after all,
the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears,
how easily drained to the dregs of our quenchless thirst
for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so
much of the tea cup. Mankind has done worse. In
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the worship of Bacchus. We have sacrificed too freely, and
we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why
not consecrate ourselves to the Queen of the Camelias and
revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from
her altar. In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain,
the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the
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piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakumuni himself.
Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in
themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things
in others. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will
see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the
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thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and the
childishness of the East. To him, he was wont to
regard Japan as barbarous. While she indulged in the gentle
arts of peace. He calls her civilized since she began
to commit wholesale slaughter on the Manchurian battle fields. Much
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comment has been given lightly to the code of the Samurgai,
the art of death, which makes our soldiers exult in
self sacrifice, But scarcely any attention has been drawn to teaism,
which represents so much of our art of life. Fain
would we remain barbarians if our claim to civilization were
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to be based on the gruesome glory of war? Fain
would we await the time when due respect shall be
paid to our art and ideals? When will the West
understand or try to understand the East? We, Asiatics, are
often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies
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which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as
living on the perfume of the lotus. If not on
mice and cockroaches, it is either impotent fanaticism or else
abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese
sobriety is stupidity. Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism.
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It has been said that we are less sensible to
pain and wounds on account of the callousness of our
nervous organization. Why not amuse yourselves at our expense, Asia
returns the compliment. There would be further food for merriment
if you were to know all that we have imagined
and written about you. All the glamor of the perspective
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is there, all the unconscious homage of wonder, all the
silent resentment of the new and undefined. You have been
loaded with virtues too refined to be envied, and accused
of crimes too picturesque to be condemned. Our writers in
the past, the wise men who knew informed us that
you had bushy tails hidden somewhere in your garments, and
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often dined off a prickacy of newborn babies. Nay, we
had something worse against you. We used to think you
the most impracticable people on the earth, for you were
said to preach what you never practiced. Such misconceptions are
fast vanishing amongst us. Commerce has forced the European tongues
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on many an Eastern port. Asiatic youths are flocking to
Western colleges for the equipment of modern education. Our insight
does not penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we
are willing to learn. Some of my compatriots have adapted
too much of your customs and too much of your etiquette,
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in the delusion that the acquisition of stiff collars and
tall silk hats comprised the attainment of your civilization. Pathetic
and deplorable as such affectations are, they evince our willingness
to approach the West on our knees. Unfortunately, the Western
attitude is unfavorable to the understanding of the East. The
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Christian missionary goes to impart, but not receive. Your information
is based on the meager translations of our immense literature,
if not on the unreliable anecdotes of passing travelers. It
is rarely that the chivalrous pen of Lafcadio Herne or
that of the author of the web of Indian life,
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enlivens the Oriental darkness with the torch of our own sentiments.
Perhaps I betray my own ignorance of the tea cult
by being so outspoken its very spirit of politeness, exactly
that you say what you are expected to say, and
no more. But I am not to be a polite teaist.
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So much harm has been done already by the mutual
misunderstanding of the new world and the old that one
not need apologize for the contributing his tithe to the
furtherance of a better understanding. The beginning of the twentieth
century would have been spared the spectacle of sanguinary warfare
if Russia had condescended to know Japan better. What dire
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consequence to humanity lie in the contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems.
European imperialism, which does not disdain to rise the absurd
cry of the Yellow peril, fails to realize that Asia
may awaken to the cruel sense of the white disaster.
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You may laugh at us for having too much tea,
but may we not suspect that you of the West
have no tea in your constitution? Let us stop the
continents from hurling epigrams at each other, and be sadder,
if not wiser, by the mutual gain of half a hemisphere.
We have developed along different lines, but there is no
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reason why one should not supplement the other. You have
gained expansion at the cost of restlessness. We have created
a harmony which is weak against aggression. Will you believe it?
The East is better off in some respects than the West.
Strangely enough, humanity has so far met in the teacup.
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It is the only Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal esteem.
The white man has scoffed at our religion in our morals,
but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon
tea is now an important function in Western society, in
the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft
rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream
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and sugar. We know so that the worship of tea
is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guests
to the fate awaiting him in the Dubious Decoction proclaims
that in this single instance, the Oriental spirit reigns Supreme.
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The earliest record of tea in European writing is said
to be found in the statement of an Arabian traveler
that after the year eight seventy nine, the main source
of revenue in Canton where the duties on salt and tea.
Marco Polo records the deposition of a Chinese minister of
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finance in twelve eighty five for his arbitrary augmentation of
the tea taxes. It was at the period of the
Great Discoveries that the European people began to know more
about the extreme orient. At the end of the sixteenth century,
the Hollanders brought the news that a pleasant drink was
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made in the East from the leaves of a bush.
The travelers Giovanni Battista Ramusio in fifteen fifty nine, l
Almeeda fifteen seventy six, Maffeno fifteen eighty eight, Tirea sixteen
ten also mentioned tea in the last named year. Ships
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of the Dutch East India Company brought the first tea
into Europe. It was known in France in sixteen thirty
six and reached Russia in sixteen thirty eight. England welcomed
it in sixteen fifty and spoke of it as that
excellent and by all physicians approved China drink called by
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the Chinians Cha and by other nations tay alias t.
Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of
tea met with opposition. Heretics like HENRYE. Seville sixteen seventy
eight denounced drinking it as a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway
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say On t seventeen fifty six said that men seemed
to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty through
the use of tea. Its cost at the start about
fifteen or sixteen shillings a pound forbade popular consumption, and
made it regalia for high treatments and entertainments, presents being
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made thereof to princes and grandees. Yet in spite of
such drawbacks, tea drinking spread with marvelous rapidity. The coffee
houses of London in the early half of the eighteenth
century became, in fact tea houses, the resort of wits
like Addison and Steel, who beguiled themselves over their dish
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of tea. The beverage soon became a necessity of life,
a taxable matter. We are reminded in this connection when
any important part it plays in modern history. Colonial America
resigned herself to oppression until human endurance gave way. Before
the heavy duties laid on tea. American independence dates from
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the throwing of tea chests into Boston Harbor. There is
a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes
it irresistible and capable of idealism. Western humorous were not
slow to mingle the fravrance of their thought with its aroma.
It has not the arrogance of wine, the self consciousness
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of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa. Already in
seventeen eleven, says the Spectator, I would therefore, in a
particular manner, recommend these my speculations to all well regulated
families that set apart an hour every morning for tea,
bread and butter, and would earnestly advise them for their
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good to or order this paper to be punctually served
up and to be looked upon as part of the
tea equipage. Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as a
hardened and shameless tea drinker who, for twenty years diluted
his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant, who,
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with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight,
and with tea welcomed the morning. Charles Lamb, a professed devotee,
sounded the true note of Teaism, when he wrote that
the greatest pleasure he knew was to do the good
action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
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For Teaism, it is the art of concealing beauty that
you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal.
It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly
yet thoroughly, and is thus humor itself the smile of philosophy.
All genuine humorousts may in this sense be called t philosophers. Thackeray,
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for instance, and of course Shakespeare. The poets of the Decadence,
when was not the world in decadence, in their protests
against materialism, have to a certain extent also opened the
way to Teaism. Perhaps nowadays it is in our demure
contemplation of the imperfect that the West and East can
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meet in mutual consolation. The Taois relate that at the
great beginning of the no beginning, Spirit and matter met
in mortal combat. At last, the Yellow Emperor, the son
of Heaven, triumphed over Shu Yung, the demon of darkness
and earth. The Titan, in his death agony, struck his
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head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome
of Jade into fragments. The stars lost their nests. The
moon wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the nights.
In despair, the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for
the repair of the heavens. He had not to search
in vain. Out of the Eastern Sea rose a queen,
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the divine Nyuka, horn crowned and dragon tailed, resplendent in
her armor of fire, she wielded the five colored rainbow
in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the Chinese sky. But
it is also told that Yuka forgot to fill two
tiny crevices in the blue firmament. Thus began the dualism
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of love, two souls rolling through space and never at
rest until they joined together. To complete the universe. Everyone
has to build a new his sky of hope and peace.
The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the
Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping
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in the shadow of egoism and vulgarity. Knowledge is bought
through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for the sake of utility.
The East and West, like two dragons tossed in a
sea of ferment in vain, strive to regain the jewel
of life. We need Anyuka again to repair the grand devastation.
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We await the great Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a
sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos,
The fountains are bubbling with delight. The sowing of the
pines is heard in the kettle. Let us dream of
evanescence and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things the
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schools of tea. Tea is a work of art and
needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities.
We have good and bad tea, as we have good
and bad paintings, generally the latter. There is no single
recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no
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rules for producing a titan nurse san Each preparation of
the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water
and heat, its hereditary memories to recall its own method
of telling a story, The truly beautiful must be always
in it. How much do we not suffer through the
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constant failure of society to recognize this simple and fundamental
law of art and life. Lee Chi Lai, a Sung poet,
has sadly remarked that there were three most deplorable things
in the world. The spoiling of fine youths through false education,
the degradation of fine paintings through vulgar admiration, and the
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utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation. Like art,
tea has its period in its schools. Its evolution may
be roughly divided into three main stages, the boiled tea,
the whipped tea, and the steeped tea. We moderns belong
to the last school. These several methods of appreciating the
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beverage are indicative of the spirit of the age in
which they prevailed. For life is an expression our unconscious actions,
the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Confucius said that
the man heighteth not. Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much
in small things, because we have so little of the
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great to conceal. The tiny incidents of daily routine are
as much a commentary of racial ideals as the highest
flight of philosophy or poetry. Even as the difference in
our favorite vintage marks the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods
and nationalities of Europe. So the tea ideals characterize the
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various moods of Oriental culture. The cake tea which was boiled,
the powdered tea which was whipped, the leaf tea which
was steeped marked the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang,
the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China. If we
were inclined to borrow the much abused terminology of art classification,
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we might designate them, respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and
the naturalistic schools of tea. The tea plant, a native
of southern China, was known from very early times to
Chinese botany and medicine. It is alluded to in the
classics under the various names of to Sei, Chung, Kha,
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and Ming, and was highly prized for possessing the virtues
of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening the will, and
repairing the eye sight. It was not only administered as
an an internal dose, but often applied externally in form
of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains. The Taoists claimed it
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as an important ingredient of the elixir of immortality. The
Buddhists used it extensively to prevent drowsiness during their long
hours of meditation. By the fourth and fifth centuries, tea
became the favorite beverage among the inhabitants of the yang
Si Kiang valley. But it was about this time that
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the modern idiograph cha was coined, evidently a corruption of
the classic to the poets of the Southern dynasties have
left some fragments of their fervent adoration of the froth
of the liquid jade. Then emperors used to bestow some
rare preparation of the leaves on their high ministers as
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a reward for their eminent services. Yet the method of
drinking tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme.
The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into
a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk,
and sometimes with onions. The custom obtains at the present
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day among the Tibetans and various Mongolian tribes who make
a curious syrup of these ingredients. The use of lemon
slices by the Russians, who learned to take tea from
the Chinese caravansaries, point to the survival of the ancient method.
It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate
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tea from its crude state and lead to its final idealization.
With lu Wu in the middle of the eighth century,
we have our first apostle of Tea. He was born
in an age when Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking
mutual sins synthesis. The pantheistic symbolism of the time was
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urging one to mirror the universal. In the particular, Liu Wu,
a poet, saw in the tea service the same harmony
and order which reigned through all things. In his celebrated worth,
the Choking, the Holy Scripture of Tea, he formulated the
Code of Tea. He has been worshiped as the tutelary
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god of the Chinese tea merchants. The Choking consists of
three volumes and ten chapters. In the first chapter, lou
Wu treats the nature of the tea plant in the
second of the implements for gathering the leaves, in the
third of the selection of the leaves. According to him,
the best quality of the leaves must have creases like
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the leathern boots of tartar horsemen, curl like the dow
lap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising
out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by
a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth
newly swept by rain. The fourth chapter is devoted to
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the enumeration and description of the twenty four members of
the tea equipage, beginning with the tripod brazier and ending
with the bamboo cabinet for containing all these utensils. Here
we notice lu Wu's predilection for Taoist symbolism. Also, it
is interesting to observe that in this connection the influence
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of the tea on Chinese ceramics. The celestial porcelain, as
it is well known, had its origin in an attempt
to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade, resulting in the
Tang dynasty in the bluest glaze of the South and
the white glaze of the north. Lou Wu considered the
blue as the ideal color for a tea cup, as
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it lent additional greenness to the beverage, whereas the white
made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because he
used cake tea. Later on, when the tea masters of
Sung took to powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue,
black and dark browns. The mings, with their steeped tea,
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rejoiced in light wear of white porcelain. In the fifth chapter,
lu Wu describes the method of making tea. He eliminates
all ingredients except salt. He dwells also on the much
discussed question of the choice of water and the degree
of boiling it. According to him, the mountain spring is best,
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and the river water and the spring water come next
in the order of excellence. There are three stages of boiling.
The first boil is when the little bubbles like the
eye of fishes, swim on the surface. The second boil
is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in
a fountain. The third boil is when the billows surge
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wildly in the kettle. The cake tea is roasted before
the fire until it becomes soft like a baby's arm,
and is shredded into powder between pieces of fine paper.
Salt is put in the first boil, the tea in
the second. At the third boil, a dipper full of
cold water is poured into the kettle to settle the
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tea and preserve the youth of the water. Then the
beverage was poured into cups and drunk oh nectar. The
filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky,
or floated like water lilies on emerald streams. It was
of such a beverage that L'ao Tung, a Tang poet wrote,
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The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second
cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrill,
but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration. All the wrong
of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth cup,
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I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the
realm of immortals. The seventh cup, ah, but I could
take no more. I only feel the breath of cool
wind that rises in my sleeves. Where is Horai San.
Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.
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The remaining chapters of the Choking treat of the Vulgarity
of the ordinary methods of tea, making a historical summary
of illustrous tea drinkers and the famous tea plantations of China,
the possible variations of the tea service, and illustrations of
the tea utensils. The last is unfortunately lost. The appearance
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of the Cha King must have created considerable sensation At
the time. Lu Wu was befriended by the Emperor Taisung
seven sixty three to seven seventy nine, and his fame
attracted many followers. Some exquisites were said to have been
able to detect the tea made by lu Wu from
that of his disciples. One Mandarin has his name immortalized
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by his failure to appreciate the tea of this great master.
In the Sung dynasty, the whipped tea came into fashion
and created the Second school of tea. The leaves were
ground to a fine powder and a small stone mill,
and the preparation was whipped in hot water by a
delicate whisk made of split bamboo. The new process led
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to some change in the tea equipage of Liu Wu,
as well as the choice of leaves salt was discarded forever.
The enthusiasm of the Sung people for tea knew no bounds.
Epicures vied with each other in discovering new varieties, and
regular tournaments were held to decide their superiority. The Emperor
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Kai Sung eleven o one to eleven twenty four, who
was too great an artist to be a well behaved monarch,
lavished his treasures on the attainment of rare species. He
himself wrote a dissertation on the twenty Kinds of Tea,
among which he prizes the white tea as of the
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rarest and finest quality. The tea ideal of the Sungs
differed from the Tangs, even as their notion of life differed.
They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried to symbolize.
To the neo Confucian mind, the cosmic law was not
reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was
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the cosmic law itself. Eons were but moments, nirvana always
within grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the
eternal change permeated all their modes of thought. It was
the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was
the completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man
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came thus at once face to face with nature. A
new meaning grew into the art of life. The tea
began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of
the methods of self realism. Wang Yu Cheng eulogized ta
as flooding his soul like a direct appeal, that its
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delicate bitterness reminded him of the aftertaste of a good counsel.
So Tumpa wrote of the strength of the immaculate purity
in tea, which defied corruption as a truly virtuous man.
Among the Buddhists, the Southern Zen sect, which incorporated so
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much Taois doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The
monks gathered before the image of Bodhai Dharma and drank
tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality
of a holy sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which
finally developed into the tea ceremony of Japan in the
fifteenth century. Unfortunately, the sudden outburst of the Mongol tribes
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in the thirteenth century, which resulted in the devastation and
conquest of China under the barbaric rule of the Yuen emperors,
destroyed all the fruits of Sun culture. The native dynasty
of the Mings, which attempted renationalism in the middle of
the fifteenth century, was harassed by internal troubles, and China
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again fell under the alien rule of the Manchus. In
the seventeenth century, manners and customs changed to leave no
vestige of the former times. The powdered tea is entirely forgotten.
We find a commentator at last to recall the shape
of the tea whisk mentioned in some of the Sun classics.
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Tea is now taken by steeping the leaves in hot
water in a bowl or cup. The reason why the
Western world is innocent of the older methods of drinking
tea is explained by the fact that europe knew it
only at the close of the Ming dynasty. To the
later day, Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not
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an ideal. The long woes of his country have drobbed
him of the zest for the meaning of life. He
has become modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted.
He has lost that sublime faith in illusions, which constitutes
the eternal youth and vigor of the poets and ancients.
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He is an eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of
the universe. He toys with nature, but does not condescend
to conquer or worship her. His leaf tea is often
wonderful with its flower like aroma, but the romance of
the Tang and Sung ceremonials are not to be found
in his cup. Japan, which followed closely on the footsteps
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of Chinese civilization, has known the tea in all three stages.
As early as the year seven twenty nine, we read
of the Emperor Shomu giving tea to one hundred monks
at his palace in Nada. The leaves were probably imported
by our ambassadors to the Tang court and prepared in
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the way then in fashion. In eight oh one, the
monk Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in
Yei San. Many tea gardens are heard in the succeeding centuries,
as well as the delight of the aristocracy and priesthood
in the beverage. The Sung tea reached us in eleven
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ninety one with the return of Ye Sai Zenji, who
went there to study the Southern Zen school. The new
seeds which he carried home were successfully planted in three places,
one of which the Uji district near Kyoto, bears still
the name of producing the best tea in the world.
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The Southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and with it
the tea ritual and the tea ideal of the Sung.
By the fifteenth century, under the patronage of the shogun
Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the tea ceremony is fully constituted and made
into an independent and secular performance. Since then, Teaism is
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fully established in Japan. The use of the steeped tea
of the latter China is comparatively recent among us, being
only known since the middle of the seventeenth century. It
has replaced the powdered tea in ordinary consumption, though the
latter still continues to hold its place as the tea
of teas. It is in the Japanese Ease tea ceremony
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that we see the culmination of tea ideals our successful
resistance of the Mongol invasion in twelve eighty one had
enabled us to carry on the Soux movement so disastrously
cut off in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea
with us became more than an idealization of the form
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of drinkage. It is a religion of the art of life.
The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship
of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the
host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the
utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea room was an
oasis in the dreary waste of existence, where weary travelers
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could meet to drink from the common spring of our depreciation.
The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven
about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a
colored disturb the tone of the room. Not a sound
to mar the rhythm of things, Not a gesture to
obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the
(36:08):
unity of the surroundings. All movements to be performed simply
and naturally. Such were the aims of the tea ceremony
and strangely enough, it was often successful. A subtle philosophy
lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise. End
(36:30):
of Part one of the Book of Ta by Okakuda
Kakuzo
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