by Kakuzo Okakura
Chapter I
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 aestheticism - Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the
adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday
existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual
charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a
worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish
something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
The Philosophy of Tea is not mere 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
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 favourable to the 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 boudoirs, and
entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned
to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his
salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance
we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is
insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal
drama. Again we stigmatise 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
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 in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we
shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.
Mankind has done worse. In 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 piquancy of Laotse, and the
ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni 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
thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness
and 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 civilised since she began to commit
wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. Much
comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
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 civilisation
were 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 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 as stupidity, Japanese
patriotism as the result of fatalism. It has been said that we
are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the
callousness of our nervous organisation!
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 glamour of the perspective 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
somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a
fricassee of newborn babes! 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 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 adopted too much of
your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion
that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised
the attainment of your civilisation. Pathetic and deplorable as
such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach
the West on our knees. Unfortunately the Western attitude is
unfavourable to the understanding of the East. The Christian
missionary goes to impart, but not to receive. Your information
is based on the meagre translations of our immense literature,
if not on the unreliable anecdotes of passing travellers. It is
rarely that the chivalrous pen of a Lafcadio Hearn or that of
the author of "The Web of Indian Life" 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 exacts that you say
what you are expected to say, and no more. But I am not to
be a polite Teaist. So much harm has been done already by
the mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old,
that one need not apologise for 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 consequences to humanity lie in the
contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems! European
imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of
the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that Asia may also awaken
to the cruel sense of the White Disaster. 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 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 tea-cup.
It is the only Asiatic ceremonial which commands universal
esteem. The white man has scoffed at our religion and 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 and sugar, we know that
the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The
philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him
in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single instance
the Oriental spirit reigns supreme.
The earliest record of tea in European writing is said to be
found in the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the
year 879 the main sources of revenue in Canton were the
duties on salt and tea. Marco Polo records the deposition of
a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 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 made in the East from the leaves of a bush. The
travellers Giovanni Batista Ramusio (1559), L. Almeida
(1576), Maffeno (1588), Tareira (1610), also mentioned
tea. In the last-named year ships of the Dutch East India
Company brought the first tea into Europe. It was known
in France in 636, and reached Russia in 1638. England
welcomed it in 1650 and spoke of it as "That excellent and
by all physicians approved China drink, called by the
Chineans Tcha, and by other nations Tay, alias Tee."*
Like all good things of the world, the propaganda of Tea
met with opposition. Heretics like Henry Saville (1678)
denounced drinking it as a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway
(Essay on Tea, 1756) 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 made thereof to princes and grandees." Yet in spite
of such drawbacks tea-drinking spread with marvellous
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 Steele, who beguiled
themselves over their "dish of tea." The beverage soon
became a necessity of life--a taxable matter. We are
reminded in this connection what an 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 the throwing of tea-chests into Boston harbour.
There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it
irresistible and capable of idealisation. Western humourists
were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with
its aroma. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-
consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of
cocoa. Already in 1711, 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 good to order this paper to be punctually served up and
to be looked upon as a 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 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 a
good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. For
Teaism 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 humour
itself - the smile of philosophy. All genuine humourists may in
this sense be called tea-philosophers - Thackeray, 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 our demure contemplation
of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in
mutual consolation.
The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning,
Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat. At last the Yellow
Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the
demon of darkness and earth. The Titan, in his death agony,
struck his 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 night. In
despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer
of the Heavens. He had not to search in vain. Out of the
Eastern sea rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and
dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armor of fire. She welded the
five-coloured rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the
Chinese sky. But it is told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny
crevices in the blue firmament. Thus began the dualism of
love--two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they
join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build
anew 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 in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity. Knowledge is
bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for
the sake of utility. The East and the West, like two dragons
tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain strive to regain the jewel of
life. We need a Niuka again to repair the grand devastation;
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 soughing of the pines is heard in
our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the
beautiful foolishness of things.
*
As E. F. Bleiler points out in an end note, whether the writing of an Arabian traveller should be considered a European record is disputable. Also, Marco Polo does not, in fact, appear to have referred to tea in his writing, and Giambattista Ramusio was strictly speaking not a traveller at all, but merely a compiler of other people's accounts. Note, too, that the re-telling of the Niuka myth later on is markedly different from what you will find in most Chinese sources.
by Kakuzo Okakura
- The Cup of Humanity
- The Schools of Tea
- Taoism and Zennism
- The Tea-Room
- Art Appreciation
- Flowers
- Tea-Masters
The Book of Tea was published in 1906 and is now in the public domain.
The text as it appears here was originally taken from http://www.teatime.com/tea/TheBookOfTea/, but this has since disappeared.
The book can also be found at http://hjem.get2net.dk/bnielsen/teatbot.html among other places.
Hardlinks and footnote are Oolong's.