The Book of Tea
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The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
i. The Cup of Humanity
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 1636, 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.
II. The 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 rules for
producing a Titian or a Sesson. Each preparation of the leaves
has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat,
its own method of telling a story. The truly beautiful must
always be in it. How much do we not suffer through the constant
failure of society to recognise this simple and fundamental
law of art and life; Lichilai, 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 art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of
fine tea through incompetent manipulation.
Like Art, Tea has its periods and 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 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 "man hideth not." Perhaps we reveal ourselves
too much in small things because we have so little of the 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 favorite vintage marks
the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods and nationalities
of Europe, so the Tea-ideals characterise the various moods
of Oriental culture. The Cake-tea which was boiled, the
Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was
steeped, mark 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, 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 Tou, Tseh, Chung,
Kha, and Ming, and was highly prized for possessing the
virtues of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening
the will, and repairing the eyesight. It was not only
administered as an internal dose, but often applied externally
in form of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains. The Taoists
claimed it 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 a favourite
beverage among the inhabitants of the Yangtse-Kiang valley.
It was about this time that modern ideograph Cha was
coined, evidently a corruption of the classic Tou.
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 a reward for 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 day among the Thibetans
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,
points to the survival of the ancient method.
It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea
from its crude state and lead to its final idealization. With
Luwuh 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 synthesis.
The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to
mirror the Universal in the Particular. Luwuh, a poet, saw in
the Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned
through all things. In his celebrated work, the "Chaking"
(The Holy Scripture of Tea) he formulated the Code of Tea.
He has since been worshipped as the tutelary god of the
Chinese tea merchants.
The "Chaking" consists of three volumes and ten chapters.
In the first chapter Luwuh treats of 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 the leathern boot of
Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap 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 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 Luwuh's
predilection for Taoist symbolism. Also it is interesting to
observe in this connection the influence of tea on Chinese
ceramics. The Celestial porcelain, as is well known, had its
origin in an attempt to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade,
resulting, in the Tang dynasty, in the blue glaze of the south,
and the white glaze of the north. Luwuh considered the blue
as the ideal colour for the tea-cup, as 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 the powdered tea, they preferred
heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown. The Mings, with
their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white porcelain.
In the fifth chapter Luwuh 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 the best,
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 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 dipperful of cold water is poured into the
kettle to settle the tea and revive the "youth of the water." Then
the beverage was poured into cups and drunk. O nectar! The
filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like
waterlilies on emerald streams. It was of such a beverage that
Lotung, a Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and
throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup
searches my barren entrail 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 I am purified; the sixth cup calls me
to the realms of the 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 Horaisan? Let me ride on this
sweet breeze and waft away thither."
The remaining chapters of the "Chaking" treat of the vulgarity
of the ordinary methods of tea-drinking, a historical summary
of illustrious tea-drinkers, 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 of the "Chaking" must have created
considerable sensation at the time. Luwuh was befriended
by the Emperor Taisung (763-779), and his fame attracted
many followers. Some exquisites were said to have been able
to detect the tea made by Luwuh from that of his disciples.
One mandarin has his name immortalised 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 fine powder in a small stone mill, and the preparation was
whipped in hot water by a delicate whisk made of split bamboo.
The new process led to some change in the tea-equippage of
Luwuh, as well as in 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 Kiasung (1101-1124), 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 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 symbolise. To the Neo-Confucian mind
the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world,
but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself. Aeons
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 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-realisation. Wangyucheng eulogised tea as "flooding
his soul like a direct appeal, that its delicate bitterness reminded
him of the aftertaste of a good counsel." Sotumpa 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 much of
Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The
monks gathered before the image of Bodhi 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 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 Sung culture. The native dynasty of
the Mings which attempted re-nationalisation in the middle
of the fifteenth century was harassed by internal troubles, and
China 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 Ming commentator at loss to
recall the shape of the tea whisk mentioned in one of the
Sung classics. 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 method of drinking tea is
explained by the fact that Europe knew it only at the close
of the Ming dynasty.