Tea Gong Academy
日本語

Chapter 1

The Origins and Aims of Japanese Tea Culture

Where tea came from, and where it is going

Japanese tea was not Japanese to begin with. It crossed over from China together with Zen, was given its form in the capital, and in time put down roots of a quite different kind in the life of mountain villages.

These six lessons follow how that came about. What lay behind the refined culture of the tea ceremony? What did mechanisation and the codifying of knowledge take out of the craftsman’s hands? And now, at a moment of great change, how might we receive tea afresh? This is history, but the aim is not to tidy up the past — it is to get our bearings on the road ahead.

Lessons in this chapter (6)

  1. 01 The Dawn of Japanese Tea Culture How tea first came to Japan, and how the Zen thought standing behind it took shape.
  2. 02 Tea and Zen, One Taste The tea ceremony and Japanese tea culture as they were formed from the Kamakura period onward: how they are put together, and what lies at their heart.
  3. 03 Tea as an Everyday Affair How the tea culture of the capital, brought to completion by Rikyū and his contemporaries, spread across the country from the Edo period and settled into ordinary life.
  4. 04 Tea Making in the Age of Information How the knowledge and instinct held in a craftsman’s hands were converted into theory as tea making industrialised in the modern era.
  5. 05 Bancha, and What Tea Culture Aims At Against the matcha and sencha born in the capital, a second lineage: the bancha raised by people living in the mountains. What has tea culture been reaching for?
  6. 06 The Way of Tea at a Turning Point At a crossing point between inherited wisdom and technology developed to an extreme, how might we meet this age through tea?