The Book of Tea

The Book of Tea is a long essay by the Japanese scholar Okakura Kakuzo, published in English in 1906 for a Western readership, examining the Japanese tea ceremony and the broader aesthetic and philosophical outlook Okakura calls Teaism. Okakura presents Teaism as a way of finding beauty within the ordinary business of life, cultivating simplicity, humility and reverence for the imperfect, and argues that its influence extends outward from the tea room into art, architecture and daily conduct, describing the practice as inculcating purity, harmony and a kind of mutual charity among its participants. Written partly in response to Western dismissal of Japanese culture in the years around the Russo-Japanese War, the essay became one of the most widely read English-language introductions to Japanese aesthetics and remains a frequently cited text in the study of the tea ceremony and of Japanese cultural self-presentation to Western audiences.