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. (from "The Book of Tea")

The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo shows how Tea has affected nearly every aspect of Japanese culture, thought, and life. The book is accessible to Western audiences because, though Kakuzo was born and raised Japanese, he was trained from a young age to speak English. In this book he explains tea in the context of Zen and Taoism as well as the secular aspects of Tea and Japanese life. This book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that this tea-induced simplicity affected Japanese art and architecture. A clear guide to living a...

The Book of Tea is a fascinating examination of Japanese thought and culture through its most central element - the tea ceremony. It was written in 1906, at a time when Japan was becoming a major player on the international scene. Author Kakuzo Okakura's fluency in English and expertise in the traditional arts rendered him uniquely qualified to help promote understanding between Japan and the West. The book offers a detailed account of the spiritual and philosophical significance of "the way of tea," tracing it's Taoist and Zen Buddhist roots, as well as a more material look at the effects of...

That a nation should construct one of its most resonant national ceremonies round a cup of tea will surely strike a chord of sympathy with at least some readers of this review. To many foreigners, nothing is so quintessentially Japanese as the tea ceremony--more properly, "the way of tea"--with its austerity, its extravagantly minimalist stylization, and its concentration of extreme subtleties of meaning into the simplest of actions. The Book of Tea is something of a curiosity: written in English by a Japanese scholar. It was first published in 1906, in the wake of the naval victory over...

The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo shows how Tea has affected nearly every aspect of Japanese culture, thought, and life. The book is accessible to Western audiences because, though Kakuzo was born and raised Japanese, he was trained from a young age to speak English. In this book he explains tea in the context of Zen and Taoism as well as the secular aspects of Tea and Japanese life. This book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that this tea-induced simplicity affected Japanese art and architecture. A clear guide to living a...