The Book of Tea

Okakura Kakuzō wrote this slender book in English to explain the spirit of the Japanese tea ceremony to Western readers who, he felt, saw only quaint ritual where a whole philosophy lay hidden. Teaism, as he called it, gathers up Zen and Taoist thought, the love of the imperfect and the simple, and turns the making of a bowl of tea into a discipline of harmony, humility, and attention. Moving through the history of tea, the design of the tea room, flowers, and the great tea masters, Okakura gently reproves the West for its condescension toward the East while offering its aesthetic ideals as a common human inheritance. Graceful and quietly persuasive, the essay has introduced generations of readers to Japanese art and sensibility. This free PDF and EPUB edition presents the complete text.