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THE BOOK OF TEA
Okakura Kakuzo by Shimomura Kanzan
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
© 1956 by Charles E. Tuttle Company
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number 56-13134
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0758-8 (ebook)
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CONTENTS
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Frontispiece is reproduced from a preliminary sketch for a portrait by Shimomura Kanzan, one of Okakura's outstanding pupils, and is used here by the kind permission of the Geijutsu University and Mr. Hidetoki Shimomura, Kanzan's grandson. The sketch, in Japanese ink and traces of water colors on paper, mounted as a hanging scroll, was formerly in the possession of Mr. Langdon Warner, of Harvard University, who returned it to Japan after the finished portrait was destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1923. The rather conspicuous errors in draftsmanship, particularly noticeable in the hand holding the cigarette, were corrected in the final painting, which was one of Kanzan's masterpieces.
The illustrations at the head of each chapter are taken from the ink drawings of Sesshu (1420-1506), the greatest of all Japanese painters in the same Zen tradition which inspired the tea ceremony.
FOREWORD
by Elise Grilli
NOT ALWAYS does the fame of an author keep step with the fame of his books. Sometimes the man advances and his work recedes, as, for example, in the case of Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose personality continues to intrigue us today, just as much as it did his contemporaries; we can still see him vividly through the eyes of Boswell and other diarists and recorders, while much of his own writing has taken on an obsolescent tinge.
The opposite fate seems to have befallen Okakura Kakuzo and The Book of Tea. The book is just fifty years old, and in this half century its fame has grown steadily and continuously. Starting out as an esoteric morsel for a select few in the small aesthetic world of Boston at the turn of the century, it has been moving in ever-widening circles, propelled as by a natural movement across the waters that lap the shores of Asia and of Europe, always radiating from the modest little edition that first appeared in America in 1906. From this original publication in English, the book has been translated into innumerable languages including, as an ironical apogee of fame, its author's native tongue, Japanese. Its sales through the years and in many languages and editions reach certainly into the hundreds of thousands, and nothing bears more eloquent witness to its continuing appeal than that it should now be appearing in this present new and handsome edition.
Yet the name of the book's author is becoming dimmer with the years even in Japan —or, rather, especially in Japan, where today he merits only a short paragraph in the national biographical dictionary. As important as the book is, Okakura deserves much more than to be remembered merely as the author of The Book of Tea. For bis accomplishments were great and his stature large. Now, more than forty years after his death, his memory still remains vivid for his one-time students and collaborators. For them he was a Character, with a capital C, and a genius, at least with a small g. As one talks with those who remember him it becomes clear that his striking appearance and dramatic personality could not possibly be forgotten by anyone who came into contact with him.
As may be seen in the biographical sketch appended to this volume, his was not the old story of the prophet who had to be recognized by the world at large before