“Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”
My friends outside the wine industry give me funny looks sometimes. They wonder how it is that spoiled grape juice elicits the kind of language we use in industry discussions. The passion about a successful food pairing, of a particularly well-aged bottle, or of finding something unique and enchanting. It’s an understandable confusion, of course, in that way that confusion about any passion unshared can be understood. For all the tomes written about wine, it can be hard to exactly convey why one should feel so strongly about a beverage.
But such passion for a specific facet of food and drink is not itself unique, and need not always require a tome to explain it.
The Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzo, is just under forty-thousand words. Yet, as one can find nuance and complexity in its eponymous beverage, so one can find surprising cultural, philosophical, and aesthetic observations in this minute pages. This was a book read aloud for Isabella Gardner’s salons, something considered an “object d’art.” And, for the most part, it really is about tea.
What, then, earns it a place in my Top Ten Books?
Well, first, I love tea. I really love tea. I have a lot of tea in my house, and normally start my mornings with a pot of tea. A whole pot, really. In the summer I keep a giant jar of iced tea in my fridge. I make tea syrups for cocktails, personal and professional. When one of my friends was moving away for a grand new opportunity, we celebrated with a multi-tea-party. I probably consume as much tea as wine (take either of those however you will).
Sure, part of this has to do with caffeine. Tea is that great counterpart to wine, a boost of energy and a necessary component to a writing session. (Both are but for different reasons… Write Drunk, Edit Sober y’all. (Responsibly)). But there’s something more to it than that, for coffee has more the weight of caffeine and espresso more so, and yet I am not as great a devotee of either. (Okay I drink my share of coffee at work and I love my little Nespresso machine, but the prior is usually iced for quick chugging and the latter as often prepares London Fogs as Lattes).
Tea is more relaxing than coffee, more patient than espresso, and meditative for its preparation. It cannot be rushed, it cannot be forced, and it can only be savored. Preparing a cup of tea is an act and ritual in and of itself. It requires slowing down, waiting, and watching (even if the boiling slows as a result).
That is what lies at the heart of The Book of Tea. Teaism, a philosophy all its own derived from tea’s history and preparation as observed by Kakuzo, rolls front and center and serves as a lens not only for life but also in cultural interaction. Tea’s role in society, especially Japanese society as Kakuzo explains, “is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and the 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 aristocratic in taste.”
In short, it is more than just hot leaf juice.
Second, I was a history major, and an almost-East Asian Studies minor (Mandarin was my downfall.) The Book of Tea was written in 1906, and presents a fascinating look at the exchange happening between Japan and the west, through not only the lens of tea but also Kakuzo’s own experiences. There are plenty of unique japes at the expense of both parties (at one point there’s the accusation raised that perhaps Westerners have too little tea in their constitutions). It’s a piece of history for its existence, written in Boston (with noted alludes to the role tea played there), at a point of what it feels is a great flux. To feel that tension, the unease about the future of East and West, and the smiles disguising it at the time is a study in cultural interaction, written from a culture outside my own, that warrants a read for those reasons alone. It is an attempt to convey Zen and Taoism to the West through their shared lens of tea, and the perpetual uncertainty of its acceptance.
And yet there’s the hope that the love of tea can soothe these simmering tensions. It’s beautiful, for its hope and its melancholy. So much, then, in a cup of tea.
That mixture of emotions is most starkly present in the observation of flower arranging. “Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that awaits you? Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the gentle breezes of summer. To-morrow a ruthless hand will close around your throats.” It’s in details like this that The Book of Tea explores the importance of, paraphrasing it, the greatness in the little, and the littleness of the great. The urge and drive to stop and ponder.
After examining the role of tea in history and culture, The Book of Tea, discusses the rituals and appreciations the full aesthetic embrace of tea and tea ceremonies facilitate. Flower arrangement, appreciating art, the desire for space (though we do not have tea rooms, we do have our favorite chairs, our favorite mugs, the trails we walk to be alone, and the dishes we love to cook. The culture of the tea room is there, even if we do not assign it such a name.) In it, tea, is an examination of all the elements of culture and life sometimes taken for granted and in turn offers a difference, a change, towards the simple, the aesthetic, and the meditative.
Tea, therefore, and its book, stand in perfect and important contrast with wine. That I should be drawn to The Book of Tea is an acknowledgement of the important of balance (dare I say, temperance?) Even with the drive towards natural wine, towards democratized wine, towards unpretentious wine, we know the inverse remains. That wine is about its complexity, the weight of its history and place, the power and passion of its cultures, and the reverence that made it essential to religions. These are all some of the reasons I love it, and why many are drawn to it.
But the mornings after the chateau, and the cotes, and the dinners with their crystal stemware, I’ll wait while water boils, pause to pour it over tiny leaves, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
